Need fast help on the X-over settings on my Sub-Woofer

eclypse

Ok i need help and fast! I'm trying to decide between 2 powered sub-woofers..

1. Velodyne CHT-8
2. Velodyne CHT-10

Now i have installed the sub using the speaker level ins and outs.. What you guess call the Polk way i take it..so using speaker wire out from the main outs to the sub speaker level ins and then out from there to the speakers..

Now i'm new to all of this and i cant figure out what settings i should use on the subs crossover.. If i set the X-over to 80hz on the sub i really dont hear much from the sub nor the speakers (Rti70's). But when i set it higher then that at 100-120Hz, i hear alot more bass that i was missing from the music.

I still cant figure out what the crossover does.. Like if i set it to 80 does that mean the sub uses 80-120Hz and sends the rest to the speakers? or does it send 80-120Hz to the speakers and the sub plays 79-40Hz??

Any help would be great since i have to make a desision on which sub is right for my room (30x13) well the listening area is only (16x13) with a very tall cathedral ceiling.

heh i only have about 3 hours left to decide then the wife comes home and she is expecting me to have one of them boxed up

:rolleyes:

RuSsMaN

First, grow some balls and when your wife gets home, in your best Cartman voice, tell her to 'get her **** **** in the kitchen and make you some pie'.

First, if you are using the 'Polk' way, ie speaker (high) level connection to your sub, make sure on you AVR that the mains are to set to LARGE, and sub to off/no.

Next, the crossover setting dictates what freq the sub will play UP to before it begins to roll off. If you sub can play to 25Hz, and you set the crossover to 80, it will play 25-80Hz and then roll off.

80 is a great place to start, then make adjustments up or down to what you feel best blends with your main speakers.

Some subwoofers have a built-in high pass for the speakers ran through it. I don't know if your velo's do or not. Something you will want to find out though.

Cheers,
Russ

eclypse

Thanks!

No the 8 and 10 dont have the high pass but the 12 does! What exactly does the high pass do and do i need it?

Another question.. Is it possable to by-wire the system like this:

from the mains out on the receiver to the top speaker hook up on the 70's and then send another wire from the mains from the receiver to the sub speaker ins.. then from there send a wire out to the lower speaker terminals.. So that way i'm still bi-wiring and the lows go to the sub and out to the speakers and the highs go from the receiver out to the speakers?

eclypse

Coming guys its getting close to that time and i'm move confused the more i read about subs.. i'm about ready to just return both and forget about subs all together for now till i can understand this crap... problem with that is that i bought them at CC and they have the 12 month interest free going on now and i prob wont beable to afford one without that..

Fastmerc

You would probably get more out of your whole system if you just run your mains from the reciever set to small and run a rca line from the sub out on your reciever to the sub in...and forget the whole hi level input deal. then you can concentrate on which sub actually sounds the best for your room and you can adjust all the levels on the reciever which is probably more precise.

Unless those arent powered subs...Im not familiar with velo.

Hope that helps
Brett

eclypse

I wish i could.. i have the cable and used it that way at first but when i set the front speakers to small and sw to on it sounds like i'm missing half the sound to the fronts... Hollow sounding.. even my wife noticed that.

The receiver i have sucks for bass management.. its a Kenwood Vr-6070.. i cant select the speaker size independitly from eachother.. I cant select the x-over on the receiver either.. I'm not sure what it defaults to when i turn the sw to on..

It sounds much better when i hook it up the way i have it now but i have to turn the x-over to 100-120 just to hear the missing bass from the music..

I'd like i'd beable to hear bass from the fronts if i turn the x-over all the way down to 40 but i dont hear anything from the speakers but the high notes... 80Hz sounds ok but i'm not hearing much bass.. and missing alot from the songs that i know till i turn it up to 100-120Hz.

This sucks! My wifes on her way home and she dont wana hear anything more about speakers period.. I've gone and pissed her off only talking about that to her the past 2 weeks. its not like i have anyone else to talk to about it.. no friends..

The woofer stats are:

Cabinet- 16.25"x15"x21"
Frequency Response 35Hz-140Hz
High Pass Crossover- Passive 85hz
Low Pass Crossover 40Hz-120Hz (12db/octave, 24 db ultemate)
Amp- 375 Watt/150Watt RMS
Woofer 10" forward firing
Magnet 40oz
Voice coil 2" four-layer copper
Inputs- Line-Level and speaker level
weight 53 lbs.

