Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Need help setting up Denon 2809ci and ep350

So as some of you know I received my architectural on wall w22s w150 and ep350 last week. I just got the receiver last night and began to test the system. I ran audyssey. It set the distances pretty close to reality. It set the crossover to 90 for the L/R and 80 for the center. 90 for the sub as well.
It set the LF at -1.5db C at -2Db RF at -3.5 and the sub
the at +12db. I had the crossover on the sub set to the 120 and volume at about 9 o'clock. The speakers sound great to me, but the sub is lacking. It appears to produce a little rumble, but definately no punchy base. It seems like much of the punchy base is being produced by the spakers. I have not done anything with SPL since I do not have one and do not know how to use one. I would imaging however that I should be able to get more from the sub with some simple fixes. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Also I did move the sub around to a few different spots with no noticable improvement.

Turn Audyssey off which I have done (and many others have) because I didn't like how it set my subwoofer, it sounded flat and lifeless. Other than that, what is this size of your room? I know there's not much difference between the 350 and 500 but my room is 20 x 24 and I have my 500 volume at 7 o'clock. I would suggest setting your subwoofer to bypass, unless 120 is considered bypass and your crossover on your receiver to 80 Hz, also make sure that your speakers are set to "small" to send the LFE to your 350.

Listener:

Don't get too worried yet, this usually ends up being a connection issue.

First thing to check: Make sure you have the sub RCA cable connected to the sub pre-out connection on the back of the Denon. There are a couple of other RCA outs on the back that look very similar and are easy to confuse.

Second: Check the "gain" knob on the back of the 350. You want it 1/3 or 1/2 of the way to full volume to start with. (at that setting, your receiver shouldn't need to be anywhere near +12, but don't worry about correcting that until you have more bass coming out of the 350)

Third: Crossovers and Receiver Speaker Setup. The most common settings here are to cross over the fronts and center at 60 or 80. (I believe more people do 60). In your speaker configuration, set your front & center speakers to small, and set the sub to "LFE + Mains" (you can change this back to just LFE later if you like, but for purposes of making sure things are working, I'd start here).

Finally, if none of these change the output from the sub, perform a simple test to ensure you are getting sound from the sub only. Do this by entering the speaker setup menu and going into channel level. Choose "Manual" and then go to the subwoofer channel. Make sure that you are hearing a low (probably loud if still set at +12) rumble from the 350. If you do not, then you have either a bad speaker or still have a connection/configuration problem. If you try all of the above and still don't have strong bass during this step, something more serious is wrong.

Try this and let us know if it improves, if not, others will probably offer additional ideas.

Jason

Gotta disagree with you there, Jason... you don't want the volume on an EP350 at 50%!! That'l blow you out of the water! You also don't want the receiver at +12. I'm guessing that there's something wrong with the connection or possibly something wrong with the sub itself. One way to test it is to hook the sub directly to a CD player without any other speakers and see if it produces sound. I'd advise keeping it fairly turned down at the beginning of that test, though...

Well Ken, it is true that I nearly blew my head off doing something similar when assessing a similar problem in my room. Apparently I didn't learn much.

In my defense, I just wanted to be sure it was on high enough to rule out all of the problems before going further. Ken's right that you won't need it this high long term. Run through the steps above and let us know what more information you're able to come up with and we'll go from there.

Jason

The front speakers are all set to small. 120 is considered bypass. RCA is connected correctly. I tried the manual test and I am getting a rumble out of the sub it isn't quiet, but i certainly isn't earth shattering.Sounds like a train going by in the distance. I turned off Audyssey set LFE+Main and changed the crossover to 80 for everything. This seems to improve things but I still have the receiver set to +12 for the sub and the volume on the sub about a third of the say up to achieve this. Should I really by using the LFE+MAINS? Keep in mind these are the architectural w22 and w150s. It does appear to help, but I'm worried that it's simply because the fronts are now producing more bass. It actually seems like the center is the one producing most of the bass eventhough it is set to -2db now while the left and right are at 0

oh yeah my room is 25x20x8

I would first turn off the auddessy's auto equilization. (Make sure your speakers are set to small, subwoofer set to yes, and sub set to LFE+Mains or LFE Norm.

The +12 gain on your receiver is way too much. Set that gain to 0.

Now slowly incraese the gain on the subwoofer, try turning up the gain until it rumbles (even if you have to go to half to 3/4 way). Post back and tell us if there is any rumble at all.

You can also try setting the gain on the sub to the half way point and increase the gain on the receiver starting from 0 and working your way up. Essentially by increasing the subwoofer gain on the receiver, you are upping the voltage being sent to the sub, hence increasing its sensitivity.

I just tried this. There is a rumble. I have the volume set at 50% to achieve this however. Also it seems like even when there is no music playing the sub hums. Perhaps my expectations are simply unrealistic. I just remember when i heard a polk system at tweeter once (Watched transporter) during explosions and gunshots you could almost feel them.