Monitor II 60's setup small or large and x over point

sue

Pioneer Elite svx-33
powering :

center cs-20
FL FR 2 polk monitor 60II
SL SR 2 polk monitor 60II
SBL SBR 2 polk monitor 60II
SW 12" energy sub

The speakers sound fantastic - movies! and music!

Was told to set all the speakers to large with a x-over of 50 (Is this setting correct? )
- I don"t want to damage the speakers, including the center? - can they handle this?

ROHfan

I'm running M60s and a CS2 which is almost identical to your center. It is generally recommended to set your speakers to "small" all around. I set my mains and rears to 80 and my center and front heights to 100, all set to "small". Sounds great to me.

Crabberjon

I'm up and running with the Polk Mon 60's II Bi-amped for front two speakers set full range on Dolby THX mode with a Paradigm CC150, two sony SSU-4030's (they were in my closet with some old Nakamichi PA304's) for my rear surrounds, and a polk PSW-10 Sub. I went with the Onkyo 609 and this does rock the house! Been trying to hold back to break them in I started at 80 Reference level settings all around, but with the speakers Bi-amped they are only pushing what the prcessor is processing right.... Sounds a lot better on full. I was going to try speakers not bi-amped first but I said what the heck and just set it up bi-amped from the start. Maybe if I'm bored one day I'll switch it to try, but after pushing the extra watts is there a point? My tuner does run a little hot may put a small exteral computer type fan near to exhuast the heat away. I'll mess with the Internet hookup in the next week. took a few hours to set up and my wife actually likes hearing the music, now this is a wife with sensitive ears. Anyway cheers try full range. Any suggestions on Polk Rear Surrounds would be appriciated, I like it loud and media room is 18' X 20'.

sue

Thank you for the replies, I changed the speakers to small and crossover to 80. I watched a movie, listened to music..There was not too much difference with regards to the movies, they did sound great. But I did notice a big difference with music (stereo/surr) lack of bass..Mucked around switching SW between on and Plus for music...I found I preferred them set to large. Will I damage them if I keep this setting?

BigBankBii

I blew a tweet on my similar center channel recently and was told that it may have been my crossover set too low (60hz). So yes, it's possible to damage smaller speakers, but larger mains should be fine at full range. Just set your center and surrounds to small @ 80z+, and just enjoy tunes in stereo ( the way the good lord intended)..

Syndil

Setting a crossover too low would not have any effect on a tweeter, since the speaker's internal crossovers route only high-frequency sounds to the tweeter.

BigBankBii

Would not or should not?

Syndil

Would not. Low frequencies do not get sent to tweeters.

BigBankBii

They're certainly not supposed to, but when the Polk Tech suggests that that was likely what happened in my situation, it would suggest that crossovers don't always do as they're told.

Syndil

If that was indeed the case, then the speaker was faulty, and that was what damaged the speaker, not the crossover setting.

Frankly I interpreted the answer you got from the tech as, "I don't know what damaged your speaker, but I'll make something up that sounds like it might be plausible since this guy won't know the difference anyway."

BigBankBii

Frankly, no one asked for your interpretation. What was asked, was advice on avoiding speaker damage, and thats what was forwarded. No need for the shots.

tonyb

The best advice anyone can give you on avoiding speaker damage is to keep the volume at a decent level. Pushing a speaker to play louder than it was designed to play, in a bigger room than it was designed to be in, coupled with playing distorted music played back on not so good gear, is probably the main reason people blow speakers.

Lego1

My interpretation is setting the crossover lower requires more power from your avr or amp because it takes more power to play the lower frequency. If you're system is already lacking on power snce it's trying to power all 5 speakers, the tweeter does not receive enough power and will start clipping causing it to go bad. Speakers are damaged from not enough power.

Think if it this way, your avr has only a certain amount of power. Most of the say 100w per channel or s, but thats usually with a single or 2 channels playing at once. So if your avr has a certain amount of power, If you add more speakers, the number going to each speaker drops. It takes much more power to create lower frequencies, so the lower the crossover, you get even less power per channel.

That is why it is recommended to increase your crossover and let the sub do the lower frequencies if your avr doesnt have much power, or go with external amps.

So the polk tech was right. Only set your crossover low if you have aot of power going to each speaker, and if the speakers can handle going so low.

BigBankBii

Well said. Which adds to my surprise that my HK amp (not AVR) @ a high current of 100A would be at fault, even with the preamp crossed at 60. Seems like ample power, and within cs10 specs.

Although I will admit, I was friggin cranking Gladiator when it blew!

Syndil

Again, if the tweeter was damaged by clipping, then it was clipping that damaged the tweeter. Jumping to the conclusion that a too-low crossover point was the cause of the clipping is just that, jumping to a conclusion.

I did not mean to "throw shots" at anyone other than the tech. I think he fed you a line. I've worked with techs (albeit computer techs) for longer than I care to admit, and I see this tactic used all the time. He didn't want to blame the speaker since it was his company's speaker, he didn't want to blame the consumer for playing the music too loud, because A) that would potentially insult the consumer and suggest the speaker was not up to the task, so best to put the blame on a variable that implicated neither the speaker or the consumer, the AVR made by a third-party.

And if it was indeed clipping that damaged the tweeter, then the AVR is indeed to blame. However the fix for clipping is not a higher crossover point, it is more power.

No one should be trying to set the precedent that crossover points higher than sonically necessary should be used to prevent damage to the speaker.