The CHT-12 has a Highpass X-cover at 80Hz or 100Hz.. If that will make these sound better i'll pick that up insted of these..

I've only owned 3 sets of Bose speakers for 7.1 for the past 10 years and they have a passive sub so i never had to deal with this before.

RuSsMaN

So your sub does have a high pass.

Hook it up with using the rca cable, as fastmerc suggested, and set the mains to large, then listen. Adjust the gain on the sub to blend.

You've got every option there is, pick one, and GROW SOME EFFIN BALLS MAN. I can't take anymore of this 'hurry hurry the wife is coming BS', seriously. At this point - I wouldn't even mess with it. Get the whiskey down out of the cabinet, and be nice and drunk when she shows up instead.

Cheers,
Russ

eclypse

No mine (CHT-10) does not have a high pass but the next model up (CHT-12) does.

RuSsMaN

You just listed stats for a 10" sub, and I see 'high pass'.

eclypse

Originally posted by RuSsMaN
You just listed stats for a 10" sub, and I see 'high pass'.

What "Passive at 85Hz"?

eclypse

Ok well if i use the RCA cable from the reciever to the sub and set the mains to large wouldnt both the sub and the mains play the low bass?

Fast said to set the mains to small.. that way the bass goes to the sub.

I remember when i did set the mains to large before when i had it set with the sub cable that it would sound better but everything else says to put all the speakers to small when ya use the RCA sub cable..

RuSsMaN

Originally posted by eclypse
I remember when i did set the mains to large before when i had it set with the sub cable that it would sound better....

Looks like you answered your own question.

eclypse

Sure but it dont make any sense period!

Everything i've read says to set the speakers to small when ya turn the sw to on so all those low frequencies will play threw the sub and not the speakers.

If i set the fronts to large then the only thing that will play threw the sub would be the channels i set to small like the center or surrounds.

Fastmerc

If the reciever is set to sub on....then the rca output will get all the sub signals under whatever xover the reciever uses...regaurdless of whether the mains are set to large or small...in effect you will just have more bass output as it is coming from the sub and the mains and if thats what sounds the best definetly use it...no matter who says to set what to small, including me I ran mine that way for years. (M=large, Sub=on)

eclypse

Originally posted by Fastmerc
If the reciever is set to sub on....then the rca output will get all the sub signals under whatever xover the reciever uses...regaurdless of whether the mains are set to large or small...in effect you will just have more bass output as it is coming from the sub and the mains and if thats what sounds the best definetly use it...no matter who says to set what to small, including me I ran mine that way for years. (M=large, Sub=on)

I hear ya.. but its not gona cause any probs like both the subs and mains canceling eachother or playing the same notes?

walk

I would set speakers to small and sub to On. Wire the sub with RCAs, set the xover freq at 160hz and listen for a while. Play with the level control until you find what you like.

You can also reach around and turn the sub on/off to see how much bass it's really adding (without changing the settings on the reciever).

Just play with it until you find something you like. Listen to a few different CDs, DVDs, etc... If you have Star Wars Ep2 the first scene where the Naboo cruiser flys over and lands has some of the best room-shaking bass I've ever heard. It should literally make your couch jump up off the floor at high levels But obviously with music/etc you don't want the bass to overpower the rest of the sound.

If it sounds too "boomy" you can try turning down the xover freq to 120hz or so but I wouldn't go much lower. If it's still too "boomy" you probably have the level set too high. Keep in mind what sounds good for music might not get that room-shaking effect in music. A lot of people including me use one setting for music and then bump it up +8 or +10db for movies (hopefully using the digital controls on the reciever so you don' t have to mess with the sub dial).

Depends on the room, but 140-120hz is where the speakers really start to fall off. I have the RTI150's and they still drop off rapidly at 110-120, so I set my sub to 120hz.

Now if you still don't like the way this sounds you can try Large setting, and play with the sub again, it might sound better. I use Large on my 150's, but small for center/surrounds. If you still don't like that, you may need a new reciever...

eclypse

Thanks for the info there Walk.. Yeah in movies it sounds great.. no probs. Sometimes a little load but thats what its all about.

The music is whats bothering me and making me feel i'm not setting the crap up right. My Sub X-over dial only goes from 40 up to 120Hz.. I kinda like it around 100Hz.. But thats with hooking the speakers straight to the sub from the reciever.. I dont have a clue as to what the default crossover is for the reciever since it dosent say at all.. I only hear that when i turn on the THX it will set the crossover at 85Hz.. Now when it does that and i leave it at the 100-110hz on the sub does that mean i loose any low bass in between?

