Speaker help needed

[rbedrock]

I recently purchased some monitor 40's and a CS1 center channel speaker. I am happy with the speakers for the most part except the vocals (movies and music) seem to have a hiss to them. I notice this mostly with words with an S in them and also in womens' voices. Is this what I should expect from this line of speakers as they are Polk's lower end? I read somewhere that different receivers can have different effects on the same speaker's tonal quality. I do not know if this is true or not. My receiver is a Pioneer VSX-815 and I have tried changing the EQ settings through the receiver but this did not help. Any suggestions would be helpful. I am on a budget so investing in more expensive speakers is not an option. I would be willing to upgrade to a different receiver but $600-700 would probably be my limit. Thanks.

[*Seby*-Polk-]

Hi Rbed !!!! Welcome :)

Respect your thread...i tell you something...

I listen for hours..days...a complete set of Monitor 50, Monitor 30, CS1, PSW10 (my future system) with a Yamaha RX-V657 and RX-V2600. The performace of thats receivers with CS1 is AWESOME. I can listen every dialog and effects with the best possible quality for the price. Clean, crystal clear and loud sound (i hear things that i never heard before).

I think your problem is the receiver. Pioneer (except Elite line) has inferior quality than, for example, Yamaha or Denon AV'r. Obviously IMHO and to my ears.

Try to change your receiver in the future and test other brands like Denon or Yamaha ......;)

[shack]

What you are experiencing is Sibilance - Energy from a voice centered around 7 kHz caused by pronouncing "s", "sh" or "ch" sounds. Sometimes different interconnects or different speaker cables will help tame the sibilance. Before I got rid of the reciever would experiment with different cables and possibly a different source (DVD player, CD Player). In my experience excessive sibilance is caused by a combination of things and sometimes changing just one fixes it. Rarely is the amplification or speakers the problem.

[millerman 3732]

what kind of E-Q settings does your pioneer have?

[anonymouse]

I can confirm that Pioneer's lower end receivers (I had the VSXD 411) do a serious injustice to Polk speakers. The Polk RTi28's sounded like crap with that receiver, but sound fantastic with a Sony STR-DA2ES. It was not just sibilance, but just overall control that the Pioneer had over the speakers. I strongly suggest you audition your speakers with a high current receiver e.g. Onkyo, Harman Kardon, Sony ES Series etc. to hear the difference.