Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Set-Up Help With Denon 4806

hashts,

To answer your question on how high have I cranked up the vol... nowhere near -10db. More like -25db before the little lady made her appearance and voiced her disapproval. But putting that aside, I am going to need some advice on setting up the speaker config (or any other tweaks for that matter)in order to get the best response from my 600.

When I did the Audyssey EQ, I noticed that the fronts were set to large, and the rest of the speakers were set to small. Does the front setting take any of the bass emphasis away from the sub? Aside from this possible parameter change, I am clueless as to how to get more bass response.

1 tip I can offer to get more bass is to set your Denon to output LFE to both LFE + Mains (p. 114). However, since your Mains are already set to large, then it might already be doing it. If you look on page 114 of your manual it suggests to set all your speakers to small to yield best results.

And to answer your question, you will not take away any emphasis from your sub by setting your mains to large. The M80s will add a little bit of extra bass but nowhere near what the monster EP600 can output.

When the lady leaves, try cranking that scene up to a loud but comfortable level. I'm sure -25db is plenty loud with an Epic 80-600 system. I'm drooling just imagining how nice it sounds.

Depending on phase and placement having the mains deliver bass as well as the sub *can* actually reduce the bass at the listening position... or it can make it better... or it can make the response smoother... or it can make it lumpier.

I would start with the mains set to small, use that as a reference, then try changing different things and see what works.

The "phase" switch on the subwoofer only has an effect in the crossover region (between sub and mains) if you are running mains in small, but in large it can affect all of the bass response at least down to the point the M80s give up.

Highly recommend having an assistant flip the switch while you sit in the listening postion... you won't hear the same thing standing by the sub.

OK, point taken to start with fronts set to small. I'm having a little trouble with the concept of "crossover" and the relationship between the sub and fronts (or any other speaker for that matter). Is it the point/range where the low frequency (bass)signal is assigned or sent to either the (for instance) the front speakers vs the sub? Is this point rated as/in decibles?

One other thing, I have the crossover set to "bypass" on the 600 in order to utilize the Denon sub management. I hope this is the appropriate setting.

Yep... the crossover frequency (in hz) is where the two speakers (typically subwoofer and "everything else) are getting equal amounts of signal. At lower frequencies pretty much everything goes to the sub, and at higher frequencies pretty much everything goes to the other speakers.

When people talk about the "minus 3 dB point" that is where half the energy is coming out... so both sub and mains etc are putting out half the energy (-3dB) at the crossover frequency and you hear the same volume you do at the other frequencies. This is where subwoofer phase comes in... if both mains and sub ard putting out half the energy and the signals are both arriving at the same time you get nice flat frequency response, but if they are arriving slightly skewed so that the peaks of the waveform from the subwoofer are arriving at the same time as the dips of the waveform from the mains etc.., then the signals cancel and you get a big dip in the frequency response at that point. It's sort of simple in that sound travels at about 1130 feet per second and the time for a cycle of any waveform is 1 over the frequency (eg. 80 hz signal has a cycle time of 1/80 of a second, which happens to be the time it takes sound to travel 1130/80 = about 14 feet. That means a 7 foot difference between (listener to sub) and (listener to main) would result in complete cancellation of the signals. It's never that simple because of reflections, and because you have two mains, but you get the idea.

That is the first time anyone has explained the relationship of crossover with respect to the sub/fronts in a way that I have been able to grasp the concept. Thanks for putting it in such a concise way... Bud