jstanton8

Hey Do-It-Yourselfers: The Stryke AV15 subwoofer drivers finally made it in (by slow boat from China...no joke). http://www.stryke.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5#5 They're supposed to be the new leader in the biggest-bang for-your-buck-driver currently on the market. Will keep you posted on how my 5 cu ft. box from Acoustic Visions turns out. Now what did I do with those Tumult enclosure plans...

I just bought a new 350 watt sub plate amp on e-bay. It's like the PE plate amp except it's a little bigger and has adjustable damping and frequency extension. What driver and size/type of box would this amp be compatible with?

Hey EARS: Doesn't that Paradigm X30 gizmo do pretty much the same as the SVS Bass Interface doo-dad?

Hmmmm...Dusty what do you think about this: http://www.rutledgeaudiodesign.com/subwoofers.html Do this box look promising or no?

I was just advised that the Tumult needs about 2000 watts of amplification. What on earth would one use for an amp for this sort of power requirement? Lord Jesus help me...

Hey Dustin: How's about a recommendation for a kick-*** no-holds barred-Tumult enclosure and an amp to match? I think this will be my next project after Acoustic Visions finishes my AV-15 sub.. I had talked with Adire a month or so ago & they said they "were working" on a Tumult enclosure but didn't have one yet. Thanks, J Stanton

Hey Dusty,HornEd,EARs: I stand corrected. NOW I see.... Having had my current set-up for several years, I had never once tried setting the mains to SMALL. I read those articles/posts Dusty provided, and still was slightly skeptical. Turns out I had a MAJOR misconception as to what a SMALL setting would do... What I THOUGHT was gonna happen was that all the output from the bass section of the K-Horns was going to be cut. So I put my head down to where the bin meets the wall and flipped the mains back and forth from LARGE to SMALL and guess what? There was virtually NO perceived change in the bass output! I went back to listening position and repeated it, and the change (if there was any) was very subtle. I thought that the SMALL setting maybe had a slightly clearer overall sound than LARGE, but the change was barely noticeable or was my imagination, I'm not sure which. There's all KINDS of bass information left to go to the mains when set on SMALL. I did not expect that at all. I think the reason that the perceived difference between LARGE and SMALL was not all that apparent because of the sub I've been using. The 'ol KSW-15 is probably to blame. With a better sub I bet that there would be a much greater perceived difference. I've been hot on the trail of upgrading my sub for a while. I've got Acoustic Visions building me a 5 cu. ft. AV-15 sub since last October(Stryke AV-15 drivers are late, being shipped accidentally by SURFACE mail from China), and plan on getting an SVS CS or two also this year. THEN maybe I can take advantage of using a SMALL setting once I have subs that are up to the job! Fact of the matter is that I do not think the KSW-15 is quite up to the job of taking over the extra low frequencies a SMALL setting would pass on to them, as witnessed by the fact that there was little or no perceived difference between LARGE and SMALL settings. I do not want to bash the KSW-15 too badly, however, as it does add quite a bit to the system overall, both for music and HT. It's just not the best match for K-horns...

Buy my Klipschorns & KLF-30s...I'm tradin' 'em in for bookshelfs!!!

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Hey Dusty: Thanks for the references on those articles/posts...have not had time to read them yet but will... (I just hope to hell I'm not gonna be told to set Klipschorns & KLF-30s to "SMALL". I may as well have bought a couple sets of bookshelf speakers and sunk all my money into an $8,000 subwoofer instead if that's the case...)

Sooooo....would it be safe to say that if one has full range speakers for surrounds and mains, AND a sub with an adjustable crossover, there isn't any good reason to limit those speakers by setting them to "SMALL"? And while were on the subject, I've got a KLF-C7 as a center. Now, is there any sense in running a C7 (or any center speaker) set to "LARGE"? In other words: a)does the center channel get fed any bass information (with either DD/DTS OR non-5.1 material)which would warrant setting IT to large? The reason I ask is because probably 99.999...% of all HT center channel speakers on the market are small speakers, thus I wonder if there IS any bass intended for the center channel in recorded materials in the first place.... If there IS bass information in the center channel, that would be a very good argument for having a full range speaker in that position. is a KLF-C7 capable of reproducing any bass frequncies?