I'd rather hook the sub up with the RCA since that would save me alot of xtra cash on speaker wire... heh i prob will just try that way again though its just a pain to keep changing the connectors on the wire back and forth for the differenet hookups.

Which sub woofer do you have?

Plus.. have you heard any possitive things about the Polk subs? I only hear that people are constantly blowing them right and left and that it dont sound good.. THough ya never know what to believe... But what i do like is the better speaker thats made outa rubber insted of foam and that i can use bananna clips for it insted of the cheap old spring clip on the Velodyne CH-10..

eclypse

Oh yeah one more thing.. I have the sub in the corner facing the corner since its a front firing woofer.. Is that common to turn the front facing the wall like that? I've noticed that in a show room they allways have them facing with the front out and i cant see how the bass sound can be heard like that.

walk

If you hook the speakers to the sub then they will not get the low bass, it will be filtered out by the sub. You will also have to set the speakers to Large and sub to No. In this case you'll just have to play with the x-over freq to see what sounds the best to you.

If you hook the speakers directly to the reciever, hook the sub to the reciever RCA (sub pre-out), then set speakers to Small and sub to Yes. In that case set the sub x-over freq to maximum (120hz) or disable it if you can. The reciever will do the x-over then.

3rd option is what I do, same as #2 above but set the Front (RTi150s) to Large. This means double bass from both the sub and 150's but I like it that way - it just took some careful tweaking of the sub output level to get it to sound right. But my reciever has seperate options for Large/Small for all the speakers (front/center/surrounds). If yours doesn't then I don't suggest you set them on large since your surrounds/etc won't be able to reproduce the low bass.

I suggest #2, but if #1 sounds better to you then go for it.

I also suggest listening to music in stereo (2-ch) mode, it will probably sound better on the 150's than in 5-ch mode. Does for me, anyway, and bass is stronger this way too.. In fact if you do this then maybe you can switch the speakers to Large, but then switch them back to small for surround use (movies).

walk

I have a CSW BassCube8, 50w 8" woofer, it's small but it really cranks, more than enough for my apartment (just ask my neighbors)

eclypse

Ok thanks again.

Right now i still have it set up with the speakers runing threw the sub and when i do this the reciever automaticly sets the fronts to Large.. I kinda like it this way for music from my regular CD player thats using monster RCA connects.. I have the sub X-over set at 60Mz. Played some nice music with lots of deep bass like creed and stain.. Sounded so great that i think i'll hold off from returning these polks and forget about the new Rti line.. But then, today i tried a music DVD with Metallica w/ the san Fanscisco Symphony Orchestra..

It didnt sound good at all.. Thinned and hollow once again. I was using the Digital dolby 5.1 using an optical cable from the new Samsung DVD player.. The sound reminded me of how crappy the sound sounds when i had used the RCA cable out to the sub prior.

So heres another question that i'm hoping someone can answer.. Does DD use some X-over that i dont know about? Now i know that when ya use THX that a 80Hz X-over goes into effect.. If it does then i guess i'll need to move the X-over on the sub to something higher then 80 like 100-120hz?

Oh, yeah when i used the RCA out to the sub and have Sub Woofer to on i can change the size of all the speakers..

Loud & Clear

Man, that was tense. Eclypse reminds me of that poor pizza delivery guy; the difference being that where one poor soul has a timebomb locked around his neck, the other has a wife with an equally short fuse.

"This sucks! My wifes on her way home and she dont wana hear anything more about speakers period.. I've gone and pissed her off only talking about that to her the past 2 weeks. its not like i have anyone else to talk to about it.. no friends.."

That was the part where I could see the delivery driver backpedaling just prior to ... BAM!!!

Hope you got it working, for your sake.

eclypse

Dude its not like that ok..

We just got married last June and we finally just moved into our brand spankin new condo like almost a month ago.. So as you could imagine we just spent a nice penny furnishing the place... All new furniture all around.. My only request was to finally get my new big screen and money was getting tight.. But she was nice enough to allow us to pull the 5 G's out of the bank(our security money) so i could get my dream Tv.. The only thing i seen worth spending that much cash on a Samsung 61" DLP. Now that was supposed to be it but for caught wind of CC discounting the RTi line of Polk speakers and had to act now if it was going to happen. Now as you could see that money was tight.. but she was nice enough to open an account at CC so i could also pick up my dream speakers.. which i didnt think i even had a chance at getting cause there was no cash for those. Now she did this even after we paid off our outragous debt we had for the past 13 years together..

