Distortion

[Robert Imhoff]

With the equipment of the listed below, I seem to have some distortion listening to vocal music in the upper baritone range. This is on several church cds, the production may not be of the absolute high quality, but they are professionally done. I have not bi-wired or made many tweaks to the system.

Polk RTi38 mains
Polk csi 30 center
Polk F/xi 300 surrounds
Polk 202 psw

Panasonic SA-HE70 receiver
Panasonic DVD-RV32

[Frank Z]

Make sure you have the speakers set to "Small" and let the sub hanble the low end. What do you have the crossover set at?

[Robert Imhoff]

The crossover on the psw is mid. Do I have any crossover on the RTi38 or others?

[Frank Z]

Originally posted by Robert Imhoff
The crossover on the psw is mid. Do I have any crossover on the RTi38 or others?

No, but you should be able to set the crossover in the receiver itself. You might want to take a look at the receiver's set up options and see what it's set at. Try setting it at 80-100hz and see how it sounds. Again it's important to set your speakers to "Small" via the receiver's setup options. Doing so will insure that the lower frequencies are sent to the sub. Failure to do so MAY cause the speakers to rumble or distort somewhat if they are not rated to handle low frequencies. The Rti38 frequency response is 38-27khz ( http://www.polkaudio.com/home/specs....=4&speaker=177 ) so setting the size and crossover would be a good place to start.

[BeginnersLuck]

Hello Robert-

I think the main source of you distortion is the Panasonic SA-HE70 receiver. This receiver is a class D digital amplifier. It tends to have very high THD as compared to a normal Inefficient A/B amplifer. The benefit of this reveiver it that it is very efficient, however, you pay the price in the performace area. Class D amps tend to run very cool and the THD ratings seem to clean up at higher listening levels on the power consumption band. But once you get too high things tend to digress. I believe you are experiencing about 1% distortion coming form you current souce of amplification.

My dad bought one and he loves it, but he is not nearly as picky as I am. I can tell right off the bat that his Panasonic SA-HE70 receiver is the main source of his distortion. He used to own a old Onkyo stereo amp that sounded fabulous...I think he actually downgraded in the sound departement to upgrade to Home Theater...hmmm that sounds funny. But he cannot tell so he is happy.

-BL

[ncw]

Originally posted by Robert Imhoff
With the equipment of the listed below, I seem to have some distortion listening to vocal music in the upper baritone range.

Perhaps you are blessed with a pair of very good ears. Loudspeakers will always sound different when you have someone's real voice to compare it with. If you just bought the speakers, did you let them break in for 24 hours or so? Can you compare that to a pair of other speakers for front L/R? Or listen to it with your headphones to check if there's distortion of the same baritone?