slumberer

Sounds like you're trying to decide if a 5.1 system with speakers in the corners will work. I get flamed when I suggest a 5.1 placement with surrounds behind the listening position, but I'm going to go ahead and do it again. With directional bookshelf speakers (such as the RB-61 and SBS-01) acting as surrounds, I like to have them behind and elevated. WAF will probably come into play with this placement, but I used to own the SVS system and I mounted the surrounds on the wall behind the couch with excellent results. This was a standard configuration before the advent of 7.1 and works well with directional surrounds. If you don't want to put holes in your wall, you could try some tall stands. The front tweeters should be at or slightly below ear level and the surrounds above a good distance. If you get the RS-42, these will be more conducive to the side placement in a 5.1 configuration. Only recently has the idea that your surround speakers MUST BE ON THE SIDES EVEN IN 5.1 been conventional advice. If you look at speaker placement guides in manuals from old 5.1 gear, there are many instances where the rear placement is recommended; older Rotel processors being one. When I received my SVS SBS-5.1 system (very early production) it's manual included a rear surround placement recommendation as well. For mostly movie and TV watching, the SVS system offers tremendous value and of course their subwoofers are excellent. Good Luck! Edit: For the size of your room, I would recommend against getting the Cinema Reference system. There's just not enough displacement there for a powerful movie watching experience IMO.

+1 Forte II all the way for your size room or even Quartet with sub. My experience has been the Heresy needs to be crossed over at 80hz or higher, the Forte 40-60hz, and the Quartet 60hz. Chorus would probably be overkill. Wouldn't turn my nose up at the Fortes being a lower quality than Corns or KLF; the story goes that Mr. Klipsch himself chose to use Fortes in his office so they could very well be the best Klipsch has to offer for a small to mid-size room!

1. Try to get the signal going to the sub as robust as possible and turn down the sub amp volume to compensate. I also had some difficulty getting my Sony BDP-S550 to do right with sub out when using analog, but over HDMI it works fine with my Onkyo 706 and SW-15 II. It's a pain to have to mess with the sub every time to get it to kick into gear, I know. I would try to balance out the sub with the rest of your system by turning the levels in the receiver really high and start with low volume at the sub. Personally I leave the sub on all the time and don't use the auto on feature ( I have an aftermarket plate amp running the SW-15 II as the original amp was fried when I got it...thrown in free when I purchased my Forte IIs!). 2. Don't know much beyond that the 706 doesn't seem to "pass thru" either when in standby. I've found that my Onkyo is very touchy when it comes to HDMI CEC issues. Kind of sucks when HDMI is supposed to simplify things huh? I like PL IIx for surround music and HD discrete (Dolby or DTS) for movies. THX is good but sets all your crossovers at 80hz. My favorite DSP is the Neural surround in Yamaha gear, but I don't have any Yamaha stuff anymore.

Welcome to the wacky quest for optimum home theater performance! 1. How you set your crossover depends on your receiver and sub, most modern home theater receivers will allow individual crossover adjustments. 2. Rated frequency response for speakers is generally measured in controlled environments where the manufacturer tries to get a baseline performance of the speaker without room interactions factored in, depending on your room and placement you might get more or less extension, but loud passages at lower than the rated frequency should not be sent to the speaker. In my room and placement, my center channel (Heresy III) does not get close to the rated low frequency extension. I cross it over at 90hz. The widely accepted idea is that bass frequencies below 80hz cannot be localized; meaning you can't tell where they're coming from. So this is the default crossover for many applications and most home theater speakers will reproduce 80hz. If you select THX settings in any portion of the signal from the source to your speakers, the signal will automatically be crossed over at 80hz at that point in the line. I get away with 90hz because my sub is in front, right next to the center channel, and I never use THX listening modes. There are two philosophies about frequency response for home theater, one is to get the absolute maximum output for each speaker by using placement and room treatments to 'tune' the room for accurate reproduction. If you have less flexibility for placement as in a living room system, the other road is to get a good placement scheme and then work within your room response by adjusting crossovers and the equalizer settings in your receiver to get the most accurate sound possible with your setup. A compromise between the two is what most people end up with. To get decent integration of your speakers and a subwoofer, you will need a test disk such as Avia and a sound pressure meter unless you have a receiver will auto room correction. Using the disk to run low frequency sweeps and watching the meter, you can see at what frequency your speakers start to drop away in sound pressure level (SPL). The rule is that +- 3db or more on the meter will be noticeable when listening. If your speaker starts dropping off at 72hz, you might try to move it around a few inches left, right, front, back. If you cannot get 70hz, then set your crossover for that channel at 80hz. You may need to overlap the crossover between the speaker with the highest crossover frequency and the low-pass setting in your subwoofer (like 80hz in the speaker and 100hz in the sub) to get a smooth integration because electronic crossovers are usually very steep. Some people prefer to simply defeat the low-pass in their subwoofers or set it to the highest value (usually 120 or 140hz). Receivers are getting very powerful nowadays and some will run auto calibrations using microphones to do the crossover adjustments and also assign equalization to each channel giving very flat response, although you will still need to manually fiddle with the subwoofer unless you get one with room correction circuitry built in. Graphic and parametric equalization can be used to flatten response manually if you have some older gear or you just want to be hands-on, but these techniques can wait until you get the system going and feel like playing with it some more. By the way, if you don't want to mess with it, the THX recommended 80hz crossover will probably sound pretty good for most situations. LOL! Any other questions, feel free to ask.

