My receiver gives me all these options about sending the bass to the subwoofer or if the other speakers can handle it letting themm handle some of the low sounds.
I have two front speakers and a center sp with low frequency capability but should I not use them for the low sounds waves and send everything to the subwoofer?

jeff

What Speaker type? What Subwoofer type?

My brother is one of the top audio video producers in the country and I my self have a lot of recording studio as well as speaker engineering experience from the mid 70's forward, so if this sounds off to anyone, you were told wrong to begin with.

If you have a "good" (or better) "subwoofer", I have found it best to set your surround and center speakers to small, wherefore all of the low freq material goes to the sub, as this is the way, most sound tracks are designed to be reproduced.

A lot of receivers crossover at 80HZ. But, if you can? Adjust your receivers crossover point to 60 HZ. I have found this to be the magic number for most of the installations I do. There are a lot of reasons for this.
First off,

Most all hi end professional recording mixers shelve their bottom end at 60 HZ, because it gives your sound a punchier feel than crossing over at 80 Hz. (although Greg Mackie will argue this point:( ).

Second

The voltage coming out of your wall dances around 60 HZ, so there are power supply resonant freqs to consider.

Thirdly.

most small speakers function fairly well at 60 hz but not bellow 40 HZ, so this is a good transition point.

Fourthly,

If you run your fronts for instance at large, you get overlapping phase problems with a sub that has an active crossover. the filters for example in your speakers AND! your "receiver", might be any ware between 6 to 24 db per octave . If your sub is 12 db per, and your speakers are 24 db per, this takes your speakers 180% out of phase with each other, Now some subwoofers have a "phase" adjustment on them, but this often gets people into more trouble than its worth if you don't know how to adjust it.

Sans any test equipment, listen to a constant broad spectrum sound, while turning the "phase" knob try to sense whether or not your ears feel like they are going up in an elevator, some would describe the sensation as a pulling in your ears. This is a very slight sensation and takes practice to be accomplished at performing this trick.

Now if you use the crossover in the receiver and set the fronts to small then you have 1 crossover at a set 6- 24 Db per, splitting the difference between the sub and the remaining speakers although problems still arise they are not as bad

Set your Subwoofer (if it has an active crossover) to the highest setting (probably something like 150 HZ).

Adjust the volume on the Sub to something near 50%

Do your Sub Fine tuning adjustments with your receiver.

Placement of your sub is very important, but without an architectural drawing I cant help you much. But I will suggest you get a long patch cord and move the sub around until you find a sweet spot that looks and sounds good.

If I had more time I would give you more details, but this should do for now.

if you do run your speakers at large An easy, accurate way of setting the phase control is to reverse the connections on your main speakers (the black wire goes to the red terminal and the red wire to the black terminal). Now play a simple selection, like a jazz instrumental with a good walking bass line, on your system while you're sitting in your listening position. Have a friend dial the phase control on the sub until you hear the least amount of bass. Leave the setting there. Returning your speaker wires to their proper places will now allow you to hear the most bass from your sub.
(If your sub doesn't have a phase control, you're going to want to position it as close as possible to one of your main speakers in order to ensure that the sound waves are synced up.)
i agree with RTI placement is the most crucial part of setting up a sub woofer.
The easiest method to correctly position your sub-woofer is to stand it at your listening position - don't worry, you're not going to sit on it whilst watching a movie! What you are going to do, is move around the room until you find the spot with the best bass response.this will then be the best place for the sub. Use a pink noise signal to do this. and make sure that all your other speakers are turned off.

The best position is not necessarily the one with the loudest bass, but the position with the smoothest bass. LucasFilm describe non-flat bass as having a "hooty" or "one-note" quality.



This message was edited by bob griffiths on 12/26/03 19:54.