So as you can see its not like how you think and i'm nowhere near P wipped.

It was only tense there cause everytime i want something its that time of the month..hehe.

DonCB

Make sure that you are not "double filtering"... if you are using the sub out rca it has already been filtered at what ever your amp xover at.. so you want to make sure that you are not filtering at the sub again... some of what you have said makes it sound like you are doing the old "double filter" which can make things sound off...

Velodyne are great subs ... they should rock your place...

hope this helps..

Don

DonCB

Just thought I would add a few bits here... you want to use the Crossover bypass: Subwoofer Direct (just went to the velodyne site) This way there is no filtering at the sub... it takes all that is sent to it... Your reciever will filter and only send the information from the xover point (usually about 80 hz) down and to the sub.....

Go for the CHT10 ... a little more balls and it goes deeper.. 28 hz vs 35 hz

I have a similar set up .... RTi70s CSi40 FXi30 and a polk sub .. 650
and a Samsung HLN5065 DLP... you are going to love it when you get it setup correctly..

Don

eclypse

Thanks alot for the info Don..

So how is the Samsung DLP?? I bought mine about a month ago and they told me when i bought it at ABC Warehouse that they should be getting them in Sep 25th the lastest.. Well now all they tell me is that they have no idea as to when the main warehouse will get them... Nobody knows a thing!

Now at Crutchfield they had them in last week but they since sold out! Doh hehe.. yeah everyone is jumpin on that set and i hear that Samsung cant make them fast enough.. Anyways.. At crutchfield they show that they expect to recieve more stock on 10/24.. So i'm hoping i get the set before then. Kinda weird not watchin Tv and just listening to music.. But i love it since i'm listening to the sound on my new Rti Set up.. hehe.

eclypse

Oh the prob i had was that when i was watching the DVD with Metallica i didnt have it set on 5.1.. it was only 2 channel digital..heheh.. Well.. to my defense i was watching it on a 2" very small B/W tv.. heheh.

I noticed it today and switched it and it was like ahhhhhhhhh... Much better now hehehe.

I still have the speakers hooked striaght into the sub so i can bypass the recievers X-over and just set it on the sub.. I like it at around 60Hz..

yeah i like the 10" sub better then the 8". Though i'm still thinking that i should just toss another hundred down and go for the CHT-12 just for that added future proofness of it.. hehe.. Plus it has the 5 way binding posts which i'd prefer and something that the smaller models dont, a Hgih pass X-over of 80-100 insted of the passive 85Hz that the * and 10 has.. i dont know what that is forsure.. but i'm thinking that i might need it with the way i'm hookin the sub up. If anyone has a clus as to what that does give me a shout.

ken brydson

Originally posted by eclypse
Oh the prob i had was that when i was watching the DVD with Metallica i didnt have it set on 5.1.. it was only 2 channel digital..heheh.. Well.. to my defense i was watching it on a 2" very small B/W tv.. heheh.

I noticed it today and switched it and it was like ahhhhhhhhh... Much better now hehehe.

I still have the speakers hooked striaght into the sub so i can bypass the recievers X-over and just set it on the sub.. I like it at around 60Hz..

yeah i like the 10" sub better then the 8". Though i'm still thinking that i should just toss another hundred down and go for the CHT-12 just for that added future proofness of it.. hehe.. Plus it has the 5 way binding posts which i'd prefer and something that the smaller models dont, a Hgih pass X-over of 80-100 insted of the passive 85Hz that the * and 10 has.. i dont know what that is forsure.. but i'm thinking that i might need it with the way i'm hookin the sub up. If anyone has a clus as to what that does give me a shout.

Where does that extra $100 put you $$ wise. I'd guess you're meeting or exceeding SVS PB1 territory. If so, that's where I'd go to "future Proof". Just MO

eclypse

Only at $500.00

How much does that SVS cost?

ken brydson

$599 plus shipping. My understanding is it'll smash a CHT. Top of my wish list.
http://www.svsubwoofers.com/subs_boxes.htm

eclypse

Originally posted by ken brydson
$599 plus shipping. My understanding is it'll smash a CHT. Top of my wish list.
http://www.svsubwoofers.com/subs_boxes.htm

Umm... DAMN! Where do ya buy these at?