center speaker balance

[holt]

Please see my signature for my setup; I have recently added the Newcastle 7channel amp and have used the 2 back surrounds to bi-amp my front Monitor 70s. Since doing that, 2 channel music listening has been fantastic and the amp has added to HT sound. The problem is that now I've noticed that the center speaker dialogue sounds weak, as if the movie actors are whispering their lines. I have used the auto calibration from my pioneer and have calibrated with a SPl meter, so everything should be in balance. I have tried the thx settings with and without and it still sounds the same. Raising the dbls in the center helps some but that CS2 speaker doesn't seem to "keep up" with the Monitor 70 fronts now.

Question: Is this a result of biamping the 70s or is this a problem with getting pcm output from the PS3 (unable to do bitmap). Or is this a combination of both? I seem to remember before bi-amping that the center seemed to keep up well with the fronts when they were all getting the same juice. I thought if they were all leveled, it wouldn't matter if the Monitor 70s would be getting more juice than the CS2. Any suggestions? Thanks for your responses!

[holt]

Anyone have an idea?

[wutadumsn23]

Not really sure why you are having this problem. Bi-Amping your mains with your AVR doesn't make that much of a difference (if any at all IMHO) since the power is coming from the same place for all your speakers in the AVR's amp section and won't increase that much by hooking up another set of speaker wires to your AVR's Surround Back L/R terminals. I have the 70's, CS2 and a PS3 and I have no problems. May be a problem with your CS2, try to isolate it and see how it sounds by itself.

-Jeff

[tonyb]

Bump up the center volume manually, make sure your speaker wire is connected to the center and receiver with no plastic stuck inside the connectors. Or you may have to lower the volume manually on the front left and right to match.

[holt]

The speaker wire is securely connected and I've bumped up the center some (maybe try a little more), I'm not bi-amping from the avr - only from the amp (which is 7 separate mono blocks).

I seem to remember reading in another thread where someone encountered this after bi-amping his fronts which created a situation where he felt the center "could not keep up". I want to keep the fronts bi-amped because it has made a difference in music listening.

No, I don't want to come up with a separate 2 channel system - lack of room, don't want to spend the money, and difficulty demoing quality components where I live (there is no Best Buy Magnolia for almost 200 miles).

I've thought about this last night and came up with a few different possible solutions - what are your thoughts on these, am I off base here?
1. Fronts are currently set to "full" while the center is set to "small". I might set all to full and see how that sounds.
2. take the Newcastle (its a 7 channel amp) off the two side surrounds and bi-amp the center leaving the vsx-9130txh-k to handle the 4 surrounds (I don't think it should make a difference there). That would leave one channel of the Newcastle unused.
3. Last and least likely cure: Buy a separate mono block for the center to get it up to speed with the two bi-amped fronts. This seems to be going in the direction I don't want to: Too many components drawing too much power and creating more clutter.