Satellites vs. Floorstanders

Midnite Mick

Okay, maybe I am confused about something. What I am saying is running speaker cables from the amp directly to the speakers like you do when you do not have a sub in play. Then from your second outputs from the preamp running to stereo subs. That sub circuitry would have zero effect on your mains because it is not in the signal path. Then one would have to dial in the subs to work with your mains so at get the very bottom only.

I have never ran a sub but is this not one way to do it?

Thanks,
Mike

pearsall001

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

well I guess you can sum it up Phil by saying that a good little man (satellite) can beat a bad big man (floorstander), but a good little man can never beat a good big man.

long live the floorstander!!!!!!!!!!!!

of course the OP is now totally confused and we went from Circuit City to Esoteric, but it is what we do.:eek:

RT1

Almost true Ted, but you left out one very inportant variable. The sub!!!!

Now it goes like this:

A good little man along with a good little sub will kick the living sheeeeet out of a good floorstander. The FS wouldn't make it past the 1st round.

Yeah that poor OP...he probably just went out & bought a Bose system. He probably figured out that we're all nuts around here.

Midnite Mick

You bunch of crazies.

If the OP was smart he'd get the hell out of here before it is too late. Run man run, this is no good for you.:p

jm1

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

To answer your question, No, the signal is compromised (degraded) whether its sent first to the sub then to the mains or to the sub out, any electrical circuit/connection can only take away from the signal. The sub just amplifies the signal and plays it, of course its been degraded a bit. No matter how you spin it when integrating a sub you must introduce more variables to the audio signal, still not good news.

You should have a look at the pro/cons between active and passive crossover implementations. I would rather have an external active crossover rather than an internal passive crossover commonly found in speakers.

tonyb

Gotta love the 'ol Polk back and forth.I personnaly agree with Ted,but to a point.Yes you can have monitors and subs and have a kick **** system,heard plenty myself.As in everything audio,comes down to personal taste,waf,your room,budget,yada,yada.Ted is just going down to the nuts and bolts of things,in a purist state of mind,and you guys know he's right.Now,whether you can hear the differences or not,wether you give 2 craps or not,this all may not matter to you anyway,except for what your ears are telling you.So if monitors and subs get your stick up,or be it floorstanders,rock out with your c#$k out boys.:D

jm1

tonyb wrote: »

Ted is just going down to the nuts and bolts of things,in a purist state of mind,and you guys know he's right.

That the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. Thanks! I needed that.

Midnite Mick

Really? I thought this was much funnier.

tonyb wrote: »

rock out with your c#$k out boys.:D

pearsall001

To each his own...but floorstanders are nothing more than monitor wanna be's trying (I mean that very loosely) to kick out some real bass!! :D:D

SlowcarIX

treitz3 wrote: »

Unless you have an SMS-1.

the sms-1 is no substitude for good sub placement/good sitting position...

my room bass response was so messed up - it was unfixable with the sms-1...so i moved the mic around and found this :D



sms-1 has since gone to a new home to help the new owner find the good placement/sitting position

reeltrouble1

audio geeks.............go figure....

RT1

jm1

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

audio geeks.............go figure....

RT1

Thanks, considering this is an audio forum.............go figure....

reeltrouble1

your welcome. although its hard to hear you with those loud noise banging sub thingies mucking things up.

RT1

kuntasensei

gte697h wrote: »

Hi! I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on whether Floorstanders were better than satellites? For what I've demoed at Circuit City, it seemed like the floorstanders provide better directional bass than a satellites + subwoofer combo.

Specifications for my setup are, small room, 5.1 home theater, onkyo 705 receiver. Any opinions on pros and cons of satellites vs. floorstanders would be appreciated!

As you can see from all the previous posts, opinions very wildly on the subject. I'll add my two cents:

I'm running the Onkyo 705 as well. I went from Polk RTi28 mains (bookshelves) to RTi70 floorstanders when I decided to move the 28s to rear surround duty. However, I would still recommend using a subwoofer with floorstanders. The 705 is a very flexible receiver in that it lets you select crossover points in increments of 10Hz starting down at 40Hz. There is a delicate balance between music performance and movie performance, however, I do feel that there is an advantage to using floorstanders that makes them great for both.

To get the best blend of deep bass to your subwoofer, look at the low -3dB point of floorstanding speakers and multiply that times 1.5. That gives you a half-octave above the speaker's natural rolloff for the subwoofer to take over bass duties. This point should be well below the crossovers in the speaker itself, so you shouldn't have any overlap. For instance, I'm running my RTi70s at a 60Hz crossover on the 705. This keeps the directionality of musical bass as well as the improved tone, which is the advantage of floorstanders. It also keeps significant sound down to 50Hz in the speaker itself. With most music, I notice little difference between running the 70s full range or running them at 60Hz and letting my SVS 20-39CS+/Samson 1000 rig pick up the slack. With movies, however, there's a vast difference in performance, and I wouldn't run full range floorstanders for that purpose. Because the 705 has such a flexible crossover setting, you can get the most out of floorstanders and still get great movie performance down below their capabilities.

The other thing that makes the 705 work really well for this is that it has Audyssey MultEQ XT. It will do a very fine equalization of each speaker based on its in-room response across the full range of its capabilities, giving you a great blend to the subwoofer. It also does a good job of detecting acoustic distance to keep the speakers as close in phase with the subwoofer as possible. Something to keep in mind with the 705, however: Onkyo chose to use a 80Hz threshold during Audyssey's crossover detection as "FULL RANGE"... so most bookshelf speakers will likely detect as full range on the Onkyos. After running Audyssey setup, manually change any crossover set to "full range" to 1.5x the speaker's lower -3dB point if you have a subwoofer.

All that said, you don't "need" floorstanders, especially if your primary use is for movies. I do strongly recommend at least using bookshelf sized speakers instead of "satellites", which are normally small speakers whose specs require them to be run above an 80Hz crossover (which means you will lose bass directionality and hear bass coming from the sub instead of from its corresponding channel, known as "localization"). Most Polk bookshelf speakers work well down to 60Hz, making them ideal for a system with an 80Hz crossover.

gte697h

Thanks to All for some really good answers. As you'll guessed, I didn't understand half of it which makes me want to learn more

treitz3 wrote: »

To me? That's the most loaded question of the year. It SO totally depends on what your musical genre is and how loud you listen to it, what your room dimensions are, not to mention what you have feeding it. Then there is that question that might throw a wrench into things....do you want a sub?

Answer this, we can move on.

Trietz, I like to listen to classic rock, a lot of Led Zep, rolling stones etc. I like to listen to it fairly loud as well My living room is probably 300-350-sqft. I'm inching towards a RTi8 fronts, Csi3 center and Fxi3 for the rears WITH a sub (not sure which one yet I will also be using this setup mainly for movies.

How does this setup sound guys?!

ArdyAr

I have my Acoustic Zens with a Sunfire sw crossed at 32hz.Sub is hidden and nobody guesses where it's at.Only time you run into directional problems is when you cross over too high.With some speakers you don't have a choice...