VSX-818V MCACC and System Setup

I really wanted to challenge the auto MCAAC (Multi-channel Acoustic Calibration) so I connected the VSX-818V to my family room system rather than my home theater room. We spend a lot of time in this room and the couches are set up to overlook the butterfly garden and bird feeders in our backyard with the TV in the corner. This room doesn’t have the preferred rectangular design of my home theater room and in addition the cozy space of the room allows little adjustment for perfect speaker placement.

Although it would have been nice to see more digital inputs in the back of the unit, I again realized how nice it was having large speaker binding posts on this receiver since my speaker cables already had banana clips attached to them. After connecting the speakers, subwoofer, and Sony DVD player to the receiver, I then connected it to my 42” Panasonic Plasma TV. I connected the supplied microphone to the MCACC portable jack on the front panel of the receiver, placed it at ear level near my favorite seat, and followed the directions for the MCACC setup.

Using the on-screen display on my TV and the remote I navigated through the screens and selected Auto MCACC from the system Setup Menu. The receiver automatically detected the subwoofer and the rest of my speakers in my 5.1 system.

Once the program detects your speakers it gives you 30 seconds to decide if you want to continue with the MCACC setup. You have the option of hitting the enter button at any time to continue with the setup, but after 30 seconds the MCACC setup will continue automatically. The program cycled through the test tones to determine the optimum receiver settings for channel level, speaker distance, and acoustic calibration EQ and completed its diagnostics within 5 minutes.

To check the auto MCACC setup I went to the Manual SP Setup. I was especially concerned with the distance the system configured for each of the five speakers and what the actual distance turned out to be.

I checked each of the actual distances of the five speakers with a tape measure and compared them to the distances calculated by the auto setup. All channels measured by the MCACC were within 1 inch of the actual distance from the microphone to the speaker with the exception of the subwoofer which was, not uncommonly, nearly a foot off. Because of the size of the room and the furniture placement the only visually appealing place to put the subwoofer was behind the TV. The subwoofer's internal crossover probably added the foot of delay since it’s not totally defeatable. To change the settings I decided to check out the Manual MCACC.

Manual MCACC

I decide to adjust the fine channel levels first. The default setting is 0db on all channels and can be adjusted by 10db. Once selected the system puts out a -13db tone for each speaker as it’s selected.

Editorial note: When using some of the menus such as the Fine Channel Level option, a countdown clock from 25 to 0 appears on the screen. Although it only takes a few seconds for the clock to countdown to zero it still is quite annoying.

Bass Management

The MCACC system set up my left and right speakers as Large speakers, which the Axiom Millenia M22Ti I own are definitely not. I adjusted the manual settings for Small speakers and checked the default crossover setting for the subwoofer. The default setting for the VSX-818V is 100Hz (most likely since this receiver is most likely to be used with satellite speaker systems). After my listening test I decided to adjust the crossover to 80Hz. Not a big change, but with the small room, wood floor, and windows, this small adjustment made the lower frequencies from my system blend better and sound more realistic.

Remote Control

Although I could control all the functions I needed to with the remote control, the layout still felt cluttered. One of the first features used on the remote is the setup for the receiver which can only be accessed by using a “shift” style button configuration similar to a scientific calculator. You have to hit the “Receiver" button first before you can use the “Setup” and “Return” buttons which are labeled in green under the buttons for “Guide category” and “CH-“. I guess Pioneer figures that most people never adjust their home theater system once it’s setup and don't want people accidentally entering the Setup menu.

Of course the biggest problem with the remote is that it doesn’t have any backlit buttons. I know that this is a budget-minded receiver, but even the $50 DVD player in my bedroom has a backlit remote.

iPod Connectivity

The VSX-818V allows the connection of an iPod through a USB input port on the front of the receiver and connects to the iPod through the port in the bottom of the iPod. Unlike other receivers at this price point, the iPod connection is digital, which Pioneer guarantees to be a full digital transfer without intermediate digital to analogue to digital conversions.

I decided to try out my iPod Touch with the receiver and see how it worked. I set the receiver to Standby mode while I connected the USB cable to my iPod. After the cable was inserted into the iPod Direct input terminal on the front panel of the receiver, I turned the receiver on. The iPod almost instantly went into a standby mode displaying “accessory attached” on the screen. All functions of the iPod screen were turned off and directed to the TV.

I found that scrolling through the menus was far more tedious on the TV screen than on either my iTouch or iPod nano (yes I own two iPod products, Steve Jobs owns my soul). For instance, if I have a particular song I want to play on my iTouch I can go directly to the first letter of that song (or artist, or album) and then search from there. With the on-screen display I had to scroll through hundreds (if not thousands for some iPods) of songs before I got to the one I wanted. To help narrow down my search I could select a particular artist, but I currently have over 90 artists on an 8 gig iTouch and if you decide to pick an artist near the middle of the alphabet you have to scroll through all the letters and all the artists before it.

After reading through the manual, I found out that there is an iPod control button on the remote. By pressing this button you can switch over the iPod's controls between the iPod and the receiver - either turning the receiver’s remote control and OSD active or inactive. This allows you to use the iPod screen. I even found that if you have a long enough USB cable you don’t even need to get off the couch to work it!