Question about Yamaha RXV-800 .....Woochifer or somebody else!

[dvjorge]

Hi,

I have the RXV-800 receiver, and let me say you I am very happy with it, the only complain I have about it is because my is running a set of Paradigm Studio 100, and they are a difficult load for it. The receiver doesn't look to have enough power to run the Paradigms. I am planning on getting an extra amplifier only to power the Studio 100. In this way, the receiver will work better running the center and rears speakers. Any way, I would like to know some experiences setting up the RXV-800 in home cinema mode. I mean speaker levels, large or short, delay, center eq, bass selection, etc. In fact, which is the best way to get the best performance with this receiver. I know all of this depend on room side, speaker kinds, and other factors but I would like to hear some experiences from other people who know this receiver better than me.
Thanks for your time,
George.

[Woochifer]

If you plan on using the RX-V800 as a preamp for the L/R mains, you only need to concern yourself with matching the gain on the outboard amp. Everything else should work the same way as you're using it right now (unless you use your receiver in a two-channel setup). Just make sure that your level matching is done with a SPL meter and a narrow band test tone like the one on the S&V Home Theatre Setup, Avia, or Digital Video Essentials DVDs. The wideband test tone on the receiver includes a lot of bass information that will likely distort your SPL readings. Use the same setup to match your surround and center levels.

With a pair of Studio 100s, I would just set the other speakers to small and direct their bass and the LFE track over to the mains (unless you got a subwoofer, in which case I would run the Studio 100s on Large and redirect the LFE and bass from the other speakers to the subwoofer).

With the delay settings, the default surround delay for the Normal 5.1 mode is 5 ms. If your surrounds are closer to the listening position than the mains, then you need to increase the delay timing by 1 ms for every foot that they are closer to you than the mains. If your center speaker is arranged along the same plane as your mains, then you need to set a delay timing of 1 ms for the center speaker (ideally, the center speaker should be slightly behind the main speakers).

Otherwise, adding the amp doesn't really do much that you aren't already doing.