Tip of the Day: Apply Bass Management to Achieve Better System Performance

[admin]

As a general rule of thumb, if you have a dedicated powered subwoofer in your home theater system , ALL of your speakers should be set to "small" in your A/V receiver's bass management setup. An 80Hz crossover point is usually an all around good setting to chose for your crossover frequency. This is the case even if you have relatively large towers.

Discuss "Tip of the Day: Apply Bass Management to Achieve Better System Performance" here. Read the article.

 

[Funboy]

How much power saved?

"By transferring the power robbing, low frequency load off of your speakers to the dedicated powered subwoofer, you reduce their workload as well as that of your receiver/amplifier."

Any way to quanify the amount of power saved for a typical bookshelf or tower speaker if crossed over at 80hz? Is almost all the watts in the system used by the woofer and little is needed for the tweeter? Is it enough that anyone with a decent amplifier - say emotiva x-series - has wasted their money when a upa series would already be far more powerful then the bookshelf or even tower can handle now that the low frequencies are crossed over?

 

[Steve81]

Any way to quanify the amount of power saved for a typical bookshelf or tower speaker if crossed over at 80hz?

Not exactly; it's dependent upon the program material. Nonetheless, one thing worth keeping in mind that when you drop an octave, 80Hz to 40Hz, to maintain the same output requires 4x the driver excursion (disregarding port contributions).

 

[Steve81]

Just as a quick add on since it's too late to edit, 4x the driver excursion is also the requirement for adding 12dB of output at the same frequency.