Following your adventures here and elsewhere, it seems that Audyssey, Pro or otherwise, is not a party to the cause at all. The very high (and various) sensitivities of your speakers and amps demands a wider range of level adjustments than your AVR (or, indeed, most AVRs) can handle. Had you measured the channel levels with REW or some other tool you would have come up with the same issue and, probably, the same solution.

 

Hi, Kal. Yes, that is what I was trying to convey.

 

I love the look of the Klipschorns!

High Efficiency Speakers: check
11.1: check
Emotiva XPA-5 [2] and UPA-1 [1]: check!

At least, that's the building plan here... I thought the Troels Gravesen designs I am building were high efficient at 95 dB, but those Klipschorns are 105 dB, hence in another league all together. And from what I read on AVS, your room is rather small in comparison to the size of the speakers. I did a rough calculation based on 95 dB / Watt / meter and 128 Watt / channel should be needed to play very loud in our room (107 dB at 4 meter if I recall correctly), so the 200 Watt / channel of the XPA-5/UPA-1 is more than adequate. Our room will be 28 x 23 feet.

So I will probably not run into the issues you did. How did you install those far from small Heresy III floorstanders to/near the ceiling? Are they upside down and/or inclined towards MLP?

How are the amps connected to the various speakers? I was thinking of using the UPA-1 for the center and one XPA-5 for each L/R leg, thus ensuring that L/R/C separation is perfect and that each large L/R speaker can tap from their respective XPA-5 common power supply... Did you do it that way?

 

The height Heresys are mounted on wood shelves that are attached to the front wall corners with brackets. I was using RB-81s for height, mounted on 60lb rated Omnimounts, but was not comfortable trusting the Heresys to them, plus no way was I going to drill holes in new Heresys.

One XPA-5 drives FR, FL, SR, SL and SBL. The other one drives FRH, FLH, FWR, FWL and SBR. The UPA-1 is driving the Belle center. All that power is overkill for sure, but there is no way I will clip any amp channel!

The Emo amps are a little noisy when the AVR is muted - residual power supply hum at about the 3rd harmonic. Putting the attenuators between the Denon and the Emos did nothing, so the noise is coming from the amps. Bothers me, but completely inaudible when the system is in use.

If you followed my posts on AVS, you know what I went thru to get the levels set right. I initially thought that setting everything equal using the RS meter would work, but what I did not understand is that DEQ depends on having the levels set within the AVR's adjustment range, which I could not do until adding the attenuators. All of the work was well worthwhile - system never sounded better

 

Then the XPA-5 powering the FL and FR has to work (slightly) harder then the other IMO. No sweat though...

I have a pair of XPA-1 powering Jamo R909. A hint of transformator hum is indeed audible for about a minute after powering up, not longer and also only audible if not playing music.

Since the volume control on that set is digital (Weiss DAC2, with 4 output voltage level presets) and needs a lot of attenuation (since Emo amp gain is +32 dB) even with the lowest preset, I had a go with a pair of Rothwell -10dB XLR attenuators. But I felt a whiff of resolution was taken away, so I removed them. They say digital attenuation should be as little as possible. I thought about getting a SilverKnight B&R passive magnetic preamp (these sound better with much attenuation if the reviews are correct). But they do not answer to email quote requests, so I presume they are no longer in business...

I will probably turn to Emotiva once again for the XSP-1 preamp (need to connect other sources). Thinking of using the HT-bypass for the Weiss DAC2 (keep using the Weiss as a "wired" remote, sitting next to the Mac mini). But this is getting way off topic!