Eureka, soultion for anemic bass in a 5.1 ready system -yes there's still a few of us (1 Viewer)

[Gordon Moore]

I have a panasonic CV-50 hooked up to a el'cheapo 5.1 ready sony DE line receiver (525) via the 6 analog inputs so that the CV-50 is doing the decoding and the sony the amplification. Well I always found that using the sub-out from the receiver to the sub made for amnemic bass. The sub's an infinity SSW10 servo subwoofer. I always had the sub's amp cranked to 11 and really got little output yet when I watched stuff in prologic off the receiver (be it broadcast TV or VCR) the sub was ALIVE. So one day for shits and giggles I plug the LFE rca from the CV-50 to the first input on the sub and left the receiver hooked up to the 2nd input on the sub. BOOM, the sub shaked rattled and rolled. I've dialed it WAY back and now have to work on dialling it into the rest of the system.

What the heck was going on? There was sub information passed through but it was really scaled back. My only guess is that the receiver's LFE input is corrupt somehow. The way I have it now the decoder on the DVD player has the sub gain set to -1 and the sub's amp control sits around 4-5 depending on the movie. The sub is cross-overed at 90Hz (It used to be +4 gain and 10 on the sub amp)

Maybe my point is not to give up and try the obvious and not so obvious solutions if your not happy with your current results. At this point I'm pretty sure that something wasn't/isn't right with the LFE input on the amp or that the signal is somehow diminished (even though it's supposed to be a pass-through, though as the volume dial on the amp increased so did the sub level).

 

[Cees Alons]

Excellent point. Although I still think there may be a technical answer (other than a faulty output) to your original problem, you're certainly right: never give up, try, tweak, until your satisfied !
Cees

 

[Marc Rochkind]

In a 5.1 system, the subwoofer does two jobs:

1. LFEs from the soundtrack, and

2. Deep bass redirected from the other speakers, a process called "bass management."

Both are mandated by the Dolby Digital spec. If the connection from the player to the receiver is digital audio, your receiver would probably send lots of bass to the subwoofer.

But, the decoding is in your case being done in the player, and the receiver is not doing bass management for the analog inputs, which is true of most receivers.

By running the LFE from the player to the subwoofer you get the LFE, but you do may not get #2 above. (Depends on the player, and I know nothing about yours.) The solutions are (assuming what you have done is not working the way you want it to):

1. Replace the receiver.

2. Add a separate bass-management component.