Bass Management Basics - Settings Made Simple

[admin]

Is your bass management set up properly on your processor? If you wish to optimize the bass performance of your home theater, read this article. Learn how to configure speaker size, crossovers, delay and more in this basic guide to bass management. This guide is designed to address the numerous questions we receive from new home theater owners who purchase a new system component and don't quite understand the How's and Why's of bass management. More advanced home theater folks may wish to peruse our more in-depth guides available on the site that give a more thorough explanation of this complex and often misunderstood topic.


Discuss "Bass Management Basics - Settings Made Simple" here. Read the article.

[utopianemo]

This article, for me, begs the question: What is the point of spending a lot of money on towers for Home Theater when you're not going to be using them below a certain frequency, which is where a lot of the extra money is going?

It's like when Tom Andry reviewed the Emotiva ER speaker package and compared them to the RBH TK-5CTs, and set the crossover at 80Hz. Given that the Emotivas were sufficiently well designed, of course one wouldn't hear a big qualitative difference between the tower and the bookshelf. The advantage the tower had is cut off at the knees.

It seems that when listening to music, towers make a whole lot of sense. Their xover system is designed to have a pleasing transition. But at least for HT, I can't see the point.

[Funboy]

Does any system measure and correct for the slope of the crossover depending on your system - It seems like it would be so easy for something like Audyssey to do it, but instead it measures everything, corrects everything, and then passes over the bass management to the receiver and lets it all get screwed up...

[gene]

many of these questions will be answered in a very comprehensive subwoofer calibration article I am finishing up. Fullrange speakers can work in a multi sub system but its very tricky. You are almost always better off bass managing all speakers and using 2 or 4 subs. Having a tower with multi bass drivers allows it to play much louder even if you cross them over at 80Hz so its not a complete waste.

[ParadigmDawg]

I can attest to that.

I blew 3 woofers in my Studio 40's trying to hit high volumes in my 8,000 cuft room. Since I changed to the Studio 100's, I haven't blown one.

Having a tower with multi bass drivers allows it to play much louder even if you cross them over at 80Hz so its not a complete waste.

[sholling]

Two reasons for towers. Some of us enjoy the pure/direct mode in our receivers and letting the towers deal with music down to their limits. We can still switch back to other modes that use the sub when watching videos. Second reason is efficiency and volume. Towers are still loafing when bookshelves are starting to struggle.

BTW, It looks like 3 of the 4 links are dead.

[utopianemo]

I agree with you about towers for listening to music.

A tower isn't more robust just because it's a tower; and there are plenty of high-end "Bookshelf" models--i.e. speakers that need to be mounted as opposed to floorstanding--that have outputs sufficient for large rooms.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for HT, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to design speakers that have a lot of extension below 80Hz or even 60Hz when the prevailing logic says the end user is going to filter that extension out anyway. And as a consumer, I'd rather put money into a more robust sub or throw money at a speaker that gives me more output at the frequencies I'm going to be using them for. That's why I particularly like Emotiva's speaker design philosophy--good sound and high output down to 80Hz.

[Alittlemonster]

Big vs little speakers? Hard to believe that my Klipsch would be considered "little" with ported, or horn 15 inch woofers (the speakers alone can rattle the room, never mind the subwoofer). So, measured the frequency response with an equalizer/analyser and sure enough--there it was...31.5 Hz at +0.5dB. So, did what the article said anyway and changed the x-over frequency to 80 Hz at 12 dB per octave to let the sub do its thing, and guess what? The bass sounded less muddy. The sound is gawdawful good now and before...well, was considering moving the subwoofer to get less room interaction. Nope, setting the speakers to "little" and the x-over to 80 Hz solved that problem. Neat!

Also, checked the Denon website FAQs and they answered the same question--simply put, unless your system has some really big speakers that can reproduce down to some sort of unreal frequency response and no subwoofer needed, it is best to set the speakers to little.

[utopianemo]

Alittlemonster,

Have you tried comparing your current setup (speakers set to 'small' with 80Hz xover) to leaving your speakers on large and turning off the sub?

I know your current arrangement would be able to go louder and probably have deeper extension, but I'd bet using the speakers by themselves would sound reasonably close in overall quality.

[Alittlemonster]

Alittlemonster,

Have you tried comparing your current setup (speakers set to 'small' with 80Hz xover) to leaving your speakers on large and turning off the sub?

I know your current arrangement would be able to go louder and probably have deeper extension, but I'd bet using the speakers by themselves would sound reasonably close in overall quality.

Great question--thanks for reminding me. Sure have tried that, and you are right, the big Klipsch sounded wonderful for even the very best music on an SACD--like the 1812 (the room just shook!, why even use a sub?), but they miss the boat on really low frequencies that can be heard on something like the Das Boot DVD. Not sure if the amp is running out of power trying to push the speaker woofers or the woofers simply can't do "it". It's probably a mixture of the two--have no idea what kind of ohms are coming up when the woofers get into really low frequencies causing the final amp to simply run out of oomph, but it looks like those frequencies are best handled by the sub. I think Das Boot can get to 10 Hz (as I've been told), and don't think there is any way that the Klipsch can reproduce that--the sub, on the other hand, doesn't seem to mind getting to its 12 Hz cut off, so.......

Incidently, room acoustics and build quality of the house are the single biggest problem that I have with LFE. This new house, doesn't cut the mustard. If the Klipsch can rattle the room and by that I mean the room walls and floor actually move, then you can guess what the sub does to it. Lesson learned here--next time, buy or build a more solid house. As for now, gonna listen to the xperts on this subject and in this case, turn the woof down a bit to get a more acurate sound.