What do you recommend changing in my audio system?

[Patrick Tracy]

Moving your speakers or getting different ones isn't going to change problems with the room's acoustics or in the audio mix, and it sounds like both of those may be occurring.

If the audio is mixed to mono (and the surround system is in 5.1 mode), all the sound is going to come out of the center channel.

[Edit] I just listened to a bit of the two videos linked above. The music is stereo. It "should" be spread across all the speakers while the narration "should" come out of just the center. But parts of the music track are centered (equal level in left and right channels). Those parts would probably come through the center speaker. To keep them out of the center speaker, you would need the audio to be mixed six discrete surround tracks (left, center, right, left surround, right surround, bass).

In a proper surround system, all five main speakers should match, either be identical or have matching timbre (since the surround speakers can be smaller or be dipole). As a minimum, the front three speakers should have matched timbre. If they don't match, there can be a disconnect between the center and the left/right.

[Adriano Moroni]

Originally Posted by Patrick Tracy

If the audio is mixed to mono (and the surround system is in 5.1 mode), all the sound is going to come out of the center channel.

The audio of the voice is stereo and I see all my documentaries in stereo, not in 5.1 mode.
Is it normalI listen music other than the voice in the central speaker?
I hope I didn't mess up the connections between the speakers and the amplifier.

[Patrick Tracy]

Originally Posted by Adriano Moroni

The audio of the voice is stereo and I see all my documentaries in stereo, not in 5.1 mode.
Is it normalI listen music other than the voice in the central speaker?
I hope I didn't mess up the connections between the speakers and the amplifier.

With a stereo audio track, the sound will be divided between all the main speakers. Some of it will come out of the center, but some should come out of the left and right. It depends on where the instrument is panned in the mix. But if all the sound is coming out of the center for all sources, something in your system isn't right.

[Adriano Moroni]

Originally Posted by Patrick Tracy

With a stereo audio track, the sound will be divided between all the main speakers. Some of it will come out of the center, but some should come out of the left and right. It depends on where the instrument is panned in the mix. But if all the sound is coming out of the center for all sources, something in your system isn't right.

To plug a central speaker is so easy. In fact there is a connection for it. For me the sound comes out of both the tweeters and the central speaker in stereo.

[Adriano Moroni]

Today I did various tests and I noticed that I hear the best narrative voice when I choose the AllCH Stereo option on my Onkyo.
But at this point the voice in the central speaker goes to hell, because I hear everything mixed voice and music in all the speakers. Maybe I'll leave everything like this, because it satisfies me enough, or I'll buy 2 Elac Debut b5.2, hoping that with this AllCH Stereo option I can listen to everything even better. What do you think?

[Patrick Tracy]

I generally listen to (and mix/master) music in 2.1 mode, which is stereo with a sub, and I watch video in 5.1. Most music sounds better without all the surround processing, but it's nice to have the dialog locked to the center for movies and TV. I'm sure a lot of the TV and movie sound is just stereo, but it works fine. Maybe the 5.1 processing is better in my surround receiver.

[Adriano Moroni]

You probably don't know the Onkyo TX-NR545. Among the various options I don't see 5.1, I only see the "Surround" option.

PS: If I were to buy 2 Elac Debut b5.2 speakers, to be able to connect them to the Onkyo, would you recommend using a 2 or 4 mm cable?

[Rick Reineke]

If the project's audio is 'stereo' with the narration panned to the center (as it should be), the voice and other elements panned to the center, should come out of both the left and right speakers equally and sound as though it is coming from the center.. even if there is no center speaker. This is referred to as 'phantom center'.
If you have your left, right and center speakers wired together in parallel (daisy-chained for instance), that can create all kinds of phase issues and other problems.
If your speaker set-up is 5:1 surround, there is usually six separate outputs from the amp(s) going to the speakers: Left, Center, Right. rear Left, rear Right and the LFE (Low Frequency Effects) output for the sub-woofer.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Adriano Moroni

I would like to send you a few minutes of the voice recording. It's the same file as that voice that I hear badly. The 2° file was modified with the equalizer. Please can you tell me which of 2 files is better in your opinion? I would be very grateful to be able to understand better.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bkk9u...joxydz6ri&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1utc7...rnhmei9h1&dl=0

The second one is much improved and easier to listen to IMHO. But they are two different voice-overs (or from two different places in the same voice-over maybe? IDK), and they have different loudness levels. So it's hard to be definitive. What I'm hearing though is more clarity. Which is what I think you want.

It's been long enough since I did this kind of work I didn't even think to mention applying some compression to the voice-over track. I think someone else did. Just about any dialog track benefits from some compression just because people run out of breath toward the end of a sentence. That is, they speak louder at the beginning of a sentence and softer at the end, simply because they are running out of breath. Compression makes this less noticeable, which in turn makes it less work for the listener to understand what the narrator is saying.

All that said, I think there's another complicating factor here -- and that's the difference between a stereo mix and a surround sound mix. A straight up stereo mix is fine, but it has no center channel. All it has is the two L/R channels. One can play a stereo signal on a surround sound system, and nearly all surround sound systems will, by default, use all the speakers available to play those two stereo channels. But just because the surround sound system is using the center speaker doesn't mean that you provided a true center channel to it. You did not. You only provided a L/R stereo mix; the surround sound system then "up-mixed" your stereo signal into its estimate of what would sound pleasing from a 5.1 system. In other words, your surround system is making stuff up -- based on your stereo mix. This is similar but different from the way a 4k television up-samples a DVD signal -- it's interpolating new pixels to "make up for" the lower resolution of the DVD.

