Icon W Ideal Set-up

[Ness5555]

I'd like to know what would be the best set up for my Icon W speakers. I have a pair of WF-35's, WC-24, a pair of XB-10's and the XW-500d sub. My main concern is bass management. Ideally, based on the WF-35's frequency response, I would set the crossover at 50Hz and set all speakers to small. I have not tried these settings, but would those settings yield the best integration between the speakers? Any suggestion on that? Also, should I adjust the LPF on the sub to say, 50Hz-- or just turn it off and let the receiver do the job? In the end, I'll just go with what sounds best to my ears, but I would greatly appreciate your input. Thanks.

[Ness5555]

Anybody?

[wuzzzer]

80Hz is generally recommended regardless of your speaker's low end capabilities. Its the THX standard. I'd start there and see how you like it. I think right now I have my Forte II fronts crossed at 50Hz, subwoofer at 50Hz and surrounds at 80Hz. I adjust mine all the time depending on what I'm watching/listening to.

Turn the LPF off on the subwoofer and let the receiver handle that part.

Hope you're enjoying your setup. The Icon series are beautiful looking speakers!

[jon k]

i have 4 wf-35s as fronts and surounds and i have them set to small, letting the stub do all the work and it sounds just fine.

[Ness5555]

Thanks guys.

I have heard that 80hz is the standard, but I was just wondering if that came into play when considering the low end capabilities of your speakers. I'll experiment with those suggested settings and we'll see from there. Thanks again for your input.

[SuBXeRo]

those are some great speakers IMO, i think they are very clear and clean sounding. They certainly need a good sub though because they do lack the lower end. In your case setting a bit of a higher frequncy cutoff around the standard 80 would be a good thing for seamless integration. One thing that has bothered me though with setting a subs HPF to arounds 80 is that the sub starts to pick up on more of, well we'll describe it as non-bass tones and more where the speaker should be. I tested with my old klipsch sub that at 40hz, you really do just get the clean bass, when i set my HPF at about 70-80 i started to get more noise in the sub and the bass was less crisp since the sub was trying to articulate more sounds. This is just a personally preference of course, in most cases its fine, there are so many setups like this and the standard is 80hz, i guess i am just more of a picky person. The icon subs are amazing i love them btw

[t-man]

those are some great speakers IMO, i think they are very clear and clean sounding. They certainly need a good sub though because they do lack the lower end. In your case setting a bit of a higher frequncy cutoff around the standard 80 would be a good thing for seamless integration. One thing that has bothered me though with setting a subs HPF to arounds 80 is that the sub starts to pick up on more of, well we'll describe it as non-bass tones and more where the speaker should be. I tested with my old klipsch sub that at 40hz, you really do just get the clean bass, when i set my HPF at about 70-80 i started to get more noise in the sub and the bass was less crisp since the sub was trying to articulate more sounds. This is just a personally preference of course, in most cases its fine, there are so many setups like this and the standard is 80hz, i guess i am just more of a picky person. The icon subs are amazing i love them btw

keep the crossover at 80, no lower. If you notice the sub doing too much work, it's probably turned up too high. You shouldn't notice it's there when listening to music, and you should really only notice it during some LFE during movies, and then it's like - holy shit, where did that come from as you are reaching for the remote to stop the crap from falling off the walls.

[Ness5555]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I have yet to experiment more with the 80hz setting. I currently have the crossover at 50 hz and to me, that sounds very good. The times I've set the crossover at 80Hz, I didn't really like the bass that was being produced. I felt as if the sub was getting too much info and as a result didn't produced as much clean bass as I get when I set it at 50. It may just be a personal preference. I'll have to keep experimenting with the settings and see what results I like best.