Discuss Sceptre S6 and S8 here
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:idea: After calming down from my horrible experience with 2 out of 3 new units arriving with major QC faults - a bad crackling sub & one very shrill and nasally sounding S8 - I decided to take a step outside of the box & try to analyze why 2 Sceptre S8's would sound so different provided both show no evidence of visual or internal defects. Since the Sceptres have a Lynx system inside I thought their has to be some way to reset the DSP or at least run some type of system diagnostics. So I tried powering on the crippled Sceptre S8 with different combinations of DSP buttons held. And BOOM that was the key. It seems either holding the 1st two consecutive buttons makes the speaker boot in a shrill nasally sounding mode if you will. Powering on with the last two consecutive DSP buttons held results in a balanced sounding "normal" mode. Now, powering on with other DSP button(s) combinations also seems to do something too, but not audibly. With every DSP button combination - including the audible combos - the LEDs light up in different orientations. If my assumptions are correct, these different LED orientations provide system feedback/info. What exactly they are saying is cryptic, but the important thing is I was able to get my shrill nasally speaker to sound exactly like the other pleasant & balanced sounding speaker.

This leaves me with one major gripe. Why on earth would something like this not be explained in the user manual? This QC error nearly cost PreSonus a customer for life. I've had other problems with their gear in the past & simply was fed up. This also makes me wonder how many people have returned their Sceptres simply because they sounded awful out of the box because someone forgot to check what "mode" the speaker was leaving the factory. I am going to contact tech support about this -technician's Easter egg- for lack of a better term and report back here once I have confirmed what the heck exactly I stumbled upon.
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by shanabit on Sun Dec 18, 2016 4:54 pm
Im wondering if your combination of the : "Powering on with the last two consecutive DSP buttons held" would get RID of the HISS these things have if I turn up the volume passed 9 o'clock?
Turn yours up and see if they are hissy if you would

I was two seconds from sending mine back. I had to keep the volume all the way down on them.


THanks

EDIT:]
I tried it here, no change at all

StudioOnePro 6.1
UA Apollo Twin
OSX Sonoma 14.2

iMac 2013
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by mtulbert on Sun Jan 01, 2017 9:28 am
I am so thankful that I found your post. I had one of mine change to the nasally shrill sound and thought that I had blown something. I had submitted a ticket and was very close to sending to Presonus for repair when I tried your suggestion and poof!!! back to normal.

If you are ever in the DFW area look me up and let me buy you a beer.

Many thanks again
Mark T.
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by clayeccles on Mon May 15, 2017 10:13 am
"a shrill nasally sounding mode" - Glad I found your posts. I use Studio One 3 with S8's. When my S8's go into "shrill" mode they both do it. I am going to STOP turning them off from a power bar. That seems to mess-up the DSP. Your solution worked for me this morning. Thank you. The issue today was not "shrill" mode. One of my S8's was distorting badly. I tried rebooting the speaker and a few other things but the distortion remained. I used your "hold down two buttons" reboot trick and it worked ! At that point, my other S8 (the one that was not distorting) sounded "shrill". I did the reboot trick on it and that fixed it ! I think we could use a comment here from Presonus .

I have noticed the shrill sound several times over the past 4 months. Since both monitors were doing it, I thought it was: My EARS having a bad day OR some EQ problem with my DAW. I believe that S8's shouldn't be powered up or down with a power bar switch.
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by babulmukherjee on Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:45 pm
Goodness gracious... I can't believe this worked. I'm sooooooooo happy with my S8's now! :D

I've already have mine replaced/repaired once. Was not looking forward to the hassle and expense of going through that again.

Thank you krismiller!

Apple Mac Studio Max 64gb RAM, Ventura, RME UFX III, Studio One 6, Genelec 8330A w/7350A, Sennheiser HD 650
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by michaellamm on Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:04 am
Hey

I was having all sorts of trouble with my S6s. Different tones coming out of each speaker. Did the power on with the 2 far right buttons depressed and bingo!!! Both speakers giving exactly the same tone. I can't believe this isn't mentioned somewhere. So glad I found this post. Saved me much anguish.

Thanks

Mick

iMac running Yosemite.
Presonus Studio One 2.
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by garrettfinn on Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:26 am
Here we are into February of 2018 and still no solid support from PreSonus on the matter. This post is the only reason why I didn't write a ridiculous letter to my sales engineer at Sweetwater begging for him to help me replace these with something completely different.

I was actually reviewing the mix of a friend's track which I'll be releasing on a debut compilation next month, and uncharacteristically, I thought his mix and master sucked. 1.4-4khz was pumped all to hell and there was some gnarly listening fatigue after just like three plays through. I wrote the kid some notes, sent them along, and then when I deleted something on my desktop, I noticed that the trashcan sound on my computer sounded... off. I popped open iTunes, and was shocked to hear that EVERYTHING sounded like garbage.

