5.1 vs 7.1

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Should I set my AVR to have them small ? Thats how I have all my speakers set at even though they can handle bass. Its What I read is the best thing to do but its hard mentaly to set them all small lol .

Oh, yeah, definitely set them to Small.

I know what you mean on that HOT topic of Large vs Small.

I would only set a speaker to Large if it can handle 30 Hz @ -3dB.

Otherwise, I would just set them to Small.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I see what your saying but I meant just switching the speakers around but leave the wiring configuration the same like surround sound to sides and sr to the rear but just switching the speakers like 450's for the rear and the digms for the sides if that makes any sense lol

Looks like you are going to have to conduct a double-blinded (or single-blinded) study and give us a full write-up on this SM450 for Side Surround vs Back Surround.

Personally, I would put my "better" speakers as the SIDE Surround and my "lesser" speakers as my BACK surround. But there is no science to this.

 

[TheFactor]

Looks like you are going to have to conduct a double-blinded (or single-blinded) study and give us a full write-up on this SM450 for Side Surround vs Back Surround.

Personally, I would put my "better" speakers as the SIDE Surround and my "lesser" speakers as my BACK surround. But there is no science to this.

lol Oh yes I absolutely will

 

[MatthewB.]

I would definately set the 450's to small, in fact i have mine crossed over at 70Hz and when I ran Audyssey on my Onkyo 805 it set my 450's to 70Hz. The general rule of thumb with Def Tech is to take their lowest rated frequency response and double that to get a true crossover setting. So DT claims it will go down to 30Hz, double that and set to 60Hz, I set mine to 70hz just to be safe and after Audyssey set it there also, I knew it was a good choice.

Now on to the next issue, I have a similar couch (overstuffed leather) and the problem I see is that by palcing them on your endtables is going to hinder that enveloping sound and from your picture it looks like your mid range driver is going to fire directly into the couch (which is going to absorb alot of that sound. Your best bet is to raise the speakers to just above the height of the back of the couch for the sound waves to travel freely all around you. trust me on this one, I made the same mistake and placed mine on endtables and although sounded good, when I bought five foot metal plant stands at Goodwell *couldnt beat 10.00/pair and the base fit the 450's to a friggin T, it made all the difference, sound was now more open and enveloped you. So I would mount them on the side walls further up or put something under the speakers on the endtables to lift them up about a foot.

You made a great choice on the 450's, they are great speakers and match my BP7001s great.

 

[TheFactor]

Oh, yeah, definitely set them to Small.

I know what you mean on that HOT topic of Large vs Small.

I would only set a speaker to Large if it can handle 30 Hz @ -3dB.

Otherwise, I would just set them to Small.

Heres the specs on my center, does it meet the criteria for setting to large ? Its all foreign to me http://www.paradigm.com/en/reference/speaker_only-specification-50-1-3-13.paradigm

 

[TheFactor]

I would definately set the 450's to small, in fact i have mine crossed over at 70Hz and when I ran Audyssey on my Onkyo 805 it set my 450's to 70Hz. The general rule of thumb with Def Tech is to take their lowest rated frequency response and double that to get a true crossover setting. So DT claims it will go down to 30Hz, double that and set to 60Hz, I set mine to 70hz just to be safe and after Audyssey set it there also, I knew it was a good choice.

Now on to the next issue, I have a similar couch (overstuffed leather) and the problem I see is that by palcing them on your endtables is going to hinder that enveloping sound and from your picture it looks like your mid range driver is going to fire directly into the couch (which is going to absorb alot of that sound. Your best bet is to raise the speakers to just above the back of the couch for the sound waves to travel freely all around you. trust me on this one, I made the smae mistake and placed mine on endtables and although sounded good, when I bought five foot metal plant stands at Goodwell *couldnt beat 10.00/pair and the base fit the 450's to a friggin T, it made all the difference, sound was now more open and enveloped you. So I would mount them on the side walls further up or put something under the speakers on the endtables to lift them up about a foot.

You made a great choice on the 450's, they are great speakers and match my BP7001s great.

