Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Calibration of sub & mains w/old stereo receiver?

OK. Need your help. Hooking up M60s with a sub, to an old stereo-only receiver. I'm not concerned about the hook up; high level outs from the receiver to the sub high level ins, then high level outs from the the sub to the M60s. Then use the subs crossover. But, I'm struggling with how to balance the subs volume with the M60s volume. No test tones in the receiver,but I've got a DVE disc.

Will the following do the job? Hook up the M60s alone to the receiver; set the receivers volume level to "reference," or whatever (it won't really matter); play the pink noise from DVE; note the reading on the SPL meter; then hook up the sub by itself to the receiver, leaving the receiver's volume level exactly where it was for the M60s; play the pink noise again and, using the volume knob on the back of the sub, adjust the subs reading on the SPL meter to match what it read with the M60.

I'd have to use the pink noise for the Left front or right front on the DVE disc, since the sub would be hooked up to the main outputs on the receiver. Somehow It seems like I'm overlooking something.

Is this a "just do it by ear" situation?

Thanks for any assistance you can give me.

Ajax,

I have tried to adjust my sub using my Avia and Sound & Vision dvds, but in the end I just go by my ear. After fiddling with it so many times I am fairly confident in my ear to get the sound just right. I find I want the sub level lower than what the dvds tell me, at least for stereo listening.

Ajax, if it was me, I would forgo the meter and play a variety of source material and do it by ear.

I'm betting that you can set it up with an SPL with no problem and be accurate using pink noise but I would guess that you will find that the sub will call to much attention too itself on some material.

Play and bunch of stuff and adjust (On the sub) as you go. Eventually you will hit a good spot.

I say this only because almost every time I set-up my HT system with a SPL, it sounds great with movies, DVD-A, SACD, and even multi channel stereo but...............when I switch to stereo only with sub, the sub is overpowering on most material and that is with a cross over setting of 60. I truly believe that there is no right and wrong with stereo set-up. It comes down to what you like and the way you want it to sound.

Jack,

I pretty much used the method that you described to calibrate my stereo set up.Instead of using pink noise I used test tones from the disc Hsu sent with the sub.I would imagine the end result would be the same.It worked pretty good imo and the sub doesn't seem over powering to me.

"I say this only because almost every time I set-up my HT system with a SPL, it sounds great with movies, DVD-A, SACD, and even multi channel stereo but...............when I switch to stereo only with sub, the sub is overpowering on most material and that is with a cross over setting of 60. I truly believe that there is no right and wrong with stereo set-up. It comes down to what you like and the way you want it to sound. '

I have run into nearly the exact same situation with my system. Setup perfect for all of the above with the exception of stereo I typically bump the sub down 3 and actually I definitely have to for all channel stereo, but movies and SACD and DVD audio are all just right with the test tones that I have used.

Same 60hz crossover with M60's.

Thanks guys. At the very least, you've allowed me to relax a little and not worry whether I do it as decscribed in my first post, or do it by ear. I think I'll give it a shot with the SPL meter fiirst, then just adjust to suit my ear. No big deal. Thanks, again, to you all.

Yeah Jack, whichever way. Keep in mind that unless the sub happens to have a high-pass filter on its high level outputs, the M60s will run full range and duplicate the sub output in part of the lowest bass area.

John, it's a HSU STF-2. Dunno if it has a high pass filter. It does have a crossover, and I assumed that would high pass to the M60s. Was gonna check on their website but it seems to be down at the moment.

Jack, as I recall from past discussions the Hsu high-level outputs are unfiltered and simply are a straight feedthrough to the speakers, essentially the same as if parallel wiring from the receiver terminals was used. The sub's internal crossover has no effect on the speakers and is just a low-pass filter to the sub amp.

Gotcha! Thanks, John. This is just a tempory situation until a new surround reciever is affordable; sometime this fall, hopefully.