If you can stretch the budget just a hair, the new emotiva processor and a good used amp will beat any receivers all about the head and shoulders! Probably looking at about $1200 or so depending on how ambitious you want to get with the amp.

To really clean electronics, opening them up and using 90% alcohol (as opposed to 70% medical rubbing alcohol) with an acid brush is the best way. Saturate the boards, lightly brush all the grime away until the solder is bright and allow a few hours to dry. If you cut the bristles of the acid brush in half, it will clean stubborn spots easier. You don't have to worry about alcohol damaging anything as long as you allow it to dry completely (the 90% will evaporate very fast). I have resurrected many a circuit board just by cleaning in the above manner and reflowing any cold solder joints. It might be awkward to wipe up the removed dirt unless you remove the boards from the components, but if any of your valuable gear starts malfunctioning, a good cleaning is worth a try before throwing it away. Obviously this must be done with power removed including any batteries on the boards, and may be more than you want to do unless you have a problem with gear that is out of warranty. Just giving an electronics tech's input.

I'm looking to add low frequency extension to my system and was wondering if anyone had heard the coffin style transmission line subwoofers such as the perfectionist audio design? I have a SW-15 II and while it is fast and powerful, it drops off well before hitting 25hz in my room. I can't stand the sound of ported woofers (sounds like someone blowing in a jug to my ears) and wouldn't even attempt to build a transmission line sub unless it is very different. Any input or suggestions appreciated!

Several center channel speakers of the MTM design have a varied bass distribution between the two mid drivers. When you get it positioned as your center, try adjusting the crossover for it and see if you can get rid of the rattle. The noise from the one side might stem from lower bass frequencies being sent to that driver rather than a physical problem.

You're not going to like what I have to say, but....you have too much displacement for the size of your room. The bass is basically destroying itself before it can be heard outside your very small listening position. I like to leave my sub on all the time and use night modes when I don't want to shake the walls. I definitely set speakers to large from the source and use individual crossover points in the receiver for all speakers. Running some low frequency sweeps can help you get the proper integration with your mains (probably closer to 40/60 than 80hz) then you can set up a night mode in which you cut LFE but not Subwoofer volume (this way your system will still integrate well with the mains, but not wake the neighbors). Your problem with the tightly focussed sweet spot is easy to see from the first photo; all those drivers are too close together and toed in to sound good anywhere else. If you can move your mains out toward the corners (maybe put one of the subs between one main and the TV and the other in the rear of your listening position) you will find the sound far better outside your central listening position. Room treatments can help tame the bass problems but the deal is that you have too much subwoofer for your room, sorry if this opinion upsets you and feel free to disregard. Good Luck.

I have had in the last few years the LG BH-100, PS3, X-Box 360 HD-DVD, and Sony S550. There is not a whole heck of a-lot of difference between sound quality of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. I believe that products like the BH-100 and PS3 were over-engineered devices in that they were almost like prototypes and so the newer players have suffered in comparison as manufacturers have cut corners trying to find the sweet spot between excellent performance and diminishing returns. Your HD-A3 may well fall into this category (I have no experience with it) I know that the S550 sounds every bit as good as the BH-100 initially (more on this later) and I would say that the stand alone Blu-ray manufacturers are definitely challenging the PS3 with this year's offerings. I don't know about the Oppo, if they followed the overbuilt proto-design theory, it is probably going to be great. If they tried to make do with skimpy materials to save a buck, it might not measure up. One of the main complaints I have with most disk players is that after awhile they start oscillating. You can feel it if you touch the Sony S550 after it has been playing for several minutes. Build quality should trump feature sets IMO!!

