2. home-theater
  3. 1044414801

Bass Management

I have Acoustic Research AR1's in front with powered subs.
I have full range non-powered speakers for surrounds, and therefore want all channels to be driven in full range.To do this, I must select "Large" speaker setting for my front powered towers in order to be able to select "large" for my surrounds. My Pioneer receiver will not allow for "small" fronts and "large" surrounds (if you select "small" fronts, all others including center, must be "small" also). In addition, AR strongly suggests that I use the Speaker connections for the mid/tweeter and the LFE
connection for the subs on my AR1's. When I use only the speaker connection, I still have PLENTY of bass volume on both music and movies, but I have recently plugged into SACD and DVD-Audio, which have the six channel output directly to the receiver's multi-channel input. One of these channels is specifically marked "subwoofer". My question is...what happens to this channel? Does the receiver mix the LFE info into all of my "full range" speakers, or is it only in the fronts, or is it possibly lost altogether? Please help me with any comments or suggestions!

Thank you!
fpawardse1f9
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
Bass management, If any for sacd along with dvd-audio would be in the player itself. Your receiver bass management is for DD&DTS. Music surround setup is a little different than for movie surround. I would only use monopole or bipole speakers for rears in a music set up. Also a lot of the pop and rock music that is out has deep bass in the rears as well as the fronts. It is not ment to be defuse sound as in movies (try Frankie goes to hollywood) and you'll hear what I mean, Also Pink Floyd dark side of the moon will be out soon as will lots of other stuff of this nature. If your player does not have good bass management or none at all then go to outlawaudio.com and get their ICBM, it is a bass management device that works very well, I think it sells for about $250. If you have full range speakers I would use them that way for multichannel music. Also it is much more important to have a very high quality center channel for music than it it for movies as a lot of recordings use the center for vocal only. Hope this helps.
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
(SoGood51)...With most receiver set up's there is no way to add the ICBM from OUtlaw to the system to all channels! Unless the receiver has "pre-out's" and "main-in's", you can't do this. If he was using pre-out's to another amplifier or something, he could indeed buy the Outlaw ICBM, and configure as he pleased using that device(simply setting the receiver to "large" for all speakers). But that's not the case from what's in question here I think.
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
foreverhifi, he only needs to hook his players 5.1 outputs to the ICBM and then the 5.1 outputs on the ICBM go to the 5.1 inputs on his receiver.
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
"Sogood51", can he do this? I didn't think you could. Funny, if that's the case, I guess it's workable then. I din't know you could do it that way, but I guess you are probably correct. Hummmm...that could work. I would like to ask Outlaw if this can be done. For some reason, I didn't think it was the same as a "pre-in" functionally.
foreverhifi
229 posts
 
"Sogood51", I just called Yamaha in Southern California(close to me), and they said that you CANNOT LOOP FROM YOUR PRE-OUT'S BACK INTO THE 6.1/5.1 CHANNEL INPUTS!!!! I don't think you'll probably be able to do this with any other receiver also...but could be wrong of course.
I just thought this might be helpful for anyone thinking of trying this to know!
More to discover