Newby Home Theatre Question

[ArtNJ]

My surround speakers had incredibly wimpy volume until I gave them a +6 decibel adjustment. They are 30 feet away from the receiver, wired with basic monster cable. Is this normal signal loss over that distance or something else?

[markw]

Generally, the surround channels don't do a heckuva lot when set up properly. They are called on to produce lower level information such as ambiance cluse and, of coures, the occasional gunshot or so.

If you have a "5 channel stereo" mode (like denon) then this should be a different story for music. When this is selected they should jump to life.

Your wires are fine. A little pricey for what they do, but perfectly adequate for the job.

Where in Joisey are ya? I'm in Union County.

[Over50]

If your surrounds are properly calibrated you should have no problem, like Mark said you will hear what the sound engineer wants you to hear from the rears.

[poneal]

Most newbies to home theater think that the surrounds should sound like the main or wonder why there is no sound coming from them. The reason is that dolby prologic has an algorithm for determining what is sent to the surround speakers (usually ambiance, etc). For dolby digital encoded dvd's the sound engineer places sounds on 6 separate tracks; front, left, center, surround left, surround right, and lfe (low frequency effects i.e subwoofer). As stated previously, if your receiver has a 5 channel stereo mode then all 5 speakers should have the same sound. If it makes you feel any better my surround speakers have a +5 set on them. Hope this helps. Paul.

[Woochifer]

My surround speakers had incredibly wimpy volume until I gave them a +6 decibel adjustment. They are 30 feet away from the receiver, wired with basic monster cable. Is this normal signal loss over that distance or something else?

That would depend on how far the speakers are from the LISTENING POSITION, since you naturally have diminished volume as the sound waves travel a longer distance. If your main speakers are a lot closer to you than the surrounds, then the surrounds will inevitably sound comparatively softer. Room acoustics also influence the surround levels. If the mains are positioned close to the walls, while the surrounds are in more open space, then the mains will likely generate a higher level than the surrounds because of the greater proportion of reflected sound.

Another factor at play would be the efficiency of the speakers. If you're using different speakers for the main and surround channels, then their efficiency levels won't necessarily be the same.

The room acoustics and distances are much likelier factors in what you observed than anything having to do with the signal or cabling. Even a 30 foot distance won't be long enough distance to give you significant electrical signal loss.

If you really want to do the channel balances right, go to Radio Shack and grab an analog SPL meter. Then use the tone generator in your receiver to correctly even out the levels between all of the channels. You can get the accuracy even higher if you use a test disc such as the Sound & Vision Home Theater Setup DVD.