If you're talking about the connections to the sub driver itself, it doesn't much matter. The phase adjustment allows you to switch even if you hook it up backwards. This isn't DC so no biggie! Just make sure to use the right two connections from the amp and hook it up securely!

Hopefully any subsonic filter applied by the Klipsch will not be passed through the line outs. This would be a design flaw in my opinion if it is applied to the output that could go to another sub which, as in this case, has greater low frequency extension. I wonder why most receiver manufacturers have abandoned the individually programmable dual sub outs that we saw in the onkyo/integra line from a few years ago? In looking at the manual, there is a section specifically dealing with connecting a second sub so Klipsch obviously put some thought into it. I would recommend following the procedure outlined in the manual and see whether or not the rumble is stolen from the SVS. Connecting through the Klipsch and using the outlined procedure from the manual will be FAR easier than trying to integrate the two subs separately by using a Y-splitter at the receiver.

The KSP-S6s show up on e-bay pretty regular, but often in poor condition. The RS surrounds seem overpriced. Maybe the THX Ultra surrounds if you can't find some decent S6s?

Yeah, SVS is awesome! I'm kind of running into the point where my home theater is starting to get too ridiculously elaborate.LOL I can get away with it now since I'm single, but I'm dreading the SAF from the next Mrs. Right!

Yeah, the Mcacc looks more flexible than most but definitely not the most user friendly! LOL Your choices for a good mid-bass sub are large and varied. I mentioned the Martin Logan because they have a long history of excellence and are, like Klipsch, an American company (I could go on about difficult tech support from LG all day). What you seem to need is speed and power in the mid-bass. I'm frankly surprised that the KL-650s are falling short on you. Going with the matching Klipsch Thx Ultra sub can hardly be a bad move either. My situation is opposite of yours, I'm looking for a little more extension in the lower frequencies. My SW-15 can really slam you in the chest but falls off before hitting 25hz. The Martin Logan is probably much cleaner than most (and better looking if that matters), but there are many options out there, like the aforementioned HSU MBM which is tailor made for your exact situation. Decisions, decisions. Nice problem to have though! LOL. Edit: I see you pulled the trigger, excellent price, I'm sure you'll be happy. Good gear!

Sure, most top-tier 10s or even multi-driver 8s will produce excellent mid-bass. Look for high SPL. There's a Martin Logan Depth on Audiogon (no affilitation) right now that would probably do what you want perfectly and is alot less $$ than you can probably find the RT-10D for.

I have a system similar to yours; Forte II fronts, Heresy III center, Quartet surrounds, SW-15 II sub, and an Onkyo 706 receiver (your Yamaha probably sounds a good deal better). I'm a believer in the quality of high end Yamaha gear, but I would nevertheless highly recommend external amps for your front end. I went from the Forte's and SW-15 in a 2.1 system with a Chiro C-800 pre-pro and Jaton 2140 amp to my current HT and I dearly miss the dynamics and channel separation when listening to music. That's the main thing, my receiver suffers rather noticeably in comparison because the soundstage floats around and the frequency extensions are sort of mediocre. How much of this is due to my former dedicated pre-amp, I cannot say. I had opened the Chiro up to look at it and saw that it was constructed on one huge board (almost the full size of the chassis) so the channel separation issue might have more to do with simple physical space in a separate pre-amp's circuitry. Power and SPL are not an issue in my room with the efficiency of the Klipsch gear (half volume is ear-bleed level). You might also find as I have that the SW-15, while a VERY good subwoofer, does not go to the ultra low depths of some of the newer subs. I am seriously thinking about getting a used SVS cylinder, or building one, to augment sub-30hz frequencys. I would recommend you borrow or audition a good 2 channel amp and see if the resulting differences are worth an investment to you. If you are like me, after listening to some music on the separate amp for a while, when you switch back to the receiver, you will immediately notice the floating, depressed sound quality and want to go back to the separates post-haste. I don't notice any deficiencies during movie watching though. Good Luck!

I'd try to get hold of a laptop and look at the charts from the mcacc. If I'm not mistaken, you should be able to see in-depth graphic representations of your room response. You have a very powerful receiver and spending some time using it to it's full potential might yield the results you're looking for -- increased mid-bass slam. The mcacc seems a bit tricky from what I have read; but after getting a flat calibration, you can bump up the mid-bass in the advanced menus if you spend a little time. The only thing that would make me want to throw money at the situation is if I thought that the kl-650's were just not up to filling the room with punchy mid-bass. If you've been playing with the crossovers and had the SVS covering that range though, it would seem that you might have a big room dip that the auto calibration is not quite correcting fully to your taste. Dig into that receiver dude, it's one of the latest and greatest tweaker lust objects!!

