Crossover frequency advice

[Buckle-meister]

Dear all,

After reading several articles from this site, and experimenting a little, I have set all my speakers to small, and the crossover frequency to the sub as 60Hz.

My front tower speakers have a frequency range of 48Hz to 30kHz, whilst my surrounds and front-centre are from 80Hz to 30kHz.

I set the crossover at 60Hz rather than 80Hz (my next available step up) because:

1. My front towers could handle it.
2. I wanted to reduce the chances of my sub being determined as directional.
3. I reasoned that most of the bass from films (ignoring the LFE) would derive from a front soundstage rather than a rear.

My question is: should I have chosen 60Hz rather than 80Hz? ie, am I right to have chosen a crossover frequency that may mean that I am 'pushing' my surrounds to hard. Should I perhaps change the crossover (for that reason) to 80Hz safe in the knowledge that all my speakers are capable of producing that frequency, albeit the towers may not crossover as seamlessly as before?

Thanks folks

Robbie

 

[MDS]

A couple of points:

1. 80 Hz should not be localizable and there is a reason it was chosen as the default crossover frequency. Many will claim that 80 Hz can be localized in some instances, but even Dolby had an article awhile back where they claimed that frequencies as high as 160 Hz are rarely localizable. 80 Hz is a good setting for your speakers.

2. Your logic that the majority of bass will be found in the front soundstage is sound, but remember the Center is part of the front soundstage and 70% of the music and dialog in a typical movie will come from the center. Given an 80 Hz low end for the center, 80 Hz would be a better choice for the xover.

3. The xover is not a brick wall filter and some frequency below it will still pass to the speakers (albeit at a reduced amplitude). Using 60 hz, there will still be substantial signal at a frequency well below what the speaker can reproduce accurately.

4. The front towers can handle a xover of 60 Hz, but why let them handle it when the sub is surely better suited to the task? Low frequencies tax the receiver more than high frequencies and offloading those frequencies to the sub frees up the amplifer a bit.

So 60 Hz is ok if you like the way it sounds, but imo 80 Hz would be better.

 

[Buckle-meister]

Thanks very much.

Robbie