After a quick apology to my friend and a disregard notice, I frantically started hotswapping cables, sources, interfaces, computers, all of it, and no matter what, the sound of shite ensued. I went out to my car to listen to something and see if I was like, coming down with an ear infection or something. Nope, the world sounded normal.

I had my brother, a guitarist, sit in and listen, and he immediately noticed that it wasn't just me, and that indeed something was wrong. He was actually the one to stumble upon this post. After trying a few things, I was able to reboot the DSP on the left speaker to a very clean and normal setting, but the right speaker, which was super muffled before, was not responding the same way. Trying a number of various permutations of the buttons at bootup, I was able to get a number of differently sounding 'modes' out of the speaker, but even with the same button combination and same LED arrangement feedback at startup, the speaker would not get to normal... each speaker had different settings or sounds or whatever is going on.

Now, the left speaker is fine, the right is super bright and aggressive around 1-4k and there seem to be some strange phase or delay issues happening.

Of course, I sat on the phone with PreSonus for an hour to actually get through to someone on the support line. I explained what was happening, and asked for them to send me any documentation regarding the DSPs and/or the advanced control and operation of the panel at the back, hoping to resolve this. They sent me one link to BASIC FUNDAMENTAL information about setting up monitors/ a room, and then another link to the product manual. Like, dude, I have the paper manual on the desk, did they even listen to me on the phone?

Laughably, they include a cooking recipe in the manual... but nothing on this, at all. Really hoping to get this sorted... my studio is currently useless.
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by redcoolaid on Mon Apr 15, 2019 4:14 am
4/13/2019 got home and turned on the monitors and almost got a headache listening to a song wondering why so u suck at mixing, I then played a reference then realized that the reference engineer must be deaf. It's at that point I smh and said nope it can't be, I then started testing the monitors then notice I wasn't getting enough bass from one of the monitors and was so bleep off because I have these monitors for less than 6 months.

Long story short I created a ticket with presonus but while waiting for Monday to get a reply I began googling sceptre s8 issues and ran into this post which solve the issue, thank you guys it really was good to know that I don't have to reship anything. Out of curiosity is it possible to get both to sound like crap with a mode
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by eliasskinner on Wed Apr 08, 2020 5:31 pm
I had this same issue but I think I figured out why this happens and why there are several different DSP modes (as mentioned before).

I watched Fulcrum Acoustic's (the company that helped design the Sceptres) video on their approach to DSP. The advantage to the coaxial design is even dispersion. The reason why we don't see more coaxial speakers is because the best way to direct the high frequency is with a horn. But horn's are notorious for being honkey and shrill. This is do to reflections in the horn. They fixed this by using differential equations and applying that to the DSP to correct these issues. David Gunness from Fulcrum is a genius.

The phase coherence from the high to low driver is incredible. When using SMART to analyze the phase shift, it was completely flat. So when it comes to engineering these are some of the most innovative studio monitors.

My guess is that when these speakers sound honkey and shrill, the DSP seems to be bypassed and that is the true sound of the horn. David Gunness even mentions that this is how horns sound on their own. So the DSP needs to be turned back on. I'm also guessing that they are using the same dsp chip for both the S8 and the S6. I'm willing to bet that the DSP setting for the S6 is different from the S8, so they must have 2 modes. One for S8 and on for S6. So there should be three start up modes as far as I can figure out.
    -DSP off
      -S6 DSP settings
        -S8 DSP settings

        Even though I'm upset that both my monitors did this at the same time and gave me a bit of a heart attack, I still love these to death. They sound amazing and I love geeking out on the design approach of mathematical modeling with differential equations. Hopefully this will be the extent of the issues with these monitors. (knock on wood)
        User avatar
        by babulmukherjee on Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:45 am
        Good catch eliasskinner!

        I just found out Presonus has this documented here: https://answers.presonus.com/17017/how- ... eakers-dsp

        That includes differing reset instructions for Sceptre S6 & S8 models.

        Apple Mac Studio Max 64gb RAM, Ventura, RME UFX III, Studio One 6, Genelec 8330A w/7350A, Sennheiser HD 650
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        by Ossia on Wed Oct 21, 2020 12:57 pm
        Yes!! This solution should be more promoted! I'll actually reset mine as a routine measure.
        https://answers.presonus.com/17017/how- ... eakers-dsp
        User avatar
        by Bbd on Wed Oct 21, 2020 1:35 pm
        I do the same with mine!

