Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Need crossover help!!!! Please!

In my current setup I have a pair of M2i's and the VP100 center channel. I have 4 Acoustic Research (cheap bookshelfs) for surrounds. HSU sub. H/K 535 receiver.

The receiver has variable crossover settings and I wanted to know how I should set them. IT's a bit confusing because I believe the VP100 center only goes down to 95hz.
All of the others go lower than 80hz.
I can manually adjust the xover onscreen with the H/K for the fronts, center, surrounds and sub individually.

The question is how high should the sub xover be? I think 100hz because of the center, am I correct?

Personally I would cross everything over at 100 Hz and forget about it. I have played with different crossover freqs for the different speakers (I'm another HK owner) and am not convinced that any of them sound better than a straight 100 Hz crossover for everything.

Many people cross everything over at 80 Hz, the logic being that while the center is down a bit more than 3dB at 80 Hz it's not down enough to really make a difference. I don't believe that any more, at least not with a VP100 (many people using 80 Hz crossovers have VP150s) although I have to say my testing has been relatively informal.

That was my thinking.
I actually had them set like this:
M2i's @ 80
Center @ 100
Surrounds @ 80
Sub @ 100

But I think having the Sub set at 100 nulified the fronts and backs being set at 80????
I guess I should just set them all at 100.

60Hz, 80Hz, 100Hz. Try them all and go with what sounds best to you.
With most H/K AVRs you can set the crossovers separately.
In other words you could set your center channel for 100, your fronts at 80, and your rears at 60.

u da man John

Can't wait to get your advice on speaker placement once my basement is finished...

Bray,
Would the setup I posted before your post work correctly?

I guess I keep thinking that once I set the cross for the sub @ 100 it picks up all Freq's from all of the speakers from this point down? so it doesn't even matter if I set the mains at 80 or does it?

The question which all the (well meaning ) previous posters are missing is what to set the sub at. The answer is to set the sub at the highest crossover you're using, in this case 100 Hz. In my case (since I cross my QS4s at 120 Hz), the answer is 120 Hz. My VP100 is crossed at 100 Hz, and the 50s are crossed at 60 Hz or 80 Hz, depending on the source.

In reply to:

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But I think having the Sub set at 100 nulified the fronts and backs

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The crossover on the sub should be set to out.

Kcarlile....
That's what I thought.
That's how I had it set up originally. Just needed some clarification with the variable crossovers.

Thanks

"Would the setup I posted before your post work correctly?"

Sure.
But try different things until you hear what you like.
The crossover on the sub should be turned off or turned up to its highest #.
Thats what the crossover settings on your AVR are for.

Bray,
Sorry for the confusion but I originally mean't the crossover setting for the SUB on the receiver. It's set manually on the Sub to out (receiver controlled).

Thanks for the help.

Yeah, it's a H/K specific question, because of the multiple crossover availability.

It might also be 535-specific, since the only crossover freq I can set for the sub on my 630 is the LFE high pass filter (which only works on the .1 content, not the low frequencies from any "small" speakers).

There is no separate frequency setting for the sub... it just gets whatever is sent by the crossovers for mains, center, and surrounds.

My 525 has it set separately. Do you have your bass management set to Independant or Global?

Jedi, welcome. On your specific question, no, setting the sub at 100Hz on your 525 doesn't negate the effect of setting some of the other speakers at 80Hz. It leaves the sub "open" to receive signals up to 100Hz from the speakers crossed at 100Hz, but the 80Hz settings remain in effect(and probably should be used).

KC,
My settings are independent. But they seem like global anyway because when I change video or audio sources (i.e. video 1 with optical 1 etc. The settings stay the same for bass managment even though I have them set as independent.

JohnK,
That's what I wasn't sure of. So it looks like my settings are fine after all. Just wanted to be sure. Thanks.

Thanks for all the help again.