Large or small?

[timmyleohoward]

Do woofers totally shut off when placed as a small?

 

[shadyJ]

You will have to be more specific.

 

[Pogre]

Do woofers totally shut off when placed as a small?

The woofers in your speakers? No. They're still playing those lower frequencies but they're gradually rolled off at the crossover point where they hand off to the subs. If using a subwoofer I would always set my speakers to small.

 

[Pogre]

You will have to be more specific.

Yes! Too vague for a proper answer.

I started typing my reply then realized he might be asking about the woofers in his subs..

 

[timmyleohoward]

Yes! Too vague for a proper answer.

I started typing my reply then realized he might be asking about the woofers in his subs..

My bad, my towers are studio refrance 100 Paradigms w/matching center. Do my towers 7" ×3 totally turn off except for the mids and highs?

 

[Pogre]

My bad, my towers are studio refrance 100 Paradigms w/matching center. Do my towers 7" ×3 totally turn off except for the mids and highs?

The woofers in your speakers? No. They're still playing those lower frequencies but they're gradually rolled off at the crossover point where they hand off to the subs. If using a subwoofer I would always set my speakers to small.

 

[timmyleohoward]

The woofers in your speakers? No. They're still playing those lower frequencies but they're gradually rolled off at the crossover point where they hand off to the subs. If using a subwoofer

 

[timmyleohoward]

These paradigms sinsatvataty is 220
Going down to 25Hz.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

No they definitely don’t just shut off. Especially with normal XO settings in the 50-110hz range. What your basically doing is tailoring how much bass is produced by the speaker, or the subwoofer. A kind of sliding scale. The higher the XO the more bass comes from the sub, and less from the speaker and vice versa. On paper it kinda looks like this.

 

[Pogre]

These paradigms sinsatvataty is 220
Going down to 25Hz.

Okay, sensitivity of 220 does not make sense at all. If that were possible you could power them with a AAA battery and make your ears bleed, lol.

Depending on what "down to 25 hz" means I'd say set your speakers to small and start out with a 80 hz crossover. "Down to 25hz" could mean 3 dB down or 10 dB down unless specified. Meaning they might be able to reproduce those low frequencies but not with much authority. Subwoofers live in that frequency and in general do a better job of it than most speakers.

Try the small setting, 80 Hz and go up or down from there and see what sounds best to you. My Ultra towers are legit capable -3 dB at 28 Hz and I was using a 100 Hz crossover because they just sounded (and measured) better that way. In my experience a higher crossover will give you more texture and punch if that's what you're lacking, but truly capable speakers with optimum placement can sound great with a lower crossover. That's very room dependant tho, and the placement of your speakers play a huge role. Subs are a bit more flexible in that you have more placement options to maximize performance.

 

[TLS Guy]

No they definitely don’t just shut off. Especially with normal XO settings in the 50-110hz range. What your basically doing is tailoring how much bass is produced by the speaker, or the subwoofer. A kind of sliding scale. The higher the XO the more bass comes from the sub, and less from the speaker and vice versa. On paper it kinda looks like this.

It seems this OP is asking the same question and wants a different answer.

The above diagram does give the gist of it. However your choices are different by brand. I'm an outliers here and believe that where possible speakers should be set to large and not small unless you absolutely have to. With Marantz gear you can set the speakers to large and send some of the bass to the subs. The LFE is sent to the subs.

Now I have an unusual system in that the fronts are truly full range with the speakers closely time aligned. However the sub signal and BSC is sent to the upper bass drivers and the LFE. The lower bass drivers only receive the sub and LFE signal.

Now all except the ceiling speakers are robust and capable and all have second order roll off. So all except my ceiling speakers are set to large. Now have I have done very careful listening studies level matched between LFE + main with the speakers full range and crossed over at 60 Hz and 40 Hz. with full crossover and LFE + mian at both frequencies. With LFE + main the bass and overall sound is far better than the full crossover. I know this is due to far better time alignment.

I have been convinced that time shift in speakers is an important and neglected issue. The time shift of a full crossover to subs is enormous. Ted Jordan who I knew and corresponded with until his death drew attention to this all his life.

The issue of the harm of time/phase shifts in speakers is now getting much renewed attention. I say finally after these years. Well it turns out that these phase/time shifts are an important issue in speech intelligibility. I have been hammering away about that for years. It may be one of the reasons that my systems do not have speech intelligibility issues that most speakers do. I have always taken steps to minimize this problem and especially in the speech discrimination band. Now I'm getting support on that.

