Low pass questions

[kliegs]

I have a psw 12 sub and rm 6800 sats. My receiver is the pioner vsx-912. Set up is polk-suggested. Can someone tell me the optimal cross-over settings on the receiver (3 options 100-150-200) and the sub?

Thanks very much in advance.

Matt

[dorokusai]

How do you have the subwoofer hooked up? RCA?

[kliegs]

Set up is polk-suggested. (Sorry, don't know all the lingo). Thanks.

[Dennis Gardner]

No low pass used in Polk-suggested (speaker level). It is full range and the sub settings are the low/high settings. You should set your receiver to a no sub setting though.

[kliegs]

Thanks for the quick response. I'm not sure what that means on a practical level. My receiver is set to no sub. What should the settings on the receiver (100, 150 or 200) and sub (60-160) be? Thanks for the help again and sorry for my lack of basic knowledge.

[Dennis Gardner]

Since you have chosen no sub there is no setting used. The settings are there if you choose to use the RCA subwoofer output that requires a setting to direct the lows to your sub and highs to your satellites. Hooking them up Polk's way does away with receiver settings and uses the settings on your sub exclusively. When you choose no sub a full range signal is sent to all speakers.

[kliegs]

Ok, just one more question then. What should the sub be set to? Thanks again.

[dorokusai]

I will presume that you're using the subwoofer, as you mentioned, with speaker level inputs...which would make sense for the RM series.

Sub to "No"
Front L&R speakers set to "Large"
Subwoofer adjustment turned all the way up...160, or adjust as you see fit.

The "Large" setting should take away the crossover adjustment option(100/150/200) that you're seeing on the Receiver.

[adam2434]

If using a speaker level sub connection with main left/right speakers set to large (speaker wire from receiver left/right to sub and sub to left/right speakers), you will still want to run your center and surrounds as small and thus would need to select a crossover frequency (given the small size your sats, I would start with 150 Hz). This frequency will be a high pass filter on the channels selected as small and will redirect bass below that frequency to your main left/right channels. Thus, your sub will get the redirected bass from those channels.

You will also need to adjust the low pass filter and level on the sub to blend with your left/right speakers' natural roll-off. You will need a fairly high low pass setting to blend with the sats - probably in the 120-150 Hz range.

If I were you, I'd also give the much more commonly used line level (RCA cable) method a try to determine which sounds better. In this method, you would set all speakers to small, start with 150 Hz crossover in the receiver, set sub to on, use the LFE input on the sub, and calibrate all channel levels (preferably with a SPL meter).