Receiver Setup - Part Two

Diana Krall: Love Scenes (DTS)
To quickly examine what MCACC was doing I listened to this disc with the receiver as it was automatically configured. I felt that the system sounded decent, but there were some odd things going on with regard to the low frequency extension (it was not as tight as I'd hoped). I also felt that the decay time of the reverb present in the recording was somewhat truncated or reduced. First of all, the MCACC had configured all of my main RBH Sound speakers as 'Large', giving them full range audio bandwidth. As an apparent result of this, the system had also lowered my RBH Sound 1010-SEP subwoofer level by 5.5dB. The RBH Sound 1266-LSEs sound great and can really push some low end, but with an entry level receiver you want to reduce the load to the amplifier whenever possible and let your powered subwoofer pick up the slack. This frees up your receiver's amplifier to power your main speakers through a narrower slice of the total program bandwidth.

Editor's Note on the Review System:
This review scenario was admittedly difficult for the Pioneer receiver. We set it up in Reference System 3, which features two RBH Sound 1266-LSE loudspeakers in addition to a pair of 61-LSE surrounds, a 661-LSE center channel and a 1010-SEP powered subwoofer. The 1266-LSEs are moderately efficient 4-ohm speakers - a difficult load for any receiver in this price range. To help the scenario, as indicated in the listening tests, we configured all speakers to Small to reduce the load to the amplifier and all listening tests are taking into account the fact that this receiver will likely be used with smaller, less expensive, andor more efficient loudspeakers.

With the default MCACC settings I felt the overall room sounded less "live", with the wonderful natural reverb coming from Diana's Krall's vocals being clipped just a bit short. Reconciling this with the settings, this was likely due to the correction put on the front speakers at 4 kHz.

In speaking further about the MCACC system, there are several ways to use the Room EQ available via the "Acoustic EQ" button on the remote control. When any Room EQ mode is selected, the MCACC logo lights up on the front of the receiver to indicate that you have it engaged. You can cycle through four possible settings: ALL CH (where all channels are fully EQ'd per the settings), F. ALIGN (a somewhat cryptic mode that appears to apply more correction on the surround and center channel speakers), CUSTOM 1/2 (two custom settings stored as Manual MCACC configurations), and EQ OFF.

SP SETUP
This section allows setup of the loudspeaker size, crossover setting, channel trim levels and speaker distancedelay. When configuring the system manually I arrived at the following settings (also noted above):

INPUT ASSIGN
In the Input Assignment section you can assign source devices to the digital coax and optical inputs. The digital inputs are numbered as in a higher-end receiverprocessor, but also provide labels for suggested input assignments. The three component inputs, also numbered, can have devices assigned to them as well.

M. MCACC (Manual MCACC Setup and Room Correction)
The Manual MCACC setup section allows you to run some or all of the MCACC tests one at a time so as to fine tune or re-tune your system as needed. In addition to being able to use the included microphone and perform an automatic speakerroom calibration and setup, the Pioneer VSX-815 provides for manual tweaking of the MCACC system by way of an integrated 5-band EQ. To do this you will want to select the C1 or C2 ADJ EQ settings which give you two custom user settings for the multi-channel 5-band EQ.

This is a neat feature to include in an entry level receiver and it can be used to tame, adjust, or otherwise alter what the Automatic MCACC system configures for the room. The graphical representation of the 5-band EQ is helpful and from the listening position you can visually associate what you are doing with the audible effects. Obviously this is not a tool that will effectively tame any real bass issues due to its wide Q (the "width" of frequencies affected when making adjustments to a particular band) but it does serve as an effective way to perhaps blend speakers that posess differing tonal characteristic or simply customize the sound as desired in your room.

OTHER
DRC (Dynamic Range Control) for Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks can be found in this section along with Dual Mono & LFE attentuation for limiting ultra-low bass frequencies present in DTS & Dolby Digital source material. If, for example, you are experiencing a lot of distortion while using a smaller subwoofer system (perhaps one that use single or multiple 6.5" drivers), you can enable this to drop out 10dB of gain. This allows a less robust system to attain better overall performance and efficiency.