Hey Doug: Looks like you were posting while I was typing...thanks for the reasoning behind the "small" setting. So I take it that IF you have full range speakers (K-horn mains, KLF-30 surrounds), you had best not be the proud owner of an amp that doesn't deliver bass to the subwoofer unless SMALL setting is used?? Are most A/V amps set up that way? Seems like such a waste to set up an amp like that, unless, of course you have dinky speakers...undoubtably a good idea in THAT case... Thanks

Holy smokes that's weird. The DSP-A1 has three subwoofer settings, NONE, SW, and BOTH. The SW setting is for the .1 (of 5.1 material),in other words, DD & DTS recordings, and the BOTH setting is for routing bass frequencies from the mains as well as the .1 material to the subwoofer. I would be hella pissed if the only way I could get subwoofer output was to cut the bass frequencies to my k-horns. I double checked my owner's manual last night for the DSP-A1 after reading Dustin's post above re: having to set speakers to small to get subwoofer output. For the DSP-A1 you are instructed to set either center, mains, or surround speakers to "small" ONLY if they cannot handle bass frequencies. Maybe the DSP-A1 is different from other amps in this respect. However, it makes no sense to me why an amplifier would be designed so that a subwoofer can only be used at the expense of losing all the bass frequencies to your other speakers! What would be the point of having any full range speakers AT ALL if that were the case?? Can anyone clarify this issue a bit (Dustin, EARS, are you out there)?

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Hey Dustin: I don't think you want to set your speakers to "SMALL" unless they don't have much capability of handling bass frequencies. That being said, all the amps I've owned have been Yamahas, so I guess it's possible that this will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer BUT with the Yamahas, you only want to set speakers to SMALL if they can't reproduce frequncies below 90 Hz. In this case a SMALL setting for speakers routes everything below 90 Hz to the subwoofer. However, if you use a SMALL setting for "tower" or other large speakers (like my K-horns and most other "non-satellite" speakers) which CAN reproduce these frequencies, you are going to be routing bass which SHOULD go to these speakers AWAY from them and to the subwoofer, which would be kind of like disconnecting the woofers on your speakers. Please correct me if I'm missing something here. I had Tom V. from SVS tell me to set my mains to "SMALL" also when hooking up a subwoofer. Considering I'm using K-horns for mains, that made no sense to me at the time and still doesn't. My subwoofer gets LFE output regardless of a "large" or "small" setting for the other speakers. All the "SMALL" setting does on a DSP-A1 is route bass away from speakers to which it would normally go, and you would only want to do that if you have speakers that aren't supposed to handle bass...

Hey I will buy it if you let me send half next Friday and the other half the Friday after! I've allready got one KSW-15 and could use another to run them in Stereo (Left-Right). JStanton

Hey Dustin what would be better in a 214 liter box, a Tumult or a couple of AV-15's? The reason I ask is because it looks like one can get two AV-15s for the price of a Tumult... How many PRs would be ideal for the respective driver(s)? Thanks, JStanton

Yes I think that at $200 the Behringer will fit the bill. The equivalent dbx product (Driverack 260) is $999.95! As far as the hookup-up of the sub, I was going to do as you suggest, run the full signal to the sub amp after crossing over at 50 hz with a 50 Hz Low pass FMOD. The only disadvantage to that is you then have to separately adjust the sub volume every time you adjust the mains volume. But it'll work that way... I am kinda forced to do it that way because I can't get the LFE to work with the outboard amp....

I love my K-horns but I also like the extra low-end help added by my KSW-15 and Yamaha YST-80s. I get the sense of a much "fuller" sound for both music and HT. IF they're dialed in right. I am in the process of upgrading my rig with a custom sub made by Acoustic Visions, as I have yet to be able to reach that point at which I can say "There's just too damn much bass here..." I'm firmly entrenched in the "bass-needs-to-be-felt-as-well-as-heard" camp. Of course the K-horns sound great by themselves for both HT and music, it's just that for my listening tastes they're complemented by the addition of subwoofers. When I can get to that point where's "too much bass" or when the overall sonic effect begins to be "unbalanced", that's when I would turn the subwoofer down some or "recalibrate". I have the adjustable crossovers on my subs set fairly low, with their volumes pegged so that they're running somewhere around a 50-70 Hz cutoff point. Any higher than that and things start getting boomy and the subs' volumes have to be turned down. I think that boomy region is probably where the sub lows overlap the K-horn lows (and is to be avoided). PS I'm offering a $35 reward to the first person who can trouble-shoot my LFE to outboard amp connection problem I'm having...(see Technical Questions or Powered Subwoofer Forum)...

