GoldenEar Technology

System includes Triton IIs (L/R), SuperSat 50C (center) &, temporarily, some rather mediocre Radio Shack Minimus 7 surrounds (waiting for your new in-ceiling speakers).

AVR is the Marantz SR7005. Tritons are set to "large", 50C and Minimus 7s to "small". Small crossover is set to 120 Hz

With Audessy set to "off", two channel stereo is awesome! 5.1. is fine, but, predictably, I can hear the difference in sonic signature from the Mimimus 7s.

Here is my question: When I run the Audessy calibration setup, I get an error message "Front L/R Phase". I have triple checked connections and they are correct. I played white noise in-phase and out-of-phase test tones, and the speakers are clearly performing correctly. The Marantz manual does state that if everything else checks out OK, I can ignore the error message, since the calibration will not be affected one way or the other (I'm not sure I understand this, since Audessy corrects in both frequency and time domains). I have run Audessy a number of times, moving the speakers and seating positions around to see if the perceived phase issue is somehow related to room effects, but always get the same result..

Although Audessy does seem to make the surrounds blend somewhat better, I much prefer the overall sound with all correction turned off. Do you have any thoughts as to why Audessy thinks the Tritons are out of phase? I notice that Audessy also misjudges the distance to the Tritons by a foot,.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the Golden Ears immensely, but am curious if my experience is shared by others, or if you have any idea what is going on.

This is fairly common and the general consensus is the system sounds better with the Audyssey correction. I have no idea why the out of phase message appears but your summary is correct, the speakers are fine. In our experience, room correction outside the low frequencies is a very mixed bag.

Enjoy your system.

Just to note that I decided to try my Triton 2 speakers with my home video setup (had been using them for music only in my studio) and when running the auto setup, it repeatedly told me that one speaker was out of phase (not unless they've changed the laws of physics and I've gone color blind). The system also insisted that the speakers were small, meaning it would cut off the bass, a total shame given the way the speakers can rattle teeth if needed. After running the setup a couple of times, suddenly it stopped saying the speaker was out of phase. Go figure.

I ended up doing a manual adjustment of speaker type to large. Doesn't sound as good as it should, I suspect the receiver is still intervening.

Fairly common result ... override the auto EQ and things should be lovely.

Hi ednaz,

I posted the original message in this thread. During the past ten months, I've experimented quite a bit with my setup and have come to the following conclusions regarding my home theater setup.

1) I agree with the moderator ... the Tritons are probably functioning correctly.

2) The room iteslf may be causng the "false" error messages from Audessy. The sound character of my Tritons and my 50C center channel appear to be very sensitive to room reflections in my very "live" and acoustically "difficult" room....much more so than my older, less capable two-way 5.1 system. I suspect the GoldenEar speakers exhibit a very wide dispersion pattern (normally a good thing) compared to the narrow dispersion of my older system. In my home theater, however, this means that I'm getting a lot of reflected wave energy bouncing off the walls, floor and ceiling from the GoldenEars that is out of phase with the direct sound waves emanating from the speakers. Also, the sound waves from the more sophisticated dual midrange configuration in the Tritons may be losing its tight alignment due to these reflections. This may be confusing the Audessy setup. Audessy seems quite happy with my older, narrow dispersion speakers and I get no "out of phase" messages with the older system, irrespective of their location in the home theater.

3) I've tried various acoustic treatments and relocating the Tritons and 50C center speakers to alternate positions to reduce excess reflections. What is interesting is that I still get the out of phase message for the GoldenEars, but it will point to different combination of speakers, i.e, Left/Center" or "Right/Center", "Left", etc depending on changes in speaker location or acoustic treatment. This is why I think it is the Goldenear/room interaction that is the culprit.

4) I've decided to just live with the results and use manual adjustment rather than Audessy. Like you, I don't feel I am getting optimal performance from the GoldenEars in my home theater environment, but the limiting factor is most likely the room.

I would be interested in knowing how your home video room compares to your studio. Is it more lively (less sound absorbing surfaces, etc), with more echoes or obvious sound reflections? Are you using a center channel, rear channel speakers or subwoofer?

As far as I know, none of the Audessy implementations in the various AV receivers actually "set" speaker size. It just reports what it measures. So, if it meaures a limited low frequency capability for a given speaker, it will describe the speaker as small. If you have manually set speaker size to "large" under the speaker setting menu ( which is where the adustment is made, regardless of using Audessy or not), and still are not getting good bass output, that really is confusing. I can think of only two possibilities; (1) You may be getting a lot of standing waves and low frequency cancellation at your listening ;position compared to your studio setup. I have this problem and have only had modest success in correcting it (acoustic treatment and speaker relocation) short of usng a separate subwoofer located in a more bass-friendly spot (bad room effect, once again). (2) Is it possible that the speaker settings are routing low frerquencies to a separate subwoofer when in reality there is none?

Hope this at least sheds some light on what may be going on and would welcome the Moderator's thoughts.

Thanks Dave, lots of good stuff.

The GE speakers are very wide dispersion so they will excite room reflections more than a narrowly directional speaker. In the high frequencies this is typically a good thing sonically and often produces comments like "airy, open, transparent, big". As far as we can tell, many of the Audyssey systems in receivers just come up with wrong stuff, for no reason we can sort out. It probably also explains why results are so varied.

Bass cancellation at the listening position can be a real issue and nearly impossible to solve without additional woofers. In a TritonCinema (or any system with the woofers in the front of the room), the further away you are from the back wall of the room, the worse this is likely to be.

I have heard of multiple cases where a receiver that had run Audyssey needed to have a factory reset run to clear the receiver's settings and get back to "normal" for use in a manual setup mode. There have also been some member comments that various receivers do not downmix the .1 channel into a 5.0 (or 7.0) setup. Our research indicates this is not true, but...

If the receiver has a direct or bypass mode for stereo playback which bypasses bass management and EQ, you can use that to confirm your receiver's processing is not "getting in the way".