Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Question about speaker settings

I know that I'll get some different thoughts but I need some advice on speaker settings. I have M60s, VP100 and QS4s and an HSU STF-2 sub. I set my center and surrounds to small, 60s to large, bass out to both and crossover to 60. It sounds good to me but I want the best sound possible so these settings may not be the best. I just saw another post with these settings which are quite different:
M60's small
VP150 small
Qs8's small
Bass out- Sub (not both)
Crossover 80hz

Is there really that much difference? Is it all a matter of preference and what sounds goood? or are there actual optimum settings that are better for certain speakers?

Whoa, another can of worms

With bookshelf speakers (or surrounds, or 99% of centers) you want to set them to "small" because they can't handle the bass. It's the M60s where you have options, because they can go quite deep on the bass. There are three options, each with pros and cons, each with its own fan club :

1. Set the mains to small as well, typically crossing over at 60-100 Hz. The argument for this is that the sub will still handle bass better than even the M60s and the system can play both more loudly and more cleanly this way. The arguments AGAINST are (a) picky music listeners sometimes find the crossover region between sub and mains doesn't sound right (you don't notice with HT) and (b) you can argue that by having bass split between M60s and sub you get more even bass distribution than you would with a single speaker (sub) carrying all the basee.

2. Set the mains to "large", set the crossover for mains to 40 or 60 Hz so the sub comes in where the mains start to roll off naturally, but keep a higher crossover for center and surrounds because they can't go as low. The advantage of this is that the mains carry pretty much all the bass for music applications but the sub is there for HT. Cons are that more tricky setup is required, it's hard to match the sub xover with mains rolloff, and not all receivers will do this.

3. Set mains to large, feed all the bass to the sub as well, resulting in arguably too much bass in the crossover region. Arguments for this are a bit more tenuous, including "hey, I paid for bass and I want as much as possible"

On the serious side, if your room acoustics are bad one could argue that this arrangement will put a serious dent in bad frequency response dips -- the problem is that it doesn't do anything for the peaks.

The holy grail IMO is to have a receiver which can switch setups depending on your source and decoding modes. My HK is set up to use option 1 when playing DVDs and option 2 when playing music (CDs, FM etc...).

I imagine some people switch back and forth between options 1 and 2 their whole life, occasionally using option 3 when they screw up the settings

Thanks for the input. I'll play around and see how they sound using the different options.

That is a great idea. I am always tweaking stuff to see what I like best for both HT and music. So far with my Denon 2805 I have found setting the mains to small, with a crossover of 80hz, seems to be the best of both worlds. This is just my opinion, but 80hz is still pretty low, and there is a gradual roll of, not just a cut at 80hz.

good luck

M60's, VP150, EP350, 4-Qs8's
Denon 2805
Sanyo Z2 projector
Samsung HD receiver
Toshiba DVD

Thanks for the info, and I found that I have five pre-sets for speaker set up, and each is assignable to any of the imputs, now I just need a pro to set it up, or me finds time to tweak and set them and then leave them alone.