Suggested Settings for new speakers?

stevan5150

Hey guys new to the forum, but long time lurker. Here is my question...
I have an Onkyo 607, two Polk TSI500's (fronts), CS20, two polk TSi300's (rears) and a Polk PSW125. Currently I have the the crossover settings set to 120hz for all of the speakers and the LPF of LFE setting set to 80hz. On the sub itself i have the crossover knob all the up to the right. and phase set at "0". I keep reading that alot of members are setting the 3 fronts to 80hz and the rears to 100hz. I have ran audyssey several times and it set them at 40hz for all speakers (except for sub). Maybe if you guys can look at my pics and give me some suggestions on what to try, i would greatly appreciate it.

gfong

My opinion is to put in a movie that you are familiar with and has some good bass and voices, listen for about 5 mins. Then set all your speakers to small and cross them over at 80hz. What you are doing is sending anything below 80 to the sub woofer.
If you like the sound that 80hz gives, all is good. If you like the sound that you had already them go back to those settings.

The 80/120 are all general guides/rules to follow. THX (Lucas films) state that 80 is the ideal setting. Most agree that 80hz is a good place to start.

Don't get hung up on the large/small speakers. Set them all to small and let the crossover do the figuring out for you.

General rules are:
satelite speakers crossed at 100hz to 120hz
bookshelf: 80hz to 100hz
floorstanding: 60hz to 80hz.

I have what I would call large speakers and have them all set to small.

I would bet that once you set to small and 80 you will be amazed at the fullness of the sound and should be a bit more lively. Voices should be fuller.

Nice system by the way, good luck with your settings.

Room set up: play around with the location of your sub, if anything angle it towards the left a littel so it is not facing directly at the back of your speaker. your rears can be left how they are if they sound good, but I would try them facing straight to the front, then I would face them into each other.

All this is very subjective and in the end it is how you like the looks and sound. What I have mentioned are general guidelines and you can go from there.

stevan5150

gfong wrote: »

My opinion is to put in a movie that you are familiar with and has some good bass and voices, listen for about 5 mins. Then set all your speakers to small and cross them over at 80hz. What you are doing is sending anything below 80 to the sub woofer.
If you like the sound that 80hz gives, all is good. If you like the sound that you had already them go back to those settings.

The 80/120 are all general guides/rules to follow. THX (Lucas films) state that 80 is the ideal setting. Most agree that 80hz is a good place to start.

Don't get hung up on the large/small speakers. Set them all to small and let the crossover do the figuring out for you.

General rules are:
satelite speakers crossed at 100hz to 120hz
bookshelf: 80hz to 100hz
floorstanding: 60hz to 80hz.

I have what I would call large speakers and have them all set to small.

I would bet that once you set to small and 80 you will be amazed at the fullness of the sound and should be a bit more lively. Voices should be fuller.

Nice system by the way, good luck with your settings.

Room set up: play around with the location of your sub, if anything angle it towards the left a littel so it is not facing directly at the back of your speaker. your rears can be left how they are if they sound good, but I would try them facing straight to the front, then I would face them into each other.

All this is very subjective and in the end it is how you like the looks and sound. What I have mentioned are general guidelines and you can go from there.

Hey thanks so much for the advice , i will give this a try and see how it sounds.

jbooker82

Yea you need to set the sub to 125hz. Movies with a 5.1 surround have a seperate audio track for the subwoofer. The .1 or LFE contains sound up to 125hz. So when you set the LFE in your avr to 80hz your not hearing the 80-125 hz. You don't hear it because it specificly mixed / recorded for the sub and will not be sent to other speakers.

On the other hand when you are listining to a 2.0 source that has no .1 LFE sound track, your avr will send the lower tones below your other speakers cross over point to the sub. This is why you don't want the towers and surounds set to low. The sub has its own amp and reproduces lower tones better. So if your mains are set too low you will be lacking bass when listining to a 2.0 source.

The audysse just listens to what your speakers are capable of and sets the crossover points accordingly. That is why it assigns your towers 40hz.

Here is my setup. Onkyo 808 avr. Rti A7 towers at 60-80hz. Csi A4 at 60-80hz. Fxi A4's at 80hz set on bipole. DSW Pro 550wi LFE at 120 or 125hz can't remember.

I am still messing around with the x over points for the front towers and center channel. I just listen for a while then change it. 60hz sounds better for music and 80hz sounds better for home theater. Most of the time I just split the difference at 70hz.



Another thing about setting your x overs higher is it frees up power by not producing low notes for the towers, center and surounds.

Theheadsn

On a side ? how do the 300's work for rears?

Love the setup btw, the stacking for the rear seats is a nice touch.

Monster Jam

Interesting setup.

My set up is similar, but I would like to elevate my towers the way you have. Unfortunately what I really need is a new house with a dedicated theatre room. The room I am working with is WAY to small for what I am trying to do.

Where we differ is I have the three seats in the back and two up front, as opposed to your three in front, two in back (couch/loveseat configuration).

I run all speakers (including my center) on the LARGE setting.

dnoyeB

jbooker82 is correct. The filter on the LFE channel is more to get rid of hum or other anomalies than it is to filter the actual sound. If you don't have any hum, you should set your LFE up to 120Hz or whatever its max is.

Your crossover frequency is what you should use to control what audio goes where.

stevan5150

Theheadsn wrote: »

On a side ? how do the 300's work for rears?

Love the setup btw, the stacking for the rear seats is a nice touch.

I really like them for the rears, they really cut through without being to distracting. Thanks for the kind words.

I did change the fronts and rears to 80 and i heard a pretty big difference, especially when i turned off the sub . The sub is set also to 120 which is the highest it can go. I finally got the buttkicker LFE's installed in the couches also today (1 per couch mounted inside of them) with a Yamaha 2000 watt power amp running them and man honestly I never want to go to a normal movie theater again lol

Theheadsn

I was checking out the buttkickers, how much do those run? Are they worth the price?

Theheadsn

btw, how do they hook up with your sub? do you have a splitter from your receiver? I was checking out videos online, seems totally cool. Kinda expensive but if it works as good as people seem to think then it might be worth it.

Do you only have one set? and U said your using a yamaha amp for them? I thought they came with an amp to power them

stevan5150

The kickers work incredible, well worth the money , they add so much to the movie experience. Yeah i only have 1 set of them, which is plenty, rule of thumb is 1 kicker LFE per couch. I think retail they are around the $350 mark for the set that comes with 1 kicker and their crappy amp (more on that later) Setting them up though so they only shake on intense sequences is vital to the effect, if they just shake all the time then its just a gimmick IMO. Well that onkyo has two sub pre outs so i just run a cable to my sub and then a custom made RCA to tip ring sleeve 1/4" end that runs into the Yamaha power amp that is located in the back of the room. From the amp I made some Speakon to banana speaker cables that hook up to the kickers. When i initially hooked up the buttkickers i had a severe hum in the whole system, so i installed a Radio Design Labs TX10B bridging input transformer , i spliced the cable from the amp to the receiver and placed this inbetween with some spade clips and BAM! No hum at all no matter the volume.
Yeah the buttkickers have a package that has their amp thats provided in it. But everything i have read about that amp is yes it has power and its cheap, but its honestly some of the worst quality of craftsmanship. I have read about more of them going out and starting to smoke and catch fire than i could have believed.