Klipsch 4.1 ProMedia Speaker Fill with Rear Channel volume boost?

[Jeremy Gates]

Hello, I'm posting here as a last resort and hoping somebody can provide me with some direction. Long story short, I'm trying to use Equalizer APO to accomplish a very simple task, but one that seems to be almost impossible. I've literally been working on this for over a week. All I'm wanting to do is perform a "speaker fill" to get 4 channel stereo sound on Windows 10 with my newly restored Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 speakers. I just repaired the amplifier board and re-foamed the subwoofers on this system and it's good as new. What I've tried:

With only Equalizer APO installed I've edited the config file t simply copy L to LR & R to RR. These seems to work, but the rear speakers as super-quiet and you can barely hear them. I've also installed the PEACE GUI and tried using the "Speaker Fill" preset but get the same result. The two rear channels are too quiet stil.

I'm using EQ APO for this since the "Speaker Fill" in Audio Enhancements of Windows 10 appears to be broken and the newer Realtek Driver software appears to have no suport at all for legacy speaker configurations. (4.1)

Here's how I'm currently configured:

• Klipsch 4.1 ProMedia ( 2 x Analog out for front & rear satellites + sub)
• Configured as "Quadrophonic" speaker layout in Windows 10 sound properties and all speakers play great at proper volume in sound test.

I'm no sound engineer, but I know that I need to mirror the front channels to the rear channels, which I think I've done. My problem at this point is boosting the volume on the rear channels to get them balanced with the front channels. What do I need to adjust? I've tried playing with the Preamp for specific channels, and the gain for all frequencies for the rear channels. +25 gain on all frequencies for the rear channels does increase the volume of the rear speakers but I'm concerned about this being the proper way to boost volume without introducing distortion. Any direction is extremely appreciated!

[Juha]

Config.txt would be helpful.

There are two speaker mappings for quad operation - https://sourceforge.net/p/equalizerapo/wiki/Configuration%20reference/#channel-since-version-08

You can monitor channel mappings through software as like https://www.orban.com/freeorbanloudnessmeter or https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/ (are EqiualizerAPO channels same as speaker test channels).

[Peter Verbeek]

Perhaps you have already done this but to amplify the filled speakers in Peace select the "Left rear" speaker and increase the pre amp (upper slider). Do the same for the "Right rear" speaker.
Or by commands try this:

Copy: LR=L RR=R
Channel: LR RR
Pre Amp: # dB

Where # is a value of the amplification in dB you have to enter, in your case 25 dB.

Btw. did you notice that your speaker fill command is maybe wrong? You're saying "simply copy L to LR & R to RR" but it should be "simply copy L to RL & R to RR.

To check if there's distortion by clipping when playing audio, look at the Peace peak value meter. If not in the red, all is fine.

Why the channels are quiet is very odd. A high pre amp of 25 dB can cause an issue when the rear channels suddenly do behave as the front speakers. Say it's a Windows or audio driver issue and an update corrects this then your speakers have to take the sudden 25 dB increase after this update. They may get damaged.

[Jeremy Gates]

Thanks so much for both or your replies. The speaker loudness thing was really weird. I ended up uninstalling and re-installing EQ APO and PEACE. After a reboot I started with the "Upmix stereo.peace" config preset and modified it to match my speaker layout just using notepad. I then applied a preamp setting of 4 to all channels via the Peach GUI after switching to my newly created profile. I now have pretty close to balanced front and rear channels with stero upmix fully working. I'm also not showing any clipping when playing music in the Peace GUI. The only thing I changed other than re-installing both applications and creating my new PEACE config file is the "Full Range Speakers" setting in the Windows Speaker Configuration panel. I had this unchecked, but after some research online, learned that this setting should only be disabled if you have a separate subwoofer. Thanks again for the help to get me going in the right direction. Juha, thanks for those links! I was familiar with Voicemeeter, but not Orban. Thank you Peter for the awesome Peace GUI front-end.

Edit: Attaching my config here in case it helps somebody else down the line with these speakers.

[Peter Verbeek]

Nice to hear you've managed to create a usable setup :)

Peace has one other trick up its sleeve: the Command window on which you can entered your own Equalizer APO commands. To change an effect from the Effects panel, copy it to one of the edit boxes on the command window and edit the commands (and of course switch of the effect on the effects panel).