Speaker X-over settings (1 Viewer)

[Chris Huber]

Speakers:
JBL PB12 Sub
JBL S-Center-II
JBL S312II front (big 12 inchers)
JBL E10 sides
JBL N24II rears

-My reciever has ability to set (F)ront, (C)enter and (S)urround size (S)MALL or (L)ARGE. It also has the ability to select 100, 150 or 200 x-over settings.

1. My guess would be to set FL-CS-SS for speaker sizes, right? (is that center considered small?)

2. Then where should I set the X-over, 100, 150, 200?

3. The sub has 50-150 dial. After all the above is set, where should I turn the dial to?

Thanks for your help in advance! Any other comments are welcome aswell...

 

[al lout]

Chris,

For movies, I would set all the speakers to small and sub to on. X-over at 100. Sub dial to max which is 150. For music, I would switch the 2 fronts to Large make use of those woofers plus most music don't go that low so you should be fine. Do calibrate your system though. Try out a few combinations see how you like it. Have fun.

Al,

 

[Chris Huber]

Ok, sounds good. How about Phase switch? 0 or 180?

 

[al lout]

For phase, you might need a SPL meter. Which ever phase 0 or 180 give you the flattest curve.

 

[John Garcia]

Set the phase to both positions and whichever one sounds the loudest and/or cleanest at your listening position is the one to use. Start with 0, which is typically going to work. You don't need an SPL meter for that, but it will let you know for sure if you have the right setting and it is an invaluable thing to have for HT setup.

 

[Chris Huber]

So, sub dial to max would mean that the sub is playing everything from 150 down to 50hz? The reciever set at 100hz means that those speakers will play everything 100 and up? So i have over lapped both by 50hz as to not miss anything? Is this the best setup?

Also, if you have an xover setting in your reciever, then why does it have a speaker size selction. Sounds redundant to me. If not, what is the difference?

 

[John Garcia]

Setting the x-over to it's max on the sub means you don't have the sub's x-over and the receiver's x-over combining together - with it all the way up, the receiver's x-over should more or less override the sub's.

 

[Phil Iturralde]

John is right as usual!!!

The ideal would be to TURN-OFF the sub x-over, ... if you can't, then Turn the sub's x-over to the MAX setting.

Brent Butterworth documented for Home Theater Magazine years ago that when the REC x-over & Sub's x-over were operating relatively close to each other at, let's say 100 Hz, the interaction caused a -10 dB (or more) drop/dip @ approx. around the 100 Hz frequency between the speakers and sub.

Turning off the sub's x-over or if you don't have that option, turning the sub's x-over to MAX lowered the dip to the desired

 

[Chris Huber]

So what about this?

 

[Max F]

When you select the speakers as small it activates the filter in the receiver which is set to 100, 120, etc hz.

I would definitely set it to 100 hz if you plan to play your speakers "small". If you had a setting below 100 i would say go for that, but your receiver, like mine, only goes down to 100 (which kindof sucks). If you do end up using your front speaker as large for music, you might want to play around with the crossover on the sub and lower it to the point where it doesn't sound boomy. But i would go ahead and see if you like the sound of front speakers set to small first (even for music).

 

[John Garcia]

What Max is trying to say is, the x-over only applies to speakers set to small. When set to large, they get full range signal. 9 times out of 10, your best bet is with your speakers set to small and use the lowest x-over your speakers can handle well.