I've been playing around with various settings on my receiver, particularly experimenting with different options for subwoofer calibration. Out of curiousity, I set my M60 speakers to large, all other speakers to small and set the subwoofer to off. I'm using an Outlaw 990 receiver (and 7125 amp) and the net effect of these settings is to send the full range signal to the M60s, along with the bass from the center/surrounds and the LFE channel in DD/DTS recordings. To test it out I played a couple of bass intensive scenes - Finding Nemo (Darla taps tank) and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (opening scene where ship explodes).
WOW - I was not ready for the results. For some reason, the LFE effects are significantly magnified through the M60. The output levels are extremely high. I took some measurements using a SPL meter. Playing these scenes with the LFE routed to the M60 (and no sub) hit peaks of 105-110 dB when playing -20 dB from reference levels whereas they hit peaks of 90-95 dB when the LFE is routed to the subwoofer. I did not expect this.
Is this normal? I did not expect the LFE channel to play so loudly through the M60. I don't plan on keeping the system configured this way but I thought it interesting nonetheless. It does confirm that the M60s can play reasonably low at fairly high SPL levels. But I'm surprised the Outlaw 990 sends such a strong LFE signal to the front mains when configured as such.
Any thoughts?