I just got done looking at the dbx Drive Rack 260. Looked real good except for the $999 price. If money was no object I'd go with the dbx but I think the Behringer unit has comparable features for 1/5 the price. The dbx sounds like it maybe has slightly more advanced feedback suppresion but then "feedback" may not be that much of an issue here since we're talking DVD/CDs and not live music from a mixing board...

I posted this on the Technical Questions Forum but figured I'd do the same here. The original question was whether to use a 50 or 100 Hz crossover for a custom built (unpowered) sub which is to be matched with K-Horns. The snag which has arisen is that I haven't been able to get my LFE powered successfully by an outboard amp yet, and I had been intending to do an end-run around the problem & just split the full-range signal from the CD/DVD player, cross it over at 50 or 100 Hz, & then feed it to the sub's outboard amp/pre-amp. Someone had asked me what I was going to use as a cross-over for the subwoofer: What I was going to use was the following Behringer Equalizer. (see below): http://www.behringer.com/02_products/prodindex.cfm?id=DSP8024〈=eng I had come up with the 50 and 100 Hz figures because that's the frequencies that the Parts Express Low Pass FMODs come in. They act like active crosovers in that they go in-line right after the head unit and before the amp/pre-amp. But I guess you can count on neither of those fixed values being ideal for my particular set of room modes. For sure the best crossover point will lie somewhere in between say 35-100 Hz, but exactly where is hard to say. The room they're in is roughly 17 feet (long wall, K-horn side) by 12 ft. deep by 8 ft. high, but is complicated by an "infinite baffle hallway" attached to the left side of the room (post left K-Horn) and a large overstuffed couch that take up much of the square footage of the room. In the low range the Behringer equalizer has adjustable frequency bands at 20, 25, 31.5, 40, 50, 60, 80, & 100 Hz and 3 bands of parametric EQ which I thought would be plently of control to get the room "dialed in". Also has a real-time analyzer so you can see what your doing. And it's price is right, at about $200. From the webpage: "The DSP8024 features a 31-band graphic EQ with a real-time analyzer and an Auto-Q function for automatic room measurement and correction plus three bands of parametric equalization. Further highlights include a peak limiter, an adjustable delay of up to 2.5 seconds, a noise gate and BEHRINGERs renowned Feedback Destroyer". I was going to use the 50 or 75 Hz Parts Express Low Pass FMODs to filter the highs before they get to the unit. Then run that to the Pioneer pre-amp and that to the amplifier. Does that set-up sound OK? The reason I'm going about configuring the sub like this (not using the LFE output)is that for some reason I have not been able to get the LFE output to produce any sound with an outboard amp. It works just fine for my KSW-15 and YST-80 subs (both have inboard amps) but when I try to run the LFE with an outboard amp for amplification, I get nada. I've tried an integrated amp and a separate amp (with and without a pre-amp) and the damn LFE just won't amplify that way! I know the amps work because they both do fine with a FULL RANGE SIGNAL, but hook them up to the LFE and nothing. Zip. The pre-amp for the sub-amp is a full-fledged Pioneer Elite stereo pre-amp (will get the model # & I have the owner's manual if necessary). The amp is a Sound Code Systems pro amplifier that is rated 700 watts mono-bridged. A/V amp is a Yamaha DSP-A1. The problem with running by splitting the full range output of the CD/DVD to the subwoofer instead of using the LFE for input, is that the subwoofer volume will have to be adjusted independently of the mains volume, which will be very inconvenient... I am offering a $35 reward to the first person who can give me the solution to this problem, i.e, tell me what I have to do get the amp and pre-amp I have intended to use for this sub to effectively amplify the LFE output from my DSP-A1 (so I can get this custom sub off the ground). Any suggestions? Thanks, J. Stanton

