LFE Attenuator? (1 Viewer)

[Rich Romero]

On my JVC RX-6010VBK Reciever there is an option on it called LFE Attenuator. It says in the manual to set it to 0db normally and to 10db if the bass sound is "distorted". What exactly does this mean? I'm not quite fully understanding this feature.

 

[Cees Alons]

Rich,

On first sight, that explanation doesn't make sense indeed. If it's distorted already, you wouldn't want to boost the volume further.
Unless it's actually -10dB.

If you set it, is the bass then louder or weaker?


Cees

 

[Rich Romero]

No, it's definitely 10db both on the reciever and in the manual. Well, when I set it in Dolby Digital it appeared to reduce the bass "boominess" I guess you could say but when played something in 2.0 surround I noticed very little difference. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

Edit: On further inspection. I tested out the New Line Cinema logo in 5.1 that is always very boomy on my system. I don't have what you would call a top notch system. I have the same JVC HTIAB that Ron reviewed and recommended a couple years back. When there is bass lower than the frequencies that my sub can pick up, it'll boom quite a bit, and what I mean by that is no "smooth low bass" but just uncontrollable booming. I noticed that by setting it to 10db on the New Line logo it still maintains the LFE but it did not feature the uncontrollable booming that was present before when on 0db. While the New Line logo presented a noticeable difference, I can't seem to detect any difference when actually playing movies. Weird.

 

[Eddie Horton]

Attenuate means to reduce, so if you set the attenuator to 10dB then you are reducing it by that much.

 

[Lewis Besze]

It refers to the "LFE mix" compared to the main[5] channels.The LFE gets by the decoder a 10db boost when playing back DD and DTS soundtracks,and it should be left alone.Calibration should be done with the SW out level and not this "attenuator".
Usually it should reside in it's maximum settings for Dolby,[which doesn't require adjustment anyway]for DTS maximum for movies and -10db for DTS-CDs.
If your sub sounds "boomy" try to relocate it,remeber most room has a big boost of frequecies around 40hz,especially corner loading.Your goal should be uniform bandwith not "less boommy".But that's another topic.