Thanks for your help I understand what your saying and i'll have to experiment with placement for sure and you scored on the stands !!!

 

[TheFactor]

Wright now I have all my speakers set to small and my crossover set at 80 accross the board because my ELITE 94 wont allow me to set different crossover points for different channels and for my fronts it wont let me set my center to large and fronts to small ,only center small and fronts large but not reversed or all small but its lets me choose for backs and srb . Thats the only thing I dont like about my elite other than that it rocks .

 

[MatthewB.]

I would set your center at either 50 or 60hz for tighter bass response, they have 7" woofers, but with passive woofers you really don't want to push them hard, because that brings in inherent distortion and makes the bass seem boomy. I have AR Phantom 8.2 all the way around my master bedroom setup and I have those crossed at 60hz and each one has an 8" woofer (I should really cross them at 80Hz but they sound good so I leave em) Remmeber the crossover should be used with care. It's only towers with big honking woofers 12" or larger) and powerful amps or towers with built in subs that should be set at large and even then I don't recommend it and tell people to set as small and cross at 40Hz. Your speakers should all be set to small. Your towers set at 40Hz or 60Hz, your center at 60hz and the 450's at 60Hz, 70Hz or 80Hz depending on how they sound.

Yeah on my stands I looked for months and just stumbled into a higher end Goodwill (if you can call it that, oh well it was in Scottsdale) and there they were, they were Gold colored (70's looking) but a can of piano black spray paint took care of that.

 

[MatthewB.]

Wright now I have all my speakers set to small and my crossover set at 80 accross the board because my ELITE 94 wont allow me to set different crossover points for different channels and for my fronts it wont let me set my center to large and fronts to small ,only center small and fronts large but not reversed or all small but its lets me choose for backs and srb . Thats the only thing I dont like about my elite other than that it rocks .

You will be fine at 80hz across the board, you could probably get by fine at 60Hz if the Pioneer allows that. Trust me that SVS PB13 will handle the low end just fine and better than your speakers ever could do.

Yeah that's the one thing I hated about my Pioneer when i had one, is that dang universal crossover, so those of us with mismatched speakers were stuck. Other than that tiny issue Pioneer makes great recievers.

 

[TheFactor]

I think my elite lets me have a 50 or 60 crossover setting accross the board so I could try that . So does that mean more bass goes to my sub at 60 vs the 80 setting? Sorry its a little confusing and always screws me up lol .

 

[MatthewB.]

No less bass will go to the sub the lower you set the crossover. Basically what your doing is allowing more bass information go to your other speakers the lower you set the crossover. Think of it this way, by setting your crossover to 80hz your telling the reciever to turn on your sub when any frequency below 80Hz is sent. So your speakers play down to 80hz, when you set the crossover lower, then your speakers play down to 60hz before it is crossed over (or a better term handed over) to the sub.

Since bass is considered any note below 200Hz you could essentialy set it there, the problem is that bass becomes localized and you can tell where its coming from till it hits 100Hz, hence why THX recommends a rule of 80Hz across the board for a crossover (including large towers) the problem with this is that many speakers can easily achieve clean tight bass to frequencies down in the 30-40Hz (like the DT towers with built in subs)

Since you have a Pioneer with one universal crossover point, I would take the speaker that can handle the littlest bass and use that as a guide (in your case your rear channel speakers) take it's lowest rated frequency response, and go from there. But in your case 80Hz should be more than fine. it just means your center which can easily handle 60hz won't have to play from 60hz -80hz becxause you've told the reciever to hand off everything below 80hz to the sub, and that's just fine because SVS will easily play 80hz and below just fine, because that is what it was specifically designed to do. You'll be just fine with a 80hz setting.

