Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners I have more bass punch WITHOUT a sub

Well this may tie in to the 'lack of punch' discussion of the DSP subs.

I typically notice that music appears to have much more bass punch/kick to it when I leave my ep500 off and set my m80's to large (or just press the direct button on my denon 3808).

Here is what I recently found out when listening to 2 channel music:

With m80's only- bass has a really nice punch to it that you can feel. unfortunately my m80's don't go as low as the ep500 so I miss some of the very bottom end.

With m80's set to small and crossover to ep500 set at 60 hz the punchy bass seems to dissapear into the background and almost go away- some music sounds almost thin. virtually no punch/kick at all. ep500 still plays very low notes/sounds in a 'laid back' or 'mellow' fashion.


To remedy this problem I tried keeping the m80's on small and the crossover at 60hz. I changed the sub to "LFE+main". Now the m80's produce the kick, and the ep500 does the duty of the extremely low notes. Seems to work pretty well but need to experiment some more.


Is there something wrong with this??!?!?!?

The ep500 works VERY well during movies (explosions/gunshots/ ect.) but really lacks the punch that even the woofers on my m80's can provide.


what do you guys think about this?

What can be wrong if it sounds good to you?

I know mojo has in the past moved his XO to 40 to increase the punch felt, but he moves the XO up to 60 as well.

I'm in the same boat. Because of my difficult room, the only way I can get it to sound natural is running my 80's full (no x-over), and the receiver "LFE + main". I've had it this way for about 3 years now.

Sounds like it could be a positional thing, or possibly phase. I'm sure that the EP500 can produce frequencies at 60Hz.

Isn't "LFE + main" the correct setting anyway? I mean, you want the sub to get both the LFE and the Main signals, and the crossover setting in the AVR sets the low pass filter.

No, LFE+main doubles the bass. I found that to be overpowering with my M80s with my old sub, let alone the EP350.

'LFE+Main' means the LFE channel, is sent to the mains as well as the sub and not just the sub, more or less eliminating the crossover. Whether or not this is the correct setting is individual taste.

I don't think so guys. Read this from Dobly:

http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech_library/38_LFE.pdf

I think that the proper setting for the Subwoofer in the AVR is LFE+Main if you want the sub to handle both LFE effects as well as Main sub effects.

That's why you were not getting the bass in direct mode. The subs were only outputting LFE (and there isn't any in normal 2 channel music).

Ah, good point. I get things mixed up because my receiver has independent bass settings (different behavior for different surrounds modes).

One more thing to keep in mind. If you set the AVR to LFE+Main, make sure your front speaker setting is "Small", NOT "large". If you set the fronts to "large", they ignore the crossover and also get the low frequencies (this could account for the extra bass you heard kcarlile).

The correct setting (if you have subs) is "LFE+Main", and fronts set to "Small". Put the sub crossover in bypass, and adjust the low frequency crossover via the AVR to a frequency you find pleasing.