Equipment:
Onkyo TX-NR808
Fronts: Towers (1 x 1in tweeter, 2 x 5.25in drivers, 1 x 10in driver), rear ported
Center: 1 x 1inch tweeter, 2 x 5.25in drivers, rear ported
Left and Right Surrounds: 1 x 1in tweeter, 1 x 6.5in drivers, front ported
Sub: single unit with 2 x 10in woofers, front slot ported
Room size: approx 20x12 (floorplan attached) Although, I don't believe this is a room size/setup issue. Listening area is in the living room, couch against the long wall, and sub in the corner next to the storage closet.
Auto Calibrated Audyssey Settings with 6 position Measurements:
Front: 40hz
Center: 60Hz
Surrounds: 40Hz
Dynamic Equalizer: ON
Dynamic Volume: OFF
Bass: 0
Treble: 0
Re-EQ: OFF
Problem:
Music/Movies are lacking "punchy" bass. I'm not referring to the chest thump type of bass. Its somewhat difficult to explain, but the shortcoming is most noticeable towards the BEGINNING of an explosion, or the mid to lower end of a kick drum.
If listening in any THX mode (which seems to disable dynamic EQ), it gets even worse.
I tried to correct this a number of different ways but can't seem to get it right. Also, FWIW, I have read through many Audyssey threads and several "setup guides" that talk about the calibration process and how it may be tweaked. But still, the bass just isn't quite right.
There are many things that affect bass, and it is unclear what it is you are wanting. So helping you might be difficult.
It might be the speaker placement or the quality of the speakers. So you might need better speakers to be happy. It might be that you want exaggerated bass rather than natural bass. So it might be that the speakers are fine, and you would be happier with inferior speakers that were "boomy" (i.e., that exaggerated bass). You could try turning up the bass control, or if your receiver has a built in EQ, you could play with the various settings for different bass frequencies.
I personally would probably shut off the Dynamic Equalizer and change the crossover settings to 80Hz, though it depends on what the exact speakers are that we are talking about. It is the bass performance of them that matters, not the woofer size.
After changing your crossover settings, you should rerun your automatic setup to deal with the levels with those new settings.
Things I've tried:
Raised crossovers of fronts to 60, which didn't do much, then to 80 which was a somewhat better but still lacking.
Set fronts to Full Band and enable DoubleBass with 60, 80, and100hz crossover...60 helps a bit, but still lacking, 80hz works best of the three, and 100hz is too boomy.
That makes it seem like you want to simply set the crossover to 80Hz and then turn up the subwoofer a few decibels too high (perhaps 3-4dB).
However, I'm trying to avoid the Double Bass feature to maintain an "authentic" representation of material, especially movies.
Actually, it doesn't sound like you are wanting an accurate reproduction. Not all movies have bass that has much "punch", so if you are wanting bass "punch" with those movies, you are wanting to turn up the bass higher than was intended by the makers of the film.
Adjusted Bass/Treble setting +4dB - +6dB, as opposed to 0dB. This seems to work best of all options I've tried thus far.
That makes it seem like you really are just wanting exaggerated bass (and treble). Unless the problem is that you are listening at very soft levels, in which case, due to the nonlinear nature of human hearing, the bass (and treble) will subjectively seem to be lacking when the overall volume is soft.
Current settings after fiddling around:
Front: 80hz
Center: 80Hz
Surrounds: 80Hz
Dynamic Equalizer: ON
Dynamic Volume: OFF
Bass: +4dB
Treble: 0
Re-EQ: OFF
Ok, now onto a couple related questions...
1) What specific frequencies are affected by adjusting the Bass/Treble settings?
There is no absolute standard on what frequencies are affected by those controls, nor how much they are affected. You should consult your owner's manual for your specific model. If it is not there, then contact the manufacturer about it, though if it is not in the manual, you may have a hard time getting an accurate answer.
It is common for the bass control to be centered on about 100Hz and the treble control on 10,000Hz, which means that the effects on the bass start above 100Hz and the effects on the treble start below 10,000Hz. Often, how much above and how much below depends upon the amount of the boost or cut one selects.
2) Isn't it odd that Audyssey suggested such low crossovers for my center (60Hz) and surrounds (40Hz)? Surely my 6.5in surround drivers are not equivalent to the 10in drivers in my front towers, which were also set to 40Hz.
Quite a few automatic setup systems select an incorrect frequency for this. Fortunately, it is easy to set that manually, and the automatic setups tend to get things right that are not easy to set up manually (like relative volume levels for the different channels).
You should set the crossover levels above the -3dB point for your speakers, and try to keep it below 100Hz if possible. In my case, my speakers have a -3dB point of 50Hz, and I use 80Hz for my crossover.
3) I have read lots regarding, and am familiar with "fullband/large" vs. "small" speaker settings, but am I not missing out on my tower's 10in woofers by using a whopping 80Hz crossover in attempt to gain some more bass "punch"? These speakers are rated down to an honest 30Hz, therefore, are very capable of 60Hz. Yet I still am not getting the punch and I don't think I should have to resort to routing 80Hz and below to my sub.
Looking forward to some discussion so I can stop losing sleep over all this.
One of the advantages of using a subwoofer for all of the deep bass is that you can locate the subwoofer in your room exclusively for how its location affects bass frequencies, and the other speakers for how their locations affect the higher frequencies. It also allows one to save money by not buying speakers that can do really deep bass for all of the channels, and instead put that extra money into a better subwoofer, better speakers for the upper frequencies, or into beer or chocolate or whatever.
In your particular case, if you are setting the levels flat, and you get better bass with sending the frequencies below 80 Hz to your subwoofer instead of your main speakers, what do you think you ought to do? Which is really doing a better job with those frequencies below 80Hz?
It might be that your main speakers are not as good as you thought, or it might be that their placement in the room is adversely affecting the bass, or it might be that you have some other setting wrong that is affecting this.
