Psw 1200

KEVIN HALBERT

HELLO. I AM LOOKING FOR LOW END ENTHUSIASTS THAT MAY BE RUNNING THIS THUNDEROUS BEAST. I HAVE COMBINED THIS SUB WITH A PAIR OF RT16'S AND AM STILL LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT BLEND. I HAVE FIVE MONSTER 550 SUBWOOFER CABLES CONNECTED WITH. 2 PRE OUT TO THE MAIN IN OF MY AMP, 2 FRONT L/R, AND ONE IN THE LFE. I HAVE THE HIGH PASS FILTER SET AT 40HZ AND HAVE TRIED TWEAKING THE LOW PASS FILTER UNTIL I AN NUMB. I EVENTUALLY SETTLED ON 40HZ FOR THE LOW PASS ALSO. IT SOUNDS GOOD BUT DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE THAT LOW END EXTENSION I LOOKING FOR. ANY HELP OR COMMENTS WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

Pauly

AHHHHHHH. Turn off the caps bro. Welcome to the forum someone with that knowelsge will chime in....

PolkThug

The PSW1200 speakers get full power from the amp down to 30hz, then there is drop-off. The speakers are capable of getting down to 20Hz, but at lower db's. Maybe your expectations are too high?

What is your phase set at? Try 0 first, then try 180, and see which you like better.

Regards,
PolkThug

Dr. Spec

Lets simplify things a little.

Set all speaks to Small with the AVR.

Set your AVR sub crossover to 80 Hz.

Set your AVR sub to yes/on.

Set the sub level in your AVR to -5 (on a scale of -10 to +10).

Run a single sub cable from the AVR sub out to the LFE (unfiltered) jack on the 1200.

Just to be safe set the 1200 filter control to its highest frequency setting.

Set the phase control to 0 if the 1200 is near the mains.

Calibrate the entire system with a SPL meter and the test tones. If you are a bass head, calibrate the 1200 a few dB hot.

When calibrating the 1200, adjust its level with the sub amp control, not the AVR sub level. When you get it close, fine tune with the AVR sub level, but keep it somewhere in the negative range regardless.

The 1200 corner loaded in a moderate size room should extend pretty strong down to about 25 Hz and also hit pretty hard with dual 12" and 350 watts.

danger boy

Originally posted by KEVIN HALBERT
HELLO. I AM LOOKING FOR LOW END ENTHUSIASTS THAT MAY BE RUNNING THIS THUNDEROUS BEAST. I HAVE COMBINED THIS SUB WITH A PAIR OF RT16'S AND AM STILL LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT BLEND. I HAVE FIVE MONSTER 550 SUBWOOFER CABLES CONNECTED WITH. 2 PRE OUT TO THE MAIN IN OF MY AMP, 2 FRONT L/R, AND ONE IN THE LFE. I HAVE THE HIGH PASS FILTER SET AT 40HZ AND HAVE TRIED TWEAKING THE LOW PASS FILTER UNTIL I AN NUMB. I EVENTUALLY SETTLED ON 40HZ FOR THE LOW PASS ALSO. IT SOUNDS GOOD BUT DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE THAT LOW END EXTENSION I LOOKING FOR. ANY HELP OR COMMENTS WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

my eyes, MY EYES!!!

gmorris

Dr. Spec,

I've read your subwoofer setup routine a number of times. I have one question. Why do you set the AVR sub level to -5? I'm not disagreeing or anything, I'm just curious.

goingganzo

hope you dont mind i will chim on this. it is so you dont over drive the signal going to the sub and clip it. also when setting to a -5 you can ajust from the avr and not wory about over driveing the sigonal when turing it up. there are 3 major things that kill a sub and any other driver. distorshon, clipping the amp/sigonal and over driveing. so if you play your sub with moterate thd and dont over drive it it will last you for years to come.

Dr. Spec

Yeah, what he said.

Connect any sub pre-out to an RTA and push the gain stage too high and lo and behold - harmonic distortion starts creeping up.

If you have an RTA oscilloscope function (I do), you can hook it to that and watch the onset of clipping if you really crank it up.

Keep any pre-out level in the cool zone, and the signal it sends to the amp is nice and clean.

gmorris

All right, that makes sense.

Why not set it to -10?

Ceruleance

because then you can't turn it down anymore when you are fine tuning

gmorris

true, but you still have the volume knob on the sub.... or do you not consider the knob "fine" enough for fine tuning?

lord_byron

I don't believe that overdriving the receiver output for the sub will do any damage to the sub in and of itself. The distortion that is bad for a speaker is that which is produced in the power amp stage of the signal, not the pre amp stage. Think of it like overdriving a guitar amp -- you are driving the pre amp into distortion, but that signal is passed to a power amp which reproduces the distorted signal, but is not contributing to the distortion itself. It may not sound too good to overdrive a sub from the pre amp, but its not going to harm it either.

Dr. Spec

I agree - sending the sub amp a dirty or compressed signal will sound bad, but in order to damage the woofer, the sub amp itself would have to be overdriven.

The reason you would not want to go to -10 is because the signal to noise ratio is lower than it needs to be at -10. You can increase gain 25% (to -5) and still have a clean signal and a better S/N ratio. It's a balancing act.

KEVIN HALBERT

Sorry for the all Caps everyone, (work requirement). I appreciate all the responses, but in reference to Dr. Spec's suggestion, I am still wondering about the pre out connections from the sub to my amp. Some of the research I have done on this connection indicated this would free up my amp from having to produce the low's and have more impact on the midrange and high's depending on whether I cut it at 40hz or 80hz. According to the PSW 1200's manual the front main speaker connection will filter the base out of the front L & R and route it to the sub insuring the low frequencies will be produced by the sub. Any more thoughts would be appreciated.

gmorris

I would say after you've exhausted all the different hook-up methods & settings, you need to start trying to nail down the placement of your speakers. If your speakers are in the same place you put them the first time you pulled them out of the box, move them around & notice the dramatic impact on bass performance placement can make.

The Polk website has a good .PDF document you can refer to for proper speaker placement. I'd also do a search here in the forum for different threads about speaker placement.

For starters, put your sub in a front corner of the room. That should give a LOUD & DEEP response, albeit on the boomy side. (you may like that though) Next, try sliding it along the side wall, coming further out into the room, & notice how the response changes. You will need to do some research on subwoofer placement, but if you simply move the sub around, take a listen, then move it some more, you can find a good placement within a few hours. Just experiment, remember it is your system, there is no right or wrong. If you like the sound, that is what counts.

Dr. Spec

Originally posted by KEVIN HALBERT
Some of the research I have done on this connection indicated this would free up my amp from having to produce the low's and have more impact on the midrange and high's depending on whether I cut it at 40hz or 80hz. According to the PSW 1200's manual the front main speaker connection will filter the base out of the front L & R and route it to the sub insuring the low frequencies will be produced by the sub. Any more thoughts would be appreciated.

Using a speaker level connection to the subwoofer forces your AVR to deliver a full range, full power signal to the subwoofer. The signal is then absorbed by the sub's filter network and the remainder (above the selected high pass frequency) is routed back to your speakers.

If you use the sub out connection, the filtering is done digitally in the pre amp stage, before the signal hits the AVR amp stage. This preserves all kinds of power and current and dynamic range for your AVR to drive the high passed surround channels.

Also, if this is a HT application, use 80 Hz as the xo, because the LFE channel has strong content up to 80 Hz and high passing below that point lops off the top of the LFE channel and send it to data heaven because obviously it is not rerouted via the high pass network to the surround channels - it's just gone.