2. home-theater
  3. 1044414801

Bass Management

I have Acoustic Research AR1's in front with powered subs.
I have full range non-powered speakers for surrounds, and therefore want all channels to be driven in full range.To do this, I must select "Large" speaker setting for my front powered towers in order to be able to select "large" for my surrounds. My Pioneer receiver will not allow for "small" fronts and "large" surrounds (if you select "small" fronts, all others including center, must be "small" also). In addition, AR strongly suggests that I use the Speaker connections for the mid/tweeter and the LFE
connection for the subs on my AR1's. When I use only the speaker connection, I still have PLENTY of bass volume on both music and movies, but I have recently plugged into SACD and DVD-Audio, which have the six channel output directly to the receiver's multi-channel input. One of these channels is specifically marked "subwoofer". My question is...what happens to this channel? Does the receiver mix the LFE info into all of my "full range" speakers, or is it only in the fronts, or is it possibly lost altogether? Please help me with any comments or suggestions!

Thank you!
fpawardse1f9

Showing 4 responses by foreverhifi

foreverhifi
229 posts
 
"Sogood51", can he do this? I didn't think you could. Funny, if that's the case, I guess it's workable then. I din't know you could do it that way, but I guess you are probably correct. Hummmm...that could work. I would like to ask Outlaw if this can be done. For some reason, I didn't think it was the same as a "pre-in" functionally.
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
"Sogood51", I just called Yamaha in Southern California(close to me), and they said that you CANNOT LOOP FROM YOUR PRE-OUT'S BACK INTO THE 6.1/5.1 CHANNEL INPUTS!!!! I don't think you'll probably be able to do this with any other receiver also...but could be wrong of course.
I just thought this might be helpful for anyone thinking of trying this to know!
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
First, I'm currious as to "why you would want to run the powered mains as small and the rears as full range?" If anything, you should(assuming the mains are a full range speaker with powered woofers) run the mains as "large" and the rears(passive full range towers) as small! The powered toweres do a much much better job of handling "full range" than the passive rears!!! Unless the rears are ULTRA HIGH SENSITIVITY AND EFFICIENCY, this is definitely NOT AS DESIREABLE!(POWERED SUBS DO BETTER HANDLING DD/DTS BASS!).
BTW, how low do the AR1's play and how big are the bass drivers?...this makes a difference in how you might consider crossing them over, if at all.
Worse case scanario, I would run all the speakers as "small" and add a powered sub(s). You could to "full range" to all the speakers if the mains are large enough with big powered woofers. Normally, there's not so much bass info at the rears to sweat it that much if push comes to shove(although not ideal in my experience). Then again you could consider changing your reciever(which is always going to have less current capability to do proper justice to MOST ANY SPEAKER FULL RANGE FOR DD/DTS!(except powered speakers, or running "small + sub"). The possible exception is when you're running speakers that have very very high sensitivity ratings, like 96db+!
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
(SoGood51)...With most receiver set up's there is no way to add the ICBM from OUtlaw to the system to all channels! Unless the receiver has "pre-out's" and "main-in's", you can't do this. If he was using pre-out's to another amplifier or something, he could indeed buy the Outlaw ICBM, and configure as he pleased using that device(simply setting the receiver to "large" for all speakers). But that's not the case from what's in question here I think.
More to discover