Hi guys, and thanks for the support! :neener:
Each of you has helped me advance along my HT learning at some point. Now the time has come to exercise some of that knowledge in pursuit of even better sound. Yes, I'm one of those pseudo HT nuts who places audio on a higher pedestal than video (at least until such time as I can afford for the latter's funds to surpass the former's). You will all laugh-out-loud very long and hard to find out that I am running my Salons mismatched to a B&W center channel in that tiny Green room of mine! The Salons are quite the behemoths in that cramped space, and wouldn't fare much better in the marginally larger "Eeek" room. But whether a product of my psychoacoustic imagination or my exceptionally well-honed, speaker setup skillset (hah-hah), the Salons convincingly disappear in outright audiophile fashion when reproducing up-to-snuff program material. So why oh why does dissatisfaction prevail? One Word. MMD! Mushy Movie Dialogue. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the source material, but I can't seem to understand dialogue as easily and recently as a few months ago.
Dirac Live calibrations don't drift the way a capacitors can, so I need to ask myself, "What's changed?" On the other hand, maybe I've slowly acclimated to the Salons! What was initially a dance over superior sound on 2ch music and multichannel concert videos, has become a convulsion over mostly incoherent murmuring. No blown tweets or mids. No changes in speaker position. My plan of attack is to first try a source with a known-good center signal. Then try a recalibration if that fails to turn up anything.
Those who don't know me may wish I'd just go back away rather than try to decipher my ramblings. BUT MY NAME IS LOU, AND i LOVE MY SELF!!
So I stay put. Hah! Or as the Knights Who Say "Nee" would say, I now say to you: "Nee!"
Winding down and back to the point...
My system needs more tweaking. This holiday weekend I plan to revamp the room and speaker setup. The room has become too dead as I've shoehorned in more and more bass traps. Time to back off on the wall panels as well. Then there's the speaker Combo Abomino - time to match the front set again, even if it means reverting back to the B&W's or shelling out some mean green for the Revel center. I've seen some used ones cross eBay recently for close to a song. Just couldn't pull the trigger so soon after Christmas and family Birthdays.
...while this is a rough draft of unfinished work, it's quittin' time on Friday afternoon and I need to head out the door.