Finally...An Earth Shaker

hochpt21

A HUGE shout-out to @EndersShadow for giving me the heads up on this!

I've had my HT setup for about 3 years now with no sub Most of them have been out of budget, but finally scored a good deal. It's an older generation SVS, a PC Ultra.

I'm going to work on setting it up tomorrow. I've got to get my read on to figure out what all the settings are.

I know to start with a sub crawl. From there it looks like I can set the crossover from the sub, or let the Marantz do it. I thought, though, that with a sub I should set my fronts to 'small', but when I activated the sub on the Marantz it will only let me set the fronts as 'large', so not sure what to do there.

Any advice is appreciated, and I'll be digging in tomorrow to hopefully get this guy slamming.

Thanks all!

EndersShadow

Well I figured I would finally send you a link to a LOCAL sale since you REFUSED to drive down to Indy for the THT sub .....

If you ever have to sell I'm calling right of first refusal on it lol.....

Erik Tracy

Congrats on that monster sub - once you get it dialed in it should be an earth shaker for sure!

You may not like it, but you need to dive into the Marantz manual to figure out the sequence for the setting of speaker size to 'small', use the LFE input on the sub, and set the xover freq on the Marantz to 80Hz.

I'd use this as a starting point, then run some tests and tweak until YOU like the sound.

I'm pretty sure the Marantz will also allow you to have saved settings, so you could also run thru the setup sequence with bass=sub+fronts (fronts set to large) and save that along with your first run with bass=sub, fronts set to small.

Then compare the two for what YOU like.

Thorton

The Marantz is setting the speakers to large not Audyssey.

Set the speakers to small and start at 60-80 hz for the xover. Good luck.

Joey_V

I always dreamed of an SVS Ultra... Congrats on such a find.

hochpt21

I ran the Audyssey and it set the fronts to large and the xover at 80 along with the speaker distances.

I manually turned the fronts to small, which 'grayed' out the subwoofer box on the Marantz and said off. However, the 80 was still there for the xover. I played a movie and even though the Marantz said subwoofer off it still worked.

I watched Dark Knight at about 60% gain on the subwoofer and it sounded awesome. A few movies I've tried since aren't nearly as responsive, and I'm sure that has to do with the LF in each particular movie.

But I'm finding myself turning the sub up to like 80% just to get close to where it actually makes a difference.

I'll keep working...

mikeyb128

Not familiar with the gain on that sub, but after talking to Ed about setting up my ultras he said it isn't abnormal to be in the 80% range and doesn't indicate a problem. The digital gain on my ultras are from -100 to 0 (zero being full power) and mine are in the -20 range, which would put them at about 80%. He recommended higher gain on the sub, to achieve its maximum power, and a lower gain in the AVR to help prevent "clipping" the signal and passing on distortion to the sub.

Will see if I still have the email regarding this matter.

Joey_V

80% gain? You ran room FR to see if you're compensating for a dip or suckout?

Sounds like a huge compensation

Erik Tracy

I run an Epik Valor, 15" sealed sub, and I have the gain at like 10% on the plate amp and my AVR sets its gain to -1db when I run the auto cal.

80% gain does sound like A LOT.

hochpt21

I did a sub crawl. Found the best spot. Ran Audyssey. Had to turn off Audyssey because my receiver would overheat(long story) but kept the settings.

Played Dark Knight and it was perfect and awesome at about 50-60%. The other three movies I've tried have been far less impressive. Granted DK was the only disk I've tried, the other ones were off the Dish box.

PSOVLSK

Congrats. SVS=Awesome.
I've got a Plus-2 and its the main reason I can't give up HT and go straight 2 channel.

mikeyb128

Straight out of my owners manual.

Gain:
This menu option affects how loud the subwoofer plays. The control range is -100 dB to 0 dB (maximum). The factory default setting is 0 dB.

AVR: For connection to an A/V receiver, it should normally be set between -15 and -5 (depending on the room size and strength of the AVR sub-out signal) prior to running auto-set-up.

The desired AVR subwoofer channel level after running auto-set-up is in the -8 to -4 range (typically on a scale of -12 to +12).

If the post-set-up AVR subwoofer channel level is bottomed out at the minimum setting (usually -12), that means the subwoofer volume was set too high. Reduce the subwoofer volume accordingly and re-run set-up. If the post-set-up AVR subwoofer channel level is in the positive region, that means the subwoofer volume was set too low. Increase the subwoofer volume accordingly and re-run set-up.

I've had six svs subs, that includes 4 ultras. It is NOT a lot for a svs sub to be in the 80% range.

hochpt21

Thanks Mikey.

Audyssey set my sub to -6. I went in and changed it to zero. And set the gain at 60%. Got decent bass tonight from How To Train Your Dragon 2.