As Ted Jordan preached for years, that "separating are fundamental from its harmonics in time can not possibly be a good thing". It is not. It is a very bad thing. I believe the next frontier in improved systems will come in mitigating this issue, which is not easy at all.

 

[Danzilla31]

It seems this OP is asking the same question and wants a different answer.

The above diagram does give the gist of it. However your choices are different by brand. I'm an outliers here and believe that where possible speakers should be set to large and not small unless you absolutely have to. With Marantz gear you can set the speakers to large and send some of the bass to the subs. The LFE is sent to the subs.

Now I have an unusual system in that the fronts are truly full range with the speakers closely time aligned. However the sub signal and BSC is sent to the upper bass drivers and the LFE. The lower bass drivers only receive the sub and LFE signal.

Now all except the ceiling speakers are robust and capable and all have second order roll off. So all except my ceiling speakers are set to large. Now have I have done very careful listening studies level matched between LFE + main with the speakers full range and crossed over at 60 Hz and 40 Hz. with full crossover and LFE + mian at both frequencies. With LFE + main the bass and overall sound is far better than the full crossover. I know this is due to far better time alignment.

I have been convinced that time shift in speakers is an important and neglected issue. The time shift of a full crossover to subs is enormous. Ted Jordan who I knew and corresponded with until his death drew attention to this all his life.

The issue of the harm of time/phase shifts in speakers is now getting much renewed attention. I say finally after these years. Well it turns out that these phase/time shifts are an important issue in speech intelligibility. I have been hammering away about that for years. It may be one of the reasons that my systems do not have speech intelligibility issues that most speakers do. I have always taken steps to minimize this problem and especially in the speech discrimination band. Now I'm getting support on that.

As Ted Jordan preached for years, that "separating are fundamental from its harmonics in time can not possibly be a good thing". It is not. It is a very bad thing. I believe the next frontier in improved systems will come in mitigating this issue, which is not easy at all.

So help me out here what your saying is that IF the speakers can truly handle full range running them full range with your subs due to time shift and phase issues is better if set up right then the issues that can come from running them with a crossover.

Just trying to learn something here

And to the OP yes when you set a crossover your woofers on your towers still handle more then mids and highs

 

[TLS Guy]

So help me out here what your saying is that IF the speakers can truly handle full range running them full range with your subs due to time shift and phase issues is better if set up right then the issues that can come from running them with a crossover.

Just trying to learn something here

And to the OP yes when you set a crossover your woofers on your towers still handle more then mids and highs

It is hard for me to know. Because I designed my system to have the drivers lined up and not have speakers separated around the room, which I can see has some advantages and some very big disadvantages indeed. So I elected not to have speakers under crossover control scattered about the room.

I deliberately did it that way based on my experience of audio systems.

All I can tell is that the design approach gives extremely accurate reproduction, especially the bass, which retains the effects of the original space. Many experienced listeners who have heard the system say it is the bass accuracy that as much as anything sets this system apart.

It is true though for any multi speaker system you can only really get close to perfect time alignment in one listening position. However, even given that the other positions become close.

I have shown this before, but you can see there is time alignment from the total system at the MLP.

This is a trace from a mic at the MLP. Take particular note of the impulse response with all speakers responding.

Now lets move back a row and now the timing of the speakers is separated.

Now we will move forward a row.

Now lets look at the optimal listening position in the 2.2 channel Family room system that has the subs at a distance from the right and left speakers.

I know most are in denial about this because it is so difficult to do anything about it. But it does matter in my view. As I have always maintained that it is critical in the 400 Hz to 4 KHz speech discrimination band. That is a big factor why so many center speakers are just no good. And makes the design of good center speakers so very difficult unless you use a good full ranger, which makes it much, much simpler.

Have you ever asked yourself why speech clarity became such an issue as soon as we started using Hi-Fi speakers for watching TV?

When box TVs had a cheap paper coned 4" to 5" single paper coned speakers, unless you were profoundly deaf, speech clarity was NOT an issue. That is because the parts of the crucial speech band were not separated in time. I would say this is by far the most pressing issue in the audio component of AV currently. Overwhelmingly few manufacturers have got this right.

 

[Danzilla31]

It is hard for me to know. Because I designed my system to have the drivers lined up and not have speakers separated around the room, which I can see has some advantages and some very big disadvantages indeed. So I elected not to have speakers under crossover control scattered about the room.