If you walk from one speaker to the next, putting your head next to each speaker, you will hear the voice-over coming from at least the front three speakers. And also the music, from all three speakers. Because the surround system can't extract the voice over from your stereo mix. Only you can do that. Asking an algorithm to extract your voice-over from your stereo mix is like asking it to extract the salt from a cake you already baked.

If you want the voice-over to come only from the center channel, you will have to do at least a proper 5.1 surround sound mix and supply all five channels -- L/C/R/LS/RS. If you put your voice-over track only on the center channel, your surround system playback will give you your voice-over from the center channel only.

I'm just saying that part of the confusion here might be expecting to hear the voice-over only on a center channel from a stereo mix. That will only happen if the source is a surround sound mix, not a stereo mix.

[Adriano Moroni]

I start to understand better. In your opinion, is it better to record the narrator voice in mono or stereo when recording with a professional microphone in Studio?

[Adriano Moroni]

Originally Posted by Rick Reineke

If the project's audio is 'stereo' with the narration panned to the center (as it should be), the voice and other elements panned to the center, should come out of both the left and right speakers equally and sound as though it is coming from the center.. even if there is no center speaker. This is referred to as 'phantom center'.

If you were me, you would record the narrator voice in mono or stereo when recording with a professional microphone in Studio?

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Adriano Moroni

I start to understand better. In your opinion, is it better to record the narrator voice in mono or stereo when recording with a professional microphone in Studio?

Mono. Pan to center in your stereo mix.

[Adriano Moroni]

Now I stop to ask, sorry for my insistence.
Last question, if I buy 2 Elac DEBUT 2.0 B6.2, can I use also the subwoofer that I have on the ground or should I disable it?

[Greg Miller]

We keep jumping around with new questions added before the old ones are answered.

I have a simple mind. Let's understand a few things simply.

1.) You keep talking about "tweeters." By this do you mean the left front and right front speaker? ("Tweeter" means a speaker that reproduces only higher frequencies. Depending on the system, this might start as low as 500 Hz, but much more likely starts from about 1,000 Hz and upward.) If you're talking about left front and right front speakers, for the sake of clarity call them that, or LF and RF.

2.) Please tell us the make and model number of those LF and RF speakers.

3.) You mentioned earlier that the (front) center speaker is not visible in your photo. Where is it? What is the make and model number?

4.) Also, in an earlier post I suggested that all three speakers ideally should be at the same elevation, roughly the elevation of the listener's ears. As far as I've been aware (for the past 60+ years) loudspeakers are somewhat directional. Therefore, ideally, the listener's ears should be roughly on axis of the speakers. If the speakers are sitting on a flat shelf (i.e. not tilted upward or downward) that means ideally they should be roughly at the same elevation as the listener's ears. I certainly think you can't go wrong with this placement. It will help eliminate delay/phasing issues when trying to evaluate a mix. Does someone want to disagree? If so, based on what?

(By the way, Adriano, you asked about sitting on the floor, to get your ears lower. That problem is that you can get a lot of reflections from the floor, so ideally you want neither the speakers nor your ears to be too close to the floor [or to the ceiling, either]. I think a good elevation is normal seating position, where your ears are probably ~1 meter above the floor. Your video display screen is roughly at eye level, right? Why not take the same amount of care with the audio? I probably wouldn't be as concerned about this, but since you keep wanting to change your playback system, I can't help feeling that we should get things as close as possible before spending any money.)

[Adriano Moroni]

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

1.) You keep talking about "tweeters." By this do you mean the left front and right front speaker? ("Tweeter" means a speaker that reproduces only higher frequencies. Depending on the system, this might start as low as 500 Hz, but much more likely starts from about 1,000 Hz and upward.) If you're talking about left front and right front speakers, for the sake of clarity call them that, or LF and RF.

Yes, I mean those small Bose cubes.

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

2.) Please tell us the make and model number of those LF and RF speakers.

There isn't the model on 2 Bose cubes, but they are around 20 years old.

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

3.) You mentioned earlier that the (front) center speaker is not visible in your photo. Where is it? What is the make and model number?

I didn't write it, I wrote I have "2 rear speakers (which cannot be seen in the photo)". If you look at the pic I attached on the first post, you wiill see every speaker I'm using in front.
Anyway the 2 speaker you can't see are Yamaha attached to the walls dx and sx. But I can't read the model. The central speaker is JBL ES25C. It is a three-way speaker. I bought it around 9-10 years ago and I paid it around 140 euro. Then I have a subwoofer on the ground and it is Yamaha YST-SW012 and if I remember well I paid it around 150 euro.

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

4.) Also, in an earlier post I suggested that all three speakers ideally should be at the same elevation, roughly the elevation of the listener's ears. As far as I've been aware (for the past 60+ years) loudspeakers are somewhat directional.

I did a test by temporarily turning up the speakers and I heard the audio of my documentaries better. I will do it later permanently, even if it is almost impossible for me to raise the central speaker.

English is not my mother tongue. Thanks for your patience.

https://i.postimg.cc/BQjd2HFk/TV-con-frecce.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/tCztNg3G/Onkyo-...posteriore.jpg