One more thing to note is that mid range driver size is also important in determining what to properly set your crossover to, because it is the mid range that will have to carry the mid bass frequencies to the to the lower bass. So drivers from 5.25" to 6.5" and higher can easily get down to sub levels of 60Hz to 80hz, but say a mid range with 4.5" driver I would crossover at 100Hz - 120Hz, I have a pair of DT Mythos gems that have dual 3.5" now according to DT techs that means with dual drivers that it is basically a 7" woofer (I call serious Bullshyt on this one) because a 3.25" driver (no matter how many you have) can never reach the bass of a 7" driver. So for drivers of 3.25" I cross mine at 150Hz. hence why when you are considering speakers you should do some research and look for those frequency charts like in Sound and Vision and Home Theater magazines. It will tell you excatly what they tested with a semi staright line then the lower the frequency you'll see it suddenly drop like a rock, it's at that point where it dropped that the speaker couldnt handle any more bass and so dropped off. One of the reasons Bose are horrible speakers is their tiny 2" drivers can never reproduce anything that comes close to 200Hz and so it sends it's info to that bass module which is basically three 5" drivers and can only get down to 47hz (not exactly subwoofer territory) since many bookshelves can do that (not that they should).

Hence why when you read reviews and they show you each speaker and sub you basically want a straight line from 20Hz-20kHz, so they show the graph for the sub and where the sub drops off you want the speakers to meet up with the staright line of the sub.

Take this frequency response for the Hsu speaker system, the purple graph shows what the speaker can handle before it drops off at around 100hz, but that's okay because as we can see by the blue graph (subwoofer) it can get to 100hz pretty easy and if you follow a semi straight line the sub goes from 20Hz -100hz, then the speaker picks up where the sub left off and carries the stright line the rest of the way. There are going to be peaks and valleys but there are many factors for that (room it's in, placement of microphone and so on. There are only a handful of speakers that get a perfect ruler flat frequency response (Mackie 824 powermoniters are one). But what's the most important is how the speaker sounds to you the listener, just look for a speaker that can match with a sub and you'll be good.

Sorry so long.

 

[TheFactor]

Wow thanks for info thats helps me understand the crossover much better and makes much more sense now I've been playing from having it at 50 because it goes from 30 to next highest 80 on the crossover. Haven't watched a movie yet so i'll try experimenting then. Hopefully my 450's will be here by wednesday or thursday so I can get the full effect Thanks again for the in depth info on the crossover .

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Heres the specs on my center, does it meet the criteria for setting to large ? Its all foreign to me http://www.paradigm.com/en/reference/speaker_only-specification-50-1-3-13.paradigm

No, the bass response is 47 Hz @ -2dB, so I would set it to Small.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

It's only towers with big honking woofers 12" or larger) and powerful amps or towers with built in subs that should be set at large and even then I don't recommend it and tell people to set as small and cross at 40Hz. Your speakers should all be set to small. Your towers set at 40Hz or 60Hz, your center at 60hz and the 450's at 60Hz, 70Hz or 80Hz depending on how they sound.

Believe it or not, I can agree with you on setting even a Large Tower to Small w/ a Crossover of 40 Hz.

But it really depends on your receiver.

For example, when set to Large + Crossover @ 40 Hz, my receiver will allow the Bass to be sent to both the LARGE speaker + Subwoofer at the same time (for Freq below 40 Hz).

I mean if my receiver only allows for one or the other, then I would set my speakers to Small. But since it allows the bass to be sent to BOTH the subwoofer and speaker at the same time (all frequency below 40 Hz will go to both the subwoofer and my speakers), I not missing any bass.

What do you think?

 

[MatthewB.]

Acudeftech, that's an interesrting concept (BTW what reciever are you using? ) I know you have those giant 7000's so this may not be a concern considering it has those 14" woofers and 1,800 watt amps. What i would do though is disconnect your sub, set the mains to large and just play a STEREO mix of heavy bass muisc or movie and see how well they handle the real deep bass (have an organ music handy) then listen or how well it handles the real deep bass. Because I would be considered with distortion at certain low levels and of course null voids created by certain frequencies crossing each other out (this is more prelevant in higher frequencies, but can oocur in the lower ones).