I deliberately did it that way based on my experience of audio systems.

All I can tell is that the design approach gives extremely accurate reproduction, especially the bass, which retains the effects of the original space. Many experienced listeners who have heard the system say it is the bass accuracy that as much as anything sets this system apart.

It is true though for any multi speaker system you can only really get close to perfect time alignment in one listening position. However, even given that the other positions become close.

I have shown this before, but you can see there is time alignment from the total system at the MLP.

This is a trace from a mic at the MLP. Take particular note of the impulse response with all speakers responding.

Now lets move back a row and now the timing of the speakers is separated.

Now we will move forward a row.

Now lets look at the optimal listening position in the 2.2 channel Family room system that has the subs at a distance from the right and left speakers.

I know most are in denial about this because it is so difficult to do anything about it. But it does matter in my view. As I have always maintained that it is critical in the 400 Hz to 4 KHz speech discrimination band. That is a big factor why so many center speakers are just no good. And makes the design of good center speakers so very difficult unless you use a good full ranger, which makes it much, much simpler.

Have you ever asked yourself why speech clarity became such an issue as soon as we started using Hi-Fi speakers for watching TV?

When box TVs had a cheap paper coned 4" to 5" single paper coned speakers, unless you were profoundly deaf, speech clarity was NOT an issue. That is because the parts of the crucial speech band were not separated in time. I would say this is by far the most pressing issue in the audio component of AV currently. Overwhelmingly few manufacturers have got this right.

Guess my loving 3 identical towers in the front is a good thing speech clarity has never been an issue since I've started doing that for all my systems

 

[JerryLove]

The issue of the harm of time/phase shifts in speakers is now getting much renewed attention. I say finally after these years. Well it turns out that these phase/time shifts are an important issue in speech intelligibility. I have been hammering away about that for years. It may be one of the reasons that my systems do not have speech intelligibility issues that most speakers do.

The only time I've noticed speech intelligibility issues is with some LCR systems. I solved those by pantomiming the center. What's a good sample of a speaker with speech issues?

Regardless, I would doubt the sub has much to do with speech. While the male fundamental frequency can fall within that roll-off; turning off my sub doesn't adversely effect intelligibility.

 

[shadyJ]

The only time I've noticed speech intelligibility issues is with some LCR systems. I solved those by pantomiming the center. What's a good sample of a speaker with speech issues?

Regardless, I would doubt the sub has much to do with speech. While the male fundamental frequency can fall within that roll-off; turning off my sub doesn't adversely effect intelligibility.

The sub can affect speech clarity by auditory masking. If the sub is running too hot, it can swamp out higher frequencies that go well into speech frequencies. Here is a diagram of its effect:

 

[lovinthehd]

The sub can affect speech clarity by auditory masking. If the sub is running too hot, it can swamp out higher frequencies that go well into speech frequencies. Here is a diagram of its effect:

So what does the "masker" line represent at 250hz or so?

 

[shadyJ]

So what does the "masker" line represent at 250hz or so?

The masker is a sound that 'hides' all other signals around it by dominating that auditory band in human hearing. In that graph, it is the tone that masks the darker bar at around 400 Hz. Every frequency sound with an amplitude that lay below the solid line would be rendered inaudible by the masker.
Here is a cruder graph that also illustrates this effect:

We have this phenomenon to thank for us humans being so insensitive to harmonic distortion. As you can see, most masking occurs at higher frequencies than the masker although lower frequencies can be masked to if the masker has sufficient amplitude.

 

[lovinthehd]

The masker is a sound that 'hides' all other signals around it by dominating that auditory band in human hearing. In that graph, it is the tone that masks the darker bar at around 400 Hz. Every frequency sound with an amplitude that lay below the solid line would be rendered inaudible by the masker.
Here is a cruder graph that also illustrates this effect:

We have this phenomenon to thank for us humans being so insensitive to harmonic distortion. As you can see, most masking occurs at higher frequencies than the masker although lower frequencies can be masked to if the masker has sufficient amplitude.

I was more curious as subs were mentioned then that frequency spike at 250hz......the new graph would be closer to how most use sub range but still a bit high for such a spike?

 

[shadyJ]

I was more curious as subs were mentioned then that frequency spike at 250hz......the new graph would be closer to how most use sub range but still a bit high for such a spike?

The principle holds at all frequencies, although auditory bands tend to be wider at lower frequencies, so subwoofers are especially good at masking higher frequencies.