New for Bi-wire

I heard my name, so I figured I'd chime in.

If you set the fronts to large, they get a full range L/R signal in that channel. If you also set the sub to yes, it gets the LFE channel (".1"), and also any low passed bass from any other speakers set to small.

There is sometimes an option available when you set your fronts to large. It's called "LFE+Mains". This function sends the subwoofer the LFE channel, plus duplicate low passed bass from the mains (even though they are set to large), and of course still any other low passed bass from surround channels set to small.

The "LFE+Mains" often results in too heavy bass, and can also cause the sub and the mains to intefere with each other acoustically depending on the subs location in the room. So use this with caution, if your AVR can do it.

This is the evergreen problem with powered towers. They have puny amps and small bass drivers and can't do bass as well as a sub, so the dilemma is how to run them - small, large, etc.

If I had powered towers, I'd run them on small with a filter point of 60 Hz. They would still see significant bass below that point, but would not be overwhelmed with a true full range signal that they cannot hope to properly reproduce at the higher volumes common to HT.

Doc

Think Doc will say...

If you are using the sub's LFE input, which you should if it has one, you are bypassing the sub's crossover, so the setting does not matter.
If the sub does not have an LFE input. set the crossover to its highest setting to avoid double filtering the bass signal and let the AVR do the filtering.