Newb needs help, thought I understood this stuff

[warsaw18]

Sorta understood ...anyways

I have an HK-AVR235 reciever and an old pair of CV E-312 Tower fronts and a Cerwin Vega center and bookselfs. What I planned on doing was set it up so all the bass would come through the 2 fronts since I think the 312's really pound so no need for a sub....yet anyways. Ok sounds easy set the fronts to LARGE rest to small. Sounds okay but the bass isn't quite strong enough * when i turn off the center speaker the bass completely pounds* so i check the crossover, its set at 80..ok change center to 120 and the two fronts to 40 as low as it will go. Still, doesn't sound even close to as bassy as it should. So i play with the setting i put the crossover as high as i can for all the speakers *200* and the bass is ALOT stronger through the front 2 but not quite as much as the front 2 by themselves. Why it would sound better at 200 is beyond me.... can anyone help me out and shed some light on this, what do i gotta do so make the speakers pound? Thought I knew what i was doing kinda

 

[j_garcia]

Your x-over shouldn't affect the speakers that are set to large at all, which makes me thing something else is set wrong.

Make sure you have it set to SUB = NONE/NO/OFF.

As you said, bass should not get better when you raise the x-over, so the only explaination for that might be that your receiver is underpowered for what you are asking it to do. Bass requires the most power to reproduce and the benefit of a sub is that your receiver doesn't have to do all that work to reproduce it because the sub's amp is handling the lowest parts. Large speakers being driven by the receiver and producing plenty of bass can quickly push a receiver to it's limit.

 

[warsaw18]

Settings all seem to be right. The underpowered thing did come to mind. I always read that HK wattage ratings were lower than other brands because they used a diff scale*something like that* so an 250-300 watt HK would compare to a 600 of most other brands but idk. Two things I found odd were 1. turning off the center would make the bass louder *didn't think 50-60 watts would be that big a deal in this case* and 2. Going into settings and changing the front xover from 40 to 200 would make the bass louder... thought at 200 there should even really be bass coming out of them.

thanks for giving me an idea...seems like ether a sub or and new receiver, nether i really want to do

 

[j_garcia]

The H/Ks do have respectable power with realistic ratings compared to many, however there is still a point where you are asking too much of the receiver. A buddy has this same receiver and watching him adjust settings on the fly, I know that there are a TON of things to configure for basically every input. Does it do this on all sources or just a particular one?