        Bbd

        OS: Win 10 x64 Home, Studio One Pro 6.x, Notion 6, Series III 24, Studio 192, Haswell CPU: i7 4790k @ 4.4GHz, RAM: 32GB, Faderport 8/16, Central Station +, PreSonus Sceptre S6, Eris 3.5, Temblor 10, ATOM, ATOM SQ
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        by jimhamm on Wed Oct 28, 2020 4:18 pm
        First off - Thank you very much to the original poster of this!!! Now for a story of ignorance. I purchased these used like a year ago and these has sat here unused for the most part in that time. I was alway perplexed by why these things had the same bass as my mixcubes unless you pushed them to the point my ears hurt. I just sort of assumed this was apparently how these were supposed to sound, and with all the glowing reviews out there I had to train my ears to work in this world - Man, do I feel stupid! It is like this post just purchased me a new set of awesome sounding S8s - These were literally about to hit eBay with the thinking every glowing review out there was a bunch of crap because my little mixcubes toasted these speakers. Spent the afternoon listening to music just shaking my head in embarrassment. Why Presonus, why? Why put a “crap mode” in expensive monitors? Just to jack with my mixing sanity? If that is the case you got me!
        User avatar
        by pdcreative on Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:33 pm
        ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

        Re-arranged my studio today and got the S8s in the perfect listening position. Wired and powered everything up and literally one of the nastiest sounding monitors I've ever heard. Took a chance and looked on the message board.

        Thank you to the person who originally posted this fix. Awesome. Now they sound better than ever.
        PD
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        by bryanbartone on Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:16 pm
        I want to say thanks to the OP. I just experienced a local blaock-out followed by quick successions of power surges as the local supplier was trying to restore power. It all happened so quickly, that I did not have time to react. The monitors are powered via an APC surge protector, but that did not prevent them from coming up with a messed up nasal sound. I was bummed until I tried the OP suggestion. That fixed the problem for me. Thanks again for sharing.
        User avatar
        by davidtarrao on Sun Feb 27, 2022 11:27 pm
        So yeah this through me off the deep end…..

        I’ve been banging my head for the past two years wondering my mixes won’t translate. I think I had the power go out about 2 years ago when I moved my home studio. I remember wondering why I had a hiss and why all my reference material sounded so wierd and harsh.

        So i thinking it was my new and not ideal room. I decided to I move my entire studio to different room with the same issue and checked everything you could possibly think of. From ground loops to unbalanced loads on my electrical circuits. then I bought sonarworks which was kinda fixing the eq had but could tell my stereo image still wasn’t there.

        I spent a 1000 dollars and 40+hours building my own wall ceiling panels…..and not using studio foam.

        Then I spent over another 1500 and atleast 50 hours building acoustic tube trap diffusers which help my low end but not the 1-4K bump….then I finally stumbled upon this reset post right before possibly just buying different set of monitors.

        I Cannot believe this isn’t In the users manual. How much grief and time I have lost…..my hair is falling out all of sudden too. Thanks Presonus for that one. If I had a dollar for every hour lost I could by that new interface I want.
        User avatar
        by eugeneshnayder on Mon Dec 26, 2022 9:29 am
        krismiller wrote:idea: After calming down from my horrible experience with 2 out of 3 new units arriving with major QC faults - a bad crackling sub & one very shrill and nasally sounding S8 - I decided to take a step outside of the box & try to analyze why 2 Sceptre S8's would sound so different provided both show no evidence of visual or internal defects. Since the Sceptres have a Lynx system inside I thought their has to be some way to reset the DSP or at least run some type of system diagnostics. So I tried powering on the crippled Sceptre S8 with different combinations of DSP buttons held. And BOOM that was the key. It seems either holding the 1st two consecutive buttons makes the speaker boot in a shrill nasally sounding mode if you will. Powering on with the last two consecutive DSP buttons held results in a balanced sounding "normal" mode. Now, powering on with other DSP button(s) combinations also seems to do something too, but not audibly. With every DSP button combination - including the audible combos - the LEDs light up in different orientations. If my assumptions are correct, these different LED orientations provide system feedback/info. What exactly they are saying is cryptic, but the important thing is I was able to get my shrill nasally speaker to sound exactly like the other pleasant & balanced sounding speaker.

        This leaves me with one major gripe. Why on earth would something like this not be explained in the user manual? This QC error nearly cost PreSonus a customer for life. I've had other problems with their gear in the past & simply was fed up. This also makes me wonder how many people have returned their Sceptres simply because they sounded awful out of the box because someone forgot to check what "mode" the speaker was leaving the factory. I am going to contact tech support about this -technician's Easter egg- for lack of a better term and report back here once I have confirmed what the heck exactly I stumbled upon.


        Oh bless you bro for figuring this out, I almost shat a brick when BOTH of my speakers powered on with this shrill sounding band pass sound. I think it must have been some kind of power short circuit or even maybe static electricity that reset both of my S8's to this shrill sound. (Very dry right now in the studio cause of cold temps and the furnace working overtime). But you def saved the day for many people, thank you!! 8-)

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