Reset and retighten both ends of the speaker cable. Switch cables. Switch amp channels. If you still have the problem, resolder all connections in the crossover. Still there, get crossover rebuild kits from Bob Crites for both speakers.

If you're looking for good surround for movies, I like them elevated a-lot higher. If you go to the local theater, the surrounds are probably way up there on the wall and pointed down at the audience. Having suffered through protracted arguments with fanatical people who insist that their way is the "right way", I don't want to sound like I'm trying to tell you what to do. I think the general idea is that surrounds in a mostly music capacity should image around ear height, and they will give a better surround ambience on movie tracks if mounted higher (1-3 feet above ear level). I had the SVS SBS-5.1 system and mounted the surrounds high on the back wall pointed down on the listening position. This sounded good to me, but I got into a fight with a guy on AVS who was trying to cram it down my throat that the surrounds HAVE TO BE ON THE SIDE WALLS FIRING TOWARDS EACH OTHER. I was like...sheesh man, its my system and I like the surround in 5.1 coming from behind. I've got to make the same determination as you now, I just got some Quartets to go with my Forte II/Heresy front end. Let me know what you end up doing and how it sounds.[]

I'm trying to understand your post. Are you telling him to disable one of the crossovers first? If so, then that's a problem because neither crossover has the ability to be disabled. If you run the adjustment all the way up on the sub, you have effictively disabled it, like I suggested. I apologise if I've misinterpreted your meaning, but I just don't understand the verbage of your post. No problem, let me clarify what I was trying to say. If neither has the ability to be disabled (this would be my first choice) then I, from personal experience and my limited understanding, say that running both crossovers on the same frequency is the simplest solution. You would think that running the subwoofer crossover at a higher frequency than the input signal disables it but this is not always true. My understanding is that crossover filters in these applications are reactive and therefore depending on the buffer circuitry, can be affected by another crossover in the circuit. If the Onkyo crosses in the digital domain(?), then this is less of an issue, but the Outlaw receivers and others use analog bass management and there you risk having the crossovers interact negatively. This phenomenon can be readily seen when running a low frequency sweep. You get several dips where the bad interactions cause serious attenuation at frequencies far removed from the set crossover. This experience is my reasoning that for simplicity's sake in most instances I recommend setting matching frequencies rather than trying to run the sub 'full range' as it were. Some subwoofers have an attenuation knob which should disable it when set to (0), but setting a sub to 120 means you still have an active 120hz filter in the circuit ready, willing, and able to cause gremlins in your bass response in some systems. If you have a more thorough understanding, I am fine with being corrected.

If it works for you, great. I have my Fortes and SW-15 in a totally unconventional placement all in one corner and it sounds awesome. Do what sounds good and more power to ya. I think personal experience beats any 'recommended' placement schemes. Did you get the new amps up and running yet?

I agree. You might try pulling them out a little. [^o)]

With respect, I disagree with this. Disable first (one crossover), match second, and set the sub all the way up as a last resort. The problems with two crossovers are caused by unmatched phase cancellations in the Q. You end up with several virtual bandpass filters killing linear bass response. Unless you have phase correct tuned filters, match the frequency so the problems are minimized.

The RW-12D says and/or both. This is basic electronics, when you split and connect to both inputs, you WILL get an increase in voltage, a decrease in resistance, and the current stays the same. So the signal will be a little stronger. I would recommend that you use the line inputs since the Onkyo has decent bass-management. Make sure you match the crossover frequencies in the sub and the receiver. Turn the LFE all the way up in the receiver and adjust level on the sub so you're sure to get a good clean input signal. When you get the sub and speaker levels matched up well, turn the parametric EQ off (0 attenuation) and run a low frequency sweep on Avia or a similar set-up disk. Turn the volume up high and listen for the frequency that makes your room rattle and buzz the worst. Thats the one you need to cut. Start out with a -3DB with mid Q and go down to -6DB if you need to; rechecking the sweep. Once the frequency no longer rattles and buzzes (any more than the rest), dial the Q tighter until you start to hear the buzz again and then go back a smidge until it's gone again. You definitely need good placement and a sound pressure meter to get your sub to sound its best, parametric EQ will help at loud volumes to keep your room from distorting the bass too much but is not absolutely necessary. Edit: Sorry, I didn't notice until after that the Onkyo has a graphic EQ and not parametric. The same principle applies though, use a LFE sweep to find the offending frequency and cut it 3 or 6 DB. Don't try to boost frequencies or cut more than one unless your room has two VERY pronounced buzz/rattle frequencies.