Noob Sub Questions

[FuzzyReets]

Hi folks. I'm just a newb getting into all of this home theater stuff a little and had some questions about my sub settings, mainly, what is all this stuff and what do I set it to? I have the Polk RM6750 sub and on the back there are settings for the following:

- Phase
- Low Pass
- Volume

I connect these to my receiver (Yamaha RX-V465) using a standard RCA cable to the sub out on the receiver and I'm not sure what the appropriate settings are for the sub to work with the receiver properly.

Then on the receiver I have the following related to the sub:

Crossover Setting
Phase - Norm or Rev

I'm not sure what to set any of this stuff. Help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

I'll type up a more personal response in a few minutes, but here's some info to get you started. Audioholics has a nice group of short articles in their Tips & Tricks section on how to Get Good Bass. One in particular that you might want to read is Bass Management Basics – Settings Made Simple for the settings in your receiver.

 

[FuzzyReets]

Okay Great. Reading over this now. I should probably mention that I have 15" Pioneer floor standing speakers in front and little 3.25 inch satellites for rear surround and I have the receiver set to small for both front and back. I don't know if this is correct or not. Starting to sound like maybe not. Thanks again.

 

[Adam]

Ultimately, you want to set your system up however it sounds best to you. There are guidelines regarding setting the speakers to large or small, but it's your system - enjoy it. You might find that the 15" Pioneer speakers have better bass than that 8" sub, and you might even want to route all bass through the front speakers and forget about the sub. Just some things to try out.

As for those settings and adjustments that you mentioned, here is some info:

• Phase - the setting on the sub and the setting on your receiver will do the same thing. If the sub phase is set to "0°" and the receiver phase is set to "Norm", then the sub will play in phase with the rest of the speakers. If you set either the sub phase to "180°" or the receiver phase to "Rev", then the sub will play out of phase with the rest of the speakers. If you set the sub to "180°" and the receiver to "Rev", then the sub will play in phase because they'll counteract each other. That's a bit of detail, but it comes down to this - you can try out having the sub in phase or out of phase to see which sounds best to you. Setting the phase allows you to partially deal with placement of the sub relative to the other speakers.
• Low Pass - Because you will be handling the bass management through the receiver, set the low pass on the sub itself to the highest value (160).
• Volume - the volume on the sub and the subwoofer output level on the receiver act together to set how loud the subwoofer will be. You can adjust either one to achieve the desired level of volume. My recommendation is to set the volume on the sub to about the midway mark and then run the auto set-up routine on the 465. That should level match the sub to the other speakers. One reason to set the volume control on the sub itself lower while increasing the subwoofer output level on the receiver is to increase the strength of the signal going from the receiver to the sub. That can help out if your sub either doesn't turn on or shuts off often because the "Auto On" sensor needs to have a signal high enough to trip it.
• Crossover Setting - that is discussed in that article that I mentioned, and it's dependent on your speakers and subs.

 

[FuzzyReets]

Okay Adam, I think I get this. Let me see if I have crossover right....

Smaller speakers can handle the higher frequencies and lower frequencies are made of bass type sounds which goes to bigger speakers because they can handle it. So by setting my crossover to 120Hz, I tell the receiver to put anything lower than 120Hz to my sub so those sounds don't try to get pushed through my tiny 3.25 surround speakers and distort. Sound right?

I'm still a little confused on what phase is/does but I get the settings information that you told me. It doesn't really matter then which they are on but by setting either to normal/0 or rev/180, they are in effect playing in phase.

The other thing I wanted to inquiry about was my sound. I feel like my sound is decent overall but sometimes I don't feel like I get all of an explosion or something. I feel like it should be harder hitting instead of what I'm hearing. Is there some kind of setting I can change to make explosions more in your face?

Lastly, the PS3 does not bitstream DTS-MA or TrueHd to the receiver. It decodes it and then passes it LCM to the receiver. (This is what I understand anyway.) Would a device that can bitstream right to the receiver make a huge sound difference?

Thanks for your information. If you could just confirm to me that I am correct that would be really helpful. If you have other info on the other questions, that would be great as well.

 

[Adam]

Smaller speakers can handle the higher frequencies and lower frequencies are made of bass type sounds which goes to bigger speakers because they can handle it. So by setting my crossover to 120Hz, I tell the receiver to put anything lower than 120Hz to my sub so those sounds don't try to get pushed through my tiny 3.25 surround speakers and distort. Sound right?

Yep, sounds right. It's more than distortion, though - those speakers are simply incapable of producing lower frequencies with any reasonable amount of volume. Subwoofers are intended to be better at handling bass frequencies than small speakers. If you had speakers capable of producing the full frequency band, then you wouldn't direct bass from them to a sub.

Is there some kind of setting I can change to make explosions more in your face?

Maybe, but I don't know it. Perhaps someone else here does.

Lastly, the PS3 does not bitstream DTS-MA or TrueHd to the receiver. It decodes it and then passes it LCM to the receiver. (This is what I understand anyway.) Would a device that can bitstream right to the receiver make a huge sound difference?

I see that MDS got you hooked up for this in your dedicated thread.

 

[Mister House]

Fuzzy don't forget your "Thanks" button... Adam doesn't have enough. lol