Speaker settings for subwoofer

[bensontm]

I have front floor speakers with 40 to 20 HZ range, with a center Polk 400ci with 40? to 26,000 HZ, two rear surround R30 Polks with 45 to 24,000 HZ, and a center rear surround with 80 to 20,000 HZ range. My 303 Polk subwoofer ranges down to 26 HZs.

1. A Circuit City manager told me that he would set his Onkyo six channel 80 watt receiver for all the speakers to small and set the crossover to 80 HZ. According to the Onkyo's manual, this would send all frequencies below 80 HZ from the front L/R, front center, back surround L/R, and back center surround to the 303 Polk subwoofer which goes all the way down to 26 HZ.

I tried this and it sounds good. It seems that I would get seamless bass using this method. The bass seems deeper.

2. Another Circuit City person told me to set all the speakers to large at the receiver level which according to my knowledge would not be using the subwoofer even with the subwoofer set to "yes" on the receiver, since the receiver only sends lower frequencies to the subwoofer for the "small" setting from what I understand.

The second option seems to me to be wasting my subwoofer. Is this the case?

[Dr. Spec]

It is my preferred method and I recommend it to others. Make sure you are plugged into the LFE (unfiltered) input on the sub, and not the L/R line level inputs. Also set your LFE level to slightly less than the midpoint (-3 for example) on the receiver and adjust the sub volume to your taste at the sub plate amp.

If you find the need to make the sub louder for a wimpy DVD or for music, then you can use the receiver to adjust upwards temporarily, but don't go much higher than +2 on the receiver LFE level, and make sure to set it back to -3 afterwards.