JBL S-Center: Large or Small?? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Strassburg]

Curious as to how others who use the center channel are running it. I "assumed" it had to be set to Small and never considered trying it set to Large, until I read a post where someone else was doing that and liked the male vocals better.

I plan on trying it out tonight to see if I notice a differece......Mike

 

[Jack Gilvey]

"Small" would be most appropriate, although it costs nothing to try the alternative. If set to "large", it might improve the cohesiveness of deep male voices in the case of suboptimal sub setup, but you'd likely lose any center-channel deep bass below the cutoff of the speaker (probably 60-70Hz) unless there's a provision to send bass to both center and sub.

 

[Mike Strassburg]

Jack,

Tried it set to Large on a few movies last night and noticed NO difference. Think I'll keep it set to Small....Mike

 

[Chuck C]

small, no doubt about it

 

[elMalloc]

Question:

Is there a problem with setting the speaker to large? If it can't play sounds lower than a specific hz, what's getting hurt?

I ask this because the receiver can send bass to both speakers and subwoofer. If it's not gonna get hit on the speaker, it'll get hit in the subwoofer. What's the problem in letting speakers be large in a subwoofer setup?

I noticed in my really crappy setup that my speakers are way too trebly (in music) with small speakers, but in movies they are fine. I'm upgrading to something nice soon (energy take 5.2, polk, paradigm, nOrh, wharfedale..I dunno you decide?) - so hopefully I can start listening to stuff how it's meant to be.

-ElmO

 

[Jack Gilvey]

I ask this because the receiver can send bass to both speakers and subwoofer. If it's not gonna get hit on the speaker, it'll get hit in the subwoofer.

How do you know that Mike's receiver can do this? This is most often not the case.
Link Removed

 

[elMalloc]

I wasn't talking about mike's receiver.

I was saying it generally because that's all I've ever read in this forum "set your speakres to small, look I even have speakers that go down to 30hz and I set them to SMALL!!"

-ELmO

 

[Brian Bunge]

Well, most bookshelf style speakers and center channels have 5-6" drivers (many towers too!). High amplitude bass information could easily do permanent damage to a driver that is not capable of reproducing these signals because of excursion limitations. Also, hearing a driver's voice coil "whack" against the back plate just doesn't give one a warm fuzzy feeling.

 

[Jack Gilvey]

I wasn't talking about mike's receiver.

I was saying it generally because that's all I've ever read in this forum "set your speakres to small, look I even have speakers that go down to 30hz and I set them to SMALL!!"

Ok. Well, in general the statement is wrong, then, for the reasons I stated. "Large", when referring to Dolby Digital bass management, means more than speakers that "look big" or "go down to 30Hz". And, in general, receivers do not send

bass to the sub when that channel is set to "large", it usually just gets the LFE channel.

 

[elMalloc]

Too literal.

 

[Jack Gilvey]

Huh? How so? You said that any bass not covered by the center wil be picked up by the sub. I said that was generally wrong.

 

[Mike Strassburg]

Receiver is a 3802 so I DO have the option to set it up as MAIN + LFE which is how I run it since my mains are JBL towers with dual 8's. I also have 2 more as surrounds and run them set to Large and really like the way it sounds. Tremendous amount of sound in my HT!!! Of course that will be greatly improved upon when I build my dual Tempest beast next month
I've tried the mains both ways and did NOT notice it taking away from the sub output. Don't believe setting the center to Large did either, but it also didn't make male voices sound any different so I'm changing it back to Small as that's probably safer for my S-center.