Bass Management? (1 Viewer)

[Walt H]

What would be the general consensus with JBL S38 mains set to LARGE and with bass management set to BOTH (Mains and SUB)?

Receiver is a Yamaha RX-V800 which has a built-in crossover of 90Hz.

 

[Steve Zimmerman]

Unless you have a crummy subwoofer, there's no reason to set the JBL S38s to anything but SMALL. That's my opinion, of course.

--Steve

 

[Bill Kane]

"Secrets" editor Brian Florian is an articulate advocate of setting all speakers to SMALL and routing the low frequency bass as well as the LFE chl to SUB ONLY. Link Removed is a quite recent paper.
There are floorstander owners who may prefer setting floorstander mains to LARGE and turning off the SUB for music. That can be a preference.
Brian argues against what Yamaha calls BOTH (copies the bass to both the mains and sub) saying that introduces a 6dB imbalance in bass soundwaves in the room plus addfing some phase problems with bass coming from more than one driver.
Brian's focus or argument is aimed at those who may think they're "wasting" the floorstanders by taking the low bass and stripping it to the sub in bass management, primarily in the DVD/LFE realm.
This is not to poormouth capable floorstanders. For example, from the get-go, I've had my floorstanders set to SMALL -- for DVDs, CDs, TV, FM, the works. That's all I got used to. Then I experimented by sending a CD player's signal to my Yamaha RX-V800 6 Channel main L/R inputs (the so-call DVD-A SACD inputs). Yamaha bypasses bass management in the this mode and uses the mains as LARGE. I was quite surprised how well my floorstanders sounded with music in fullrange. But in the end, I feel the floorstanders struggle somewhat in fullrange, so I find that SMALL/SUB ON gives a fuller, more rounded bass response in my room. If your S38 are bookshelve type, I think SMALL/SUB ONLY is the way to go.
Let your ears be the judge, as we say.
bill