I would say that the 700s may be the exception to the rule. I know that the 7001s drop like a rock at 28Hz, and I think the 7000's drop like a rock at 22Hz, but that is very good (even for a stand alone sub) I kinow when I had any signal below 30Hz, the bass was very boomy (I recall my parents were visiting and even they said the bass was too much -my mom loves bass heavy movies, my father not so much) anyhow, the next day I set the reciever to small and crossed at 40Hz and that's when I still got great bass from the sub but the towers sounded better than I had ever heard, just tight clean and blended great with the sub. I know you know this AcuDT but for those reading this that don't, even when you cross the channel at say 40Hz the speaker still deliveres sound at frequencies below that, because when you apply a crossover the signal slowly drops off at 40hz but still continues to play them, so in theory it can play 6Hz below the selected frequency. It's all try and listen my friend, try and listen.

EDIT- Acudeftech you mentiond in the last post that your not missing any bass. What makes you think your missing any bass? You have the 7000 and 7001s which can clearly play low then you are crossing over to that awesome sub (I assume you have the recievers sub crossover at 80hz, this way even though the sub is active at 80hz, it won't kick in till what you have each speakers crossover set at. You of all people are not missing any bass. it's just my opinion that Deftechs (starting at the 7001 and lower) do far much better when set to small and crossed over.

The Factor, I would not try 50hz, your rear channel speakers can't play that no matter what the rated frequencies are. Those are tested at close range (normally one meter or three feet) in an aneoic soundproof chamber and their microphones are designed to pick up the slightest speck of sound to register that result. So unless you are sitting 3 feet away yoru never gonna get that. Since the Pioneer goes from 50Hz to 80hz, stick with 80Hz and all your speakers are gonna sing, as mentioned above, try and listen.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Acudeftech, that's an interesrting concept (BTW what reciever are you using? ) I know you have those giant 7000's so this may not be a concern considering it has those 14" woofers and 1,800 watt amps. What i would do though is disconnect your sub, set the mains to large and just play a STEREO mix of heavy bass muisc or movie and see how well they handle the real deep bass (have an organ music handy) then listen or how well it handles the real deep bass. Because I would be considered with distortion at certain low levels and of course null voids created by certain frequencies crossing each other out (this is more prelevant in higher frequencies, but can oocur in the lower ones).

I would say that the 700s may be the exception to the rule. I know that the 7001s drop like a rock at 28Hz, and I think the 7000's drop like a rock at 22Hz, but that is very good (even for a stand alone sub) I kinow when I had any signal below 30Hz, the bass was very boomy (I recall my parents were visiting and even they said the bass was too much -my mom loves bass heavy movies, my father not so much) anyhow, the next day I set the reciever to small and crossed at 40Hz and that's when I still got great bass from the sub but the towers sounded better than I had ever heard, just tight clean and blended great with the sub. I know you know this AcuDT but for those reading this that don't, even when you cross the channel at say 40Hz the speaker still deliveres sound at frequencies below that, because when you apply a crossover the signal slowly drops off at 40hz but still continues to play them, so in theory it can play 6Hz below the selected frequency. It's all try and listen my friend, try and listen.

EDIT- Acudeftech you mentiond in the last post that your not missing any bass. What makes you think your missing any bass? You have the 7000 and 7001s which can clearly play low then you are crossing over to that awesome sub (I assume you have the recievers sub crossover at 80hz, this way even though the sub is active at 80hz, it won't kick in till what you have each speakers crossover set at. You of all people are not missing any bass. it's just my opinion that Deftechs (starting at the 7001 and lower) do far much better when set to small and crossed over.

I'm using the Denon AVR-5308CI receiver.

I listen to music (CDs) in 2.0 Pure Direct Mode. Thus, I do not use the Trinity Subwoofer at all for 2.0 music. I have Bach's organ works CDs, which definitely goes below 20 Hz.

Before I bought the Trinity Subwoofer, I was watching movies with just the BP7000SCs + CLR3000 + SM450s. For my room size (~3500 cubic feet) the bass was tremendous (walls rattled even from adjacent bedrooms). But UPGRADITIS got the best of me, and I just had to add a subwoofer and then later the BP7001SC for surrounds.

Yeah, I have the subwoofer set at 80 Hz crossover.

One thing I can't understand is the movie Transformers Blu-ray.

