Newbie question re: the SurroundBar

[DaveNagy]

Hi everybody,

I ordered my SurroundBar yesterday, after reading through all of the threads I could find about it in this forum. I still have a couple questions, one of which concerns the subwoofer hookup:

There seems to be two seperate and conflicting bits of advice floating around. The manual says that you set up your receiver's bass management so that all speakers are designated as "Large". You're also supposed to tell your receiver that you don't have a sub connected, and then just connect the sub to the high-level speaker outputs for your "front" speakers.

Meanwhile, the white paper has this advice:

A. For best music performance and smaller rooms.
1. Set subwoofer to “Off” or “”None”
2. Set Left and Right speaker channels to “Large”
3. Set Center and Rear channels to "Small”
4. Connect the subwoofer using the high level (speaker level) inputs from the same Left and Right front amplifier channels that are connected to the Surround Bar.
5. Set crossover, if selectable, set to120Hz.
6. Set all delays to zero. Or, if the receiver asks for the distance to the speakers, use the same distance for all.

B. For larger rooms or to play the system louder.
1. Set Subwoofer to "On" or "Yes"
2. Set all speaker channels to “Small”
3. Connect subwoofer to receiver subwoofer line-level output
4. Set crossover, if selectable to 100 Hz
5. Set all delays to zero. Or, if the receiver asks for the distance to the speakers, use the same distance for all.

So, which is it? :) All my prior (modest) experiance with HT suggests that setting all your speakers to "Large", and then telling your receiver that there's no sub connected would be a recipe for terrible bass if your speakers are not, in fact, large. Connecting the sub to the front L/R speaker outputs will get you some of the bass back, but not all of it, right? The advice given in the white paper makes much more sense to me. Why does the manual and FAQ contradict it so completely?

[Eric W]

Well it ultimately depends on what kind of receiver you have and how adjustable it is. For the modern Dolby Digital receiver with an adjustable crossover, it is easiest to run the speaker wires directly to the receiver's respective speaker outputs. Then, run the single sub out cable from the receiver to the subwoofer. Set all the speakers to "small", subwoofer "yes" and crossover frequency to 120 Hz.

[DaveNagy]

Ah! Very good. Yes, my receiver will allow me to do that. Well, sort of. The SA-XR57 only gives me a choice of 80Hz, 100Hz, 150Hz, and 200Hz as the crossover frequency. I'll experiment with 100Hz and 150Hz to see which one sounds best.

Alternately, I could go with "Option A" (see above) from the white paper. Set all the speakers except the fronts to "small", and then connect the sub in parallel with the front speakers. I could then use the variable crossover on the sub to limit it to 120Hz and below.

Lots of options. Thanks for the clarification.

[Eric W]

Yup precisely. Sounds like you have it figured out.