shokhead said:
...would it be better to set the front mains to large for SACD playback?
No Shokhead!
Don't do it!
Don't set them to Large!
Your signature says that you have B&W 601 surrounds, B&W 603 front towers, and an SVS 20-39 cylinder sub. The frequency responses for your speakers are 60Hz to 22kHz, 44Hz to 22kHz and 20Hz to 100kHz respectively. By setting your fronts to Large, you are in effect saying that you have full-range speakers when in fact you do not (full-range speakers strictly cover a minimum of 20Hz to 20kHz).
You definitely
do want to take advantage of your sub's ability to go all the way down to 20Hz by setting all speakers to Small. The only issue left to resolve is then the value to be assigned to the crossover between speakers and sub.
If you look at the frequency response of all your speakers
apart from the sub, you'll see that the highest of any
minimum value is 60Hz, therefore, this is the setting you should set the crossover to. You wouldn't set it less than this because even though your 603's can cleanly deliver sound under 60Hz, your 601's can't, so the 601's are the limiting speakers in your setup.
In addition, the crossover setting of 120Hz you currently have is way too high. In general, people can tell where sounds of frequency greater than about 80Hz are coming from, so if you kept the crossover setting at 120Hz, you'd be hearing sound that was meant (for example) to sound in front of you wherever you currently have your sub placed, i.e. potentially behind you! By lowering the crossover setting down to 60Hz, you practically guarantee that this won't occur, yet you'll be getting a full-range signal (covering all speakers) at the same time.
Perfect.
BobbyDigital! Where's my whisky?!