I played it on my Denon DVD-3800BDCI + AVR-5308CI.

First I had the BD player internally decode TrueHD and sent the PCM to the Receiver (via HDMI & Analog 5.1 @ different times).

Second, I had the BD player Bitstream the TrueHD to the AVR.

The bass was so lacking in both cases. It did not make sense. Like when Blackout was destroying the military base in the beginning, I felt like I was MISSING a lot of bass. When tanks fly and land, I expect some loud "THUMP" bass sound. When things explode, I expect some bass sound. But I did not get this bass sound.

So I changed my receiver setting to SMALL speakers all around and set the crossover to 80 Hz all around, just to be safe.

But the results were identical - the bass was extremely lacking. Checked to make sure all speakers & sub were plugged in and active (Red LED light). So I gave up.

Then last night, something interesting happened.

I played Transformers (again for the 20th time), but this time on my HTPC!

I ripped the BD movie into my hard drive (kept the TrueHD soundtrack). Then I used ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater 3 to play back the movie. I let TMT3 do the TrueHD decoding. The result was phenominal!

I was hearing all kinds of heavy juicy tight bass I was NOT hearing before!

Every time Blackout (or anyone) blew something up, I heard some serious thunderous bass. When the tanks flew up in the air and crashed, I heard a loud "THUMP" every time each one landed. Every time a Transformer walked, I heard a tight "THUMP" for every foot step.

 

[TheFactor]

Ok went back to having my crossover set to 80 and all speakers at small like before and it sounds the best, thanks for the input Now im pricing speaker stands and going to get some more speaker wire . I found some def tech stands that are made for the sm450's but there like 150 dollars so I think i'll just pick up some cheap ones to just get them higher then the end tables . Boy was I tempted to get the def tech stands though. There around 31 inches tall thats perfect to get my speakers above my armrests on the couch. Actually anywere from 27 inches to 31 would work great. I found some nice 24" but that would put a inch or so of the driver still pointing at the armrest depending on how far the driver is above the bottom of the speaker box.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Ok went back to having my crossover set to 80 and all speakers at small like before and it sounds the best, thanks for the input Now im pricing speaker stands and going to get some more speaker wire . I found some def tech stands that are made for the sm450's but there like 150 dollars so I think i'll just pick up some cheap ones to just get them higher then the end tables . Boy was I tempted to get the def tech stands though. There around 31 inches tall thats perfect to get my speakers above my armrests on the couch. Actually anywere from 27 inches to 31 would work great. I found some nice 24" but that would put a inch or so of the driver still pointing at the armrest depending on how far the driver is above the bottom of the speaker box.

Were you looking at these?

http://www.racksandstands.com/Sanus-BF-31-B-SY0003.html

http://www.racksandstands.com/Sanus-BF-24-B-SY0002.html

 

[TheFactor]

Were you looking at these?

http://www.racksandstands.com/Sanus-BF-31-B-SY0003.html

http://www.racksandstands.com/Sanus-BF-24-B-SY0002.html

Thanks thats to funny because those were actually the two I was looking at on Amazon.com and narrowed down to . But one of my concerns was that the base were the speakers set on looks very small but I think I might take a gamble for the price there hard to beat I think . Im leaning towards the 24'' because they might be more stable but the 31'' puts them at the perfect height .

 

[skers_54]

Thanks thats to funny because those were actually the two I was looking at on Amazon.com and narrowed down to . But one of my concerns was that the base were the speakers set on looks very small but I think I might take a gamble for the price there hard to beat I think . Im leaning towards the 24'' because they might be more stable but the 31'' puts them at the perfect height .

I've got the 31" Sanus stands. They look decent but I wouldn't use them with heavy speakers. They won't break, but there is a good bit of wobble and lean if a heavy speaker isn't dead center (and some even then). Worked well with my old Polk surrounds (~10 lbs). Not so great with my Behringers or Infinity mini-towers (~20-25 lbs). The 450s are about as heavy as my Behringers, so I would look into the 24" if you like the Sanus. If you're handy at all, its not too hard to build decent looking stands that are sturdier and cheaper than the Sanus.