Opinions on Large or Small

[burdette]

All right... I'm finally set... I have all the speakers I'm going to have for awhile, which means my 5.1 system is going to by shy it's point one.. i.e. no subwoofer.. for a couple of years.

I have Monitor 7Cs on stands as the mains.. they will obviously be set to "large". By the way, I remain as impressed with the bass of these 7Cs as I was when I bought them in 1989. I suppose I'll hear the bottom end they're missing once I do own a subwoofer, but I've *never* been left feeling like I *needed* more with these.

I'll play around with settings, but wanted opinions on where to start.

I have 5jr+ as the surrounds... would you put them L or S?

I bought an Advent center from the Fleamarket forum.. it has a pair of 5.25" woofers, ported in the rear. Would you put this on L or S?

Now, I just have to decide what movie gets the honor of being first played through my (not quite) new setup.

[TroyD]

IMO, center and rears set to small.

Congrats man, that is a good setup to start with and should bring you some quality enjoyment.


BDT

[jcaut]

burdette:

That Advent center sounded better to me with the grille off. If you look the back side of it (the grille) you'll notice there's a plastic "grid" frame-work under the cloth. It's bound to have some effect on the high-frequency dispersion pattern. It doesn't make a drastic difference but I'm pretty sure I could tell the difference.

Jason

[DaMonk]

Although the basic rules for set say go small after all is said and done the bottom line is go with what sounds good to you. try
experimenting with several settings and source types as everybody's tastes and hearing is different , also room size and
room acousticsis a factor. all I can say is watch some movies,tv and music then go with your ears! The fact you don't have a sub
says you may want large.

[mantis]

I think due to the fact you don't have a sub, Id run everything in large.Then all the speakers can perform.Untill the sub lines up,my vote is for large.

[petrym]

Hiya burdette,

I'm with mantis on this one, setting your receiver output to "large" on all channels sends the low freqs to your existent speakers and not to your as-yet-acquired subwoofer. If it sounds thin, bump up the bass output a couple of notches and try the depth charge sequence in U-571.

[burdette]

If I set a speaker to large, doesn't that mean that the entire frequency range for that channel is sent to that speaker? And if you set it to small, the lower end of the range is redirected?? AND, since I have "subwoofer" set to "no", wouldn't the redirected sound then be sent to my two mains, which ARE large (at least as large as it gets for me right now). Or am I just completely confused as to what goes on??

I thought that if you set a channel to large, it gets the entire signal, which means if the speaker can't reproduce the bass, that portion of that signal is "lost" since it isn't being sent to any other speaker...? But if you set the speaker to small, the bass is going to be sent to whatever you have that can handle it...??

Last night (after reading about it on these forums), I checked out the Setup feature on Toy Story... it didn't 'know' I didn't have a subwoofer, so still sent out that test signal which went to my mains... that was the lowest rumble I think I've heard from those Monitor 7Cs...

I'm an intelligent guy... and an audio-head (I was doing faux 'matrix' surround back in the early 80s)... although I'm new to the home theater arena because I haven't bought new equipment (before this summer) for over 12 years... so I can understand this once I know what is going on...

Thanks for the responses... its fun to be able to play with new equipment again.. a couple of new HiFi VCRs over the past few years just wasn't cutting it..

[HBombToo]

burdette, I think you are correct about Large. Whatever the speced range on the speake IS, is what range you will hear and feel.
I have a sub so I use small and cross over at 80 Hz. The crossover is handled by my h\k but has other options as well. It just seemed to work best for me. I'm guessing room dimensions and speaker performance has a lot to do with it.

[nascarmann]

Do what sounds best......maybe center small and the rest large....

[mantis]

The bottom line of this post it..or better put bottom end....You need a sub.

[Ron-P]

I have all my speakers (RT55's, CS400 & RT25i's) set to large, they just sound better that way.


Peace Out~:D

[burdette]

I told my wife that a guy on the Polk forum told me that the bottom line is that I need a sub... she's had a total change of heart and is pushing me to get one this weekend!

Not.

I know I need a sub.. I've wanted one forever, even before 5.1 became the reason. But I've decided to not go half way... I'm not going to buy until I can buy a TRUE subwoofer with performance at or approaching 20 Hz. I've built several pair of speakers over the years, and am intrigued by the NHT kits at Madisound.. they have a single 12" kit and a 10" double kit. But, when the time comes that I have the bucks, I'm sure I'll read and read and research and listen and all that stuff as I always do.

Besides, I just got a new receiver and a 'new' center channel and have my first *real* home theater set up EVER... so I think I can milk that for the enjoyment and look forward to getting ALL new speakers in a few years, including the true sub.

Thanks for the info. I think I'll just play and see how it goes.

[Ron-P]

If you have built speakers, why not build a sub. Although very large, I was able to hide my SonoSub in the closet inside my HT. It should meet your 20Hz requirement and at a much lower cost then buying one.


Peace Out~:D