HELP: PLEASE EXPLAIN SETTINGS

[vandec54]

i am new to the technology world and i would like some explanation to the settings on my woofer. i have a ksw-12 and on the back it has 2 settings i am confused about. first is the lowpass (HZ) from 40-120, second is the phase switch 0 or 180. what should i have these set at for DVD watching? thankyou for your reply.

[Dustin B]

Well, without getting into details the the crossover should be set at 120hz and the phase should be set at which ever sounds better to you.

Also, make sure all your speakers are set to small on your receiver and that the sub is set to yes (doesn't matter if you have towers are not, the naming of this feature on receivers is very unfortunate). If your receiver has multiple crossover options, use the lowest of 80 or 100 hertz.

[vandec54]

i don't mean to take up any more of your time, but could you please explain to me the reasoning to set it at 120. i had it set at i believe 90 or so. was i wrong in doing this? what should i expect more out of my sub now that i have it set at 120. thankyou for your time and response.

[Dustin B]

The highpass in sub plate amps in general suck (there are a few exceptions when running line level through some more expensive subs though). So you want your receiver to take care of the bass management. With the receiver doing the crossover you don't want the lowpass on the sub cascading with the low pass the receiver is doing. So if you have a bypass switch for the crossover on the sub use it (the KSW series don't though). So the next best thing is to turn it up as high as it will go to get it out of the way.

[jstanton8]

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...

[jstanton8]

posted twice accidently

[Invidiosulus]

jstanton8,

I have a yamaha HTR-5540 and the only way I can get a signal out of the sub out during normal listening is to have the mains set to small

If I have the mains set to large the sub only comes on if I have the receiver in a standard surround mode(DD5.1, DTS) or one of the DSP options.

This is not really a big deal since I don't have a sub but it does kinda irk me somewhat.

Peace, Josh

[dougdrake]

jstanton - I believe the thinking behind setting the mains to small is

a) most speakers really don't do ALL that well with bass below the 50hz point, probably, although there are exceptions. By routing the bass away from the mains, it gives them to a device meant to handle it. Plus, bass below 80hz is "typically" non-directional so should not affect the listening experience.

by routing all the bass to a single speaker, you can minimize the possibility of cancellation from multiple sources playing bass notes

c) by freeing up the mains from handling bass chores, they will be able to better handle the upper reachs that the woofer has to handle above 80hz, or whatever the crossover point is.

Of course, all of this varies depending on the specific speakers in question, room acoustics, placement, etc... I believe these are just general guidelines.

And, Josh, if I had Heresy's, I'd set them to small also, whether my receiver forced me to or not to bring my sub into the picture. Heck, I set my Chorus to small!

DD

[jstanton8]

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)?

[jstanton8]

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

[Invidiosulus]

Doh,

I went back andpoked around at the settings with my bass amp hooked up to the sub out.

It looks like I do get output if I set the sub to "both" and my mains to "large".

What would suck about this is that the sub is getting everything under 90Hz while my mains still hit down into the lower 60s.

This would give me a nasty hump in the 70-80Hz range if I didn't have a subwoofer with a crossover setting.

As it is I have NO sub so it is a moot point.

I just leave my heresies set to large and I can shake the floor(6" concrete) of my apartment with 110dB in episode II.

Peace, Josh

[dougdrake]

"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..."

I think that setup would be uncommon, as Josh has discovered. My Denon permits bass to go to sub or both mains/sub.

DD

[jstanton8]

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?

[Dustin B]

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?&postid=739537#post739537

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_9_3/feature-article-multiple-crossovers-9-2002.html

Even K-Horns aren't what I'd call full range speakers. Very very few towers are. And even if you do have actual full range speakers I believe there are compelling reasons not to run them full range (doug pretty much covered them). The large/small naming was very unfortunate, as it plays against that guy thing of "I don't have small speakers" while the speakers physical size should not be the deciding factor for these options. For an 80hz crossover, ideally a speaker should be flat to 40hz (or flat to one octave below the crossover). Which is the real low end flat response cut off for what most people are calling full range towers.

I don't know why processors have that both setting. With it the sub will receive the LFE and a lowpass of every channel. Then any channel set to large will be producing the same bass that the sub is already producing making your system more bass heavy then the recording engineer intended.

[jstanton8]

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...)

[jstanton8]

posted twice oops

[Dustin B]

You just have to get off letting the bad naming choices bruise your male ego of small equals bad. Setting either of those speakers to small in no way wastes them. Ideally a speaker should have flat response to an octave below the crossover, or in the case of an 80hz crossover 40hz. And in both the Klipschorn and KLF30 it's around 40hz where they will start to trail off when pushed. Little bookshelves on the other hand will start to trail off up around 80hz.

[HornEd]

Setting speakers to SMALL or LARGE has a few more considerations, IMHO. For example, while Klipschorns and KLF-30's (I have both) are rated down to 33/32 Hz... their SPL's tail off a good bit earlier... and if they are relieved of their modest low bass chores they seem to increase performance on difficult mid-bass passages. I wouldn't be HornED if I didn't let the fully horn-loaded bass bin on the K-Horns and Belle do there thing on audio... but on the HT rig, I set the KLF-30's to SMALL and let the twin Ultra tower take over the low bass chores.

Some folks think that's a waste of KLF-30 potential, but the sub tower puts out adequate SPL's through the whole 16 Hz to 86 Hz range blending transparently with the KLF-30's for HT... especially with the music. Once again, the 12" woofers on the KLF-30 seem to improve when their longer excursion chores are handed off to the subwoofer array... for an overall improvement in performance.

A fun aspect of setting them to SMALL with an adequate subwoofer array (especially one that does not send out harmonics in the directionality range - over about 85 Hz), the low bass sounds will appear to be coming from the KLF-30 that is playing the over 85 Hz sounds associated with the non-directional lower bass. Guests to my HT will actually marvel at the otic illusion and say that they never realized the KLF-30's could go so low with so much quality and power. Fact is, they can't!

So, the long and short of it is setting your speakers up should be done with exact speakers and subwoofers in mind... and with full consideration of the room acoustics and amp/pre-amp characteristics. Sometimes the SMALL/LARGE setting dilemma has some interesting results that defy knee-jerk logic.

Of course, no discussion of speaker set-up should be without a plea to please use a good set-up disk, like Avia, and an analog SPL Meter, like Radio Shack, because it is physically impossible for anyone's human ears alone to set them up correctly. It has to do with the persistance factor of human hearing that helps determine directionality, etc. =HornEd

[TheEAR]

Same here,my RF7's,Contour 3.3's are capable of 30Hz but are set to SMALL.This way the subsonic bass is reproduced by sub woofers designed for the task,this way the overall sound quality improves.As the woofers in the tower speakers dont have to work as hard.

When set well the subwoofer(s) should make a perfect match with the mains(sourround speakers).Not overpowering the mains is crucial,too much subsonic energy can ruin a great system.

[jstanton8]

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...