Cross over frequency ???

OK.What I did was run the mains and rest of the system ie. center and surrounds xover at 80hz.With the sub off I listened to a few well known sound tracks.Trying to ignore the unbalance sound it did not have that chesty sound I disliked before.It was tight and free from the peaks in the bass.It would appear that is my starting point.It also had tons of head room and only began to show signs of distress above 100db,well above my usual listening.Setting the xover higher also yeilded the same results.Gave me more headroom and my 6.5 inch drivers were very happy.I will go rent a pro xover this weekend and ease the subs into the system until I feel they are making a contrabution not an over statement.I never tryed to solve this problem from up high first and then the subs.This makes so much sense.Keep in mind I am stuck with the 24db high pass coming out of the processer.Thanx I'll keep you guys posted.

Kgveteran: Glad you are making progress. It's always good to hear that someone is willing to experiment and learn on their own AND the results that they obtain from doing such are to their liking. This can only encourage that person and others that may be sharing those experiences through forums like these. It is stuff like this that makes me happiest when it comes to various threads in these forums. Well, that and people sending me boxes of money : )

As a side note, any professional crossover that you get is likely to use either XLR's or 1/4" ( mono headphone ) jacks. As such, you'll probably have to stop by the "Shack" and grab some 1/4" male mono headphone jacks to female RCA jack adapters. You might also be able to find these at a store that sells musical instruments ala Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc.... It's quite possible that wherever you go to rent the crossover may have adapters that they'll lend you.

By the way, find out what the slope is on the crossover that you end up renting is. Some have variable slopes along with hinge frequencies. You'll probably find that a higher frequency crossover requires a sharper slope and that a lower frequency with a shallower slope can work too. Strictly a matter of trial and error here to see what works best with your gear, room and ears. Sean
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Problem #1 : My processor will allow me to adjust xover freq. but,that freq. is the hi pass and low pass.It won't let go of the LFE channel to adjust out board with out doing it it self.The unit is an EAD Ovation-8.I can run the front three large but that would entail three outboard xovers.I can't remove the low pass xover for the sub and fear redundence of cascaded xovers.I can run the high pass at 80hz (which means the bass has that freq.at the xover point ) And try to roll the bass off with an out board third octave eq. .But we are still cascading eq's.Rane makes that cool THX44 that eq's the 80-800hz for the front LCR ,to tame the xover bump.I'm going to sleep on it.Thanx.

That is the problem with many HT processors i.e. the lack of bass management. They want us to run a million speakers for all this surround stuff, but they won't provide us with the actual versatility in these units to do so properly. The only alternatives are to run TRUE "full range" speakers all the way around, which is obviously costly, or get into very costly and confusing crossover / multi-amp / rat's nest of wiring installations.

Sorry if i wasn't more help, but i'm just not familiar with a lot of that stuff. Due to using large towers with multiple woofers all the way around, i've never had to tinker with bass management very much. Have you thought about all new, monster sized speakers all the way around ??? : ) Sean
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Sean..."Versatility"? My Rotel 1066 is so damn versatile that half the time I can't figure out what it is up to. And the manual isn't much help. I do hear a lot of complaints about "bass handling", so perhaps the solution is what I have done...set all the speakers to "large" and get some separate crossovers for the speakers which aren't. I am in the process of wiring up three Marchand crossover modules and power supply in a decent chassis. The modules and the power supply are completely assembled so the wiring job is pretty easy, and the whole rig, including $40 chassis and gold plated connectors will end up costing me about $150 (three channels). For another $60 it could have been 5-channel. My old Audio Control Richter scale (2 channel) will do the rears. Of course, if you have more money than time there are plenty of crossovers available for sale complete.