Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater EP-500 Crossover/thought I had it all figured out!

While troubleshooting Toshiba's HD-XA2 player's lack of LFE, I re-read the EP-500 manual. In there, it says to set the crossover on the sub to the same or slightly higher setting than the AVR.

I thought it should just be set to bypass (making it crossover push of 150Hz). Am I wrong? does it matter since my AVR is doing the bass management?

Axiom discovered that better integration with the main channels may occur by using both crossovers. YMMV, but it's worth a shot. I believe I have my sub set to bypass since a cursory test with it enabled at 80Hz didn't yield a discernible improvement.

I've read the same information from Alan and Ian. To me the jury is still out on this setup. I currently also use Bypass on the sub and let the receiver manage the LFE. Until recently, this is what Axiom as preached.

In my testing/graphs, I have not noticed a benefit for matching the crossover on both.

I should also note that it didn't appear to hurt the sound, but I defer to Randy for details as I didn't do any graphing.

That does seem odd, unless you are running 5.1 analog from the player to the receiver in which case (depending on brand) your receiver might be doing a straight pass-through and relying on the bass management in the player.

Well, since you were all rude enough to post well-informed responses while I was carefully composing my "I dunno" answer, I guess I'll go find another thread to hang out in.

Hmpph.

Today's new and expensive discovery. Ultrasound for dogs. So much for the EP600 fund.

Well, since you were all rude enough to post well-informed responses while I was carefully composing my "I dunno" answer, I guess I'll go find another thread to hang out in.

Hmpph.

Today's new and expensive discovery. Ultrasound for dogs. So much for the EP600 fund.

You need to ditch that dial-up.

Han, there was some discussion here on that point a few months ago. I experimented a bit and found no benefit in adding the internal sub filter. I continue to set it on bypass, which was the suggestion in the manual at the time that I got my EP500 about a year ago.

Hi Hansang,

As pmbuko correctly pointed out, the reason we changed the instructions in the EP500 manual was to take into account some experiments and listening tests that Ian Colquhoun and Tom Cumberland of Axiom did with the EP500's crossover set to bypass and compared those with the crossover set to 80 Hz or somewhat higher.

The rationale behind this was that the "brick-wall" nature of the DSP filter in the EP500 might cause a sag in frequency response between 100 Hz and the integration of the satellite speakers. I didn't participate in the tests and when I tried it with my own EP500, using both M22s and M80 v2s, I couldn't discern any difference. However, I trust Ian and Tom's conclusions.

I suggest you try it both ways, with the EP500's crossover set to bypass and your AV receivers bass management set to 80 Hz, and then with the EP500 crossover set to 80 Hz or higher together with the AV receiver at 80 Hz. Listen to the bass region between 80 Hz and 150 Hz to see if there's any difference.

Regards,

Alan