What I was going to use was the following Behringer Equalizer. (see below): http://www.behringer.com/02_products/prodindex.cfm?id=DSP8024〈=eng I had come up with the 50 and 100 Hz figures because that's the frequencies that the Parts Express Low Pass FMODs come in. They act like active crosovers in that they go in-line right after the head unit and before the amp/pre-amp. But I guess you can count on neither of those fixed values being ideal for my particular set of room modes. For sure the best crossover point will lie somewhere in between say 35-100 Hz, but exactly where is hard to say. The room they're in is roughly 17 feet (long wall, K-horn side) by 12 ft. deep by 8 ft. high, but is complicated by an "infinite baffle hallway" attached to the left side of the room (post left K-Horn) and a large overstuffed couch that take up much of the square footage of the room. In the low range the Behringer equalizer has adjustable frequency bands at 20, 25, 31.5, 40, 50, 60, 80, & 100 Hz and 3 bands of parametric EQ which I thought would be plently of control to get the room "dialed in". Also has a real-time analyzer so you can see what your doing. And it's price is right, at about $200. From the webpage: "The DSP8024 features a 31-band graphic EQ with a real-time analyzer and an Auto-Q function for automatic room measurement and correction plus three bands of parametric equalization. Further highlights include a peak limiter, an adjustable delay of up to 2.5 seconds, a noise gate and BEHRINGERs renowned Feedback Destroyer". I was going to use the 50 or 75 Hz Parts Express Low Pass FMODs to filter the highs before they get to the unit. Then run that to the Pioneer pre-amp and that to the amplifier. Does that set-up sound OK? The reason I'm going about configuring the sub like this (not using the LFE output)is that for some reason I have not been able to get the LFE output to produce any sound with an outboard amp. It works just fine for my KSW-15 and YST-80 subs (both have inboard amps) but when I try to run the LFE with an outboard amp for amplification, I get nada. I've tried an integrated amp and a separate amp (with and without a pre-amp) and the damn LFE just won't amplify that way! I know the amps work because they both do fine with a FULL RANGE SIGNAL, but hook them up to the LFE and nothing. Zip. The pre-amp for the sub-amp is a full-fledged Pioneer Elite stereo pre-amp (will get the model # & I have the owner's manual if necessary). The amp is a Sound Code Systems pro amplifier that is rated 700 watts mono-bridged. A/V amp is a Yamaha DSP-A1. The problem with running by splitting the full range output of the CD/DVD to the subwoofer instead of using the LFE for input, is that the subwoofer volume will have to be adjusted independently of the mains volume, which will be very inconvenient... I am offering a $35 reward to the first person who can give me the solution to this problem, i.e, tell me what I have to do get the amp and pre-amp I have intended to use for this sub to effectively amplify the LFE output from my DSP-A1 (so I can get this custom sub off the ground). Any suggestions? Thanks, J. Stanton

I'll take a look at the model # of the pre-amp when I get home, was listed as a "Pioneer Elite" and it looks about right... As long as I split the signal from the head unit and only have the FMODs on the half going to the sub-amp, there shouldn't be any effect at all on the signal going to the AV amp/k-horns, should there be? At least I hope not, because I'm thinking it's OK to set up like that...

Hey Malotky: Thx for the recommendation on the sub X-over frequency. I've got all my speakers set on large also. That's why I got K-horns for mains and KLF-30's for surrounds in the first place. I can't think of any conceivable reason to have those suckers set on small! However, my center (KLF-C7) is set on small only because I can't tell any difference when I set it to "large". I guess the C7 must be crossed over high enough that the large setting makes no difference... JStanton

I'm having an unpowered sub built for me. It's going to get a split signal from the head unit, so I will need some sort of crossover. My question is: which of the following low pass crossover frequencies would be most appropriate: 50, 70, or 100 Hz? Keep in mind that the sub'll be paired with K-horns...the sub itself is a 5 cu. ft. box with 15" Stryke driver and two 18" PRs. It'll be used for both music and HT... Thanks, J Stanton