Crossover settings with Marantz Cinema 60 receiver

Cajudos

Hi all ,

I know that music settings are very personal but I am still new at this...

I have an Marantz Cinema 60 receiver, for front speakers the Polk ES20, center the Polk ES35, my subwoofer is the Polk HTS-12 and temporarily i am using 2 Bose Cube speakers (Acoustimass 10 Series II) for rear surroind speakers

My living room is not big but I am still struggling to find decent settings , when I put my speakers to full range they dont use my subwoofer. When I had my Bose setup in the past everything was set to full range.

Any suggestions on settings for a more true cinema experience?

Thanks for any help.

Emlyn

I'd set everything to 80Hz crossover as a starting point and see how that sounds to you. That's the normal standard for home theater systems, but it's not the only way to set things up. Speakers that won't provide bass below 80Hz simply won't produce it.

Or, try running the auto setup with the microphone and it'll set the crossover points for each channel the way the system thinks best.

ChrisD06

80Hz is THX spec and that's what I use. I set my crossover points per speaker to be 10Hz higher than the -3db point.

mantis

I would absolutely run small 80hz all the way around. Let the subwoofer do the heavy lifting and calibrate with a SPL meter OR just use the Provided microphone it comes with. Odyssey is pretty good but it's going to set all your speakers to large, a huge flaw with the program. Allow it to do it thing all the way through and then go back and adjust only the crossover settings. All small all 80hz.

ChrisD06

mantis wrote: »

I would absolutely run small 80hz all the way around. Let the subwoofer do the heavy lifting and calibrate with a SPL meter OR just use the Provided microphone it comes with. Odyssey is pretty good but it's going to set all your speakers to large, a huge flaw with the program. Allow it to do it thing all the way through and then go back and adjust only the crossover settings. All small all 80hz.

I don't use room correction honestly. I find I end up undoing 90% of what it does. Onkyo thinks my RT3000p sattelites have a crossover range of like 200Hz, and my CS400i only goes down to 90Hz. Not even close...

Emlyn

I always run the auto setups to get correct speaker distance and timing to the main listening space. The best crossover settings and speaker levels are usually way off.

Cajudos

This is definitely a brainer to get it right. At the moment I have put the crossover at 80hz and I am 85% pleased. The room calibration doesn't work and instead makes totally unrecognizable changes which I have undone all. I don't want to suck all bass from my front speakers....the Polk ES20...so any suggestion is welcome

Emlyn

If a speaker is set to "Large" rather than "Small" in the receiver it'll not have a crossover setting affecting it. The ES20 would benefit from having the HTS12 subwoofer supplementing them but you could have the crossover set at 60Hz if that sounds better in your space.

Polk doesn't appear to give a true frequency response rating using a -3dB figure for the ES20 but do provide an overall number of 41Hz. The ES20 probably doesn't produce much useful bass below about 50Hz. My guess is the 80Hz setting is best in the receiver.

It would be best to replace the Bose cubes with something better eventually.

ChrisD06

To add on to what Emlyn said, I'd recommend the Polk ES10 to replace the bose cubes.

Cajudos

I thought personally that the Bose cubes work quite well as rear surround speakers but I guess I am wrong :-) Should I go for the ES10 as surround or is the ES15 still a bit better or unnecessary in my setup ?

Emlyn

If you have the room and want to spend the money another pair of ES20s to match the front pair would be excellent but any of the same series bookshelf speakers would be good choices.