Total newb here, so bare with me.  We have the 6b's, 6c, 5db's, and 12d.  Denon 4810ci receiver.  Ran audyessey (or however you spell it) twice.  It sounds very good, but I am concerned on the frequency settings.  I saw in the speaker manuals the frequency should be around 60-80.  However, the Denon set all the speakers up as small, with the front frequency at 40, the center at 100, and the rear surrounds at 200.

 Do I need to be concerned, or redo this with the speaker meter?  Or is it fine like it is?

Hello there, 

I recommend going back in there and tweaking those settings a bit.  Note that the sound meter is only for level calibration in dB and won't help you with crossover settings.

The 6Bs I would actually leave at 40 since they go down to about 42, but the 6C I would crossover either at 80 or 60 and I would experiment to see which you like best.  For the surrounds and sub, 80 is what we recommend, 200 for the surrounds is way too high.  

Hope that helps! 

Jason,

So, I have 6Ts & 6Cs and I know they get down pretty low, but I also have a 12" sub right now.  Should I still set the 6Ts and 6Cs down to 50Hz or so?  Wouldn't that take away from the sub since the sub can probably deliver better bass at a higher volume with the bigger driver?  What is your suggestion?

BTW, I have an Onkyo 875 which allows setting Full Band to any speakers, but more importantly the fronts and the being able to set DoubleBass.  I have done, this, but wondering if I'm saturating with too much bass?  I do love bass, but I'd like to get your opinion on it.

JonL:

Jason,

So, I have 6Ts & 6Cs and I know they get down pretty low, but I also have a 12" sub right now.  Should I still set the 6Ts and 6Cs down to 50Hz or so?  Wouldn't that take away from the sub since the sub can probably deliver better bass at a higher volume with the bigger driver?  What is your suggestion?

BTW, I have an Onkyo 875 which allows setting Full Band to any speakers, but more importantly the fronts and the being able to set DoubleBass.  I have done, this, but wondering if I'm saturating with too much bass?  I do love bass, but I'd like to get your opinion on it.

When you set the crossover to 50 Hz you aren't taking away from the sub, but you are doubling up on the freqs between 50 and 80 since both the sub and the fronts are producing those frequencies.  So what can happen is a bit of a hump in this area.  Same thing when you set the fronts to fullband except now you are doubling up on all freqs all the way down to 20, although you really won't hear much below 28 from the 6Ts.  Also with the fullband setting you will be taking signal away from the sub if don't engage the doublebass setting. 

So really the way to get the smoothest curve between the fronts and the sub is to cross them both over at 80.  

Here's the thing though, some people (myself included) actually like to hear a bit of a bump in the bass region.  Technically it may not be as accurate with respect to the source material, but if your preference is for a bit more bass then my philosophy is to go with what sounds good to your ears, regardless of what the graph of the in room response would look like if you made one.  

So that's why I always encourage folks to play around with the settings and go with whatever sounds best to their ear, because at the end of the day the system is for their own enjoyment and I don't believe that any other set of parameters should take precedance. 

Jason Hicks:

JonL:

Jason,

So, I have 6Ts & 6Cs and I know they get down pretty low, but I also have a 12" sub right now.  Should I still set the 6Ts and 6Cs down to 50Hz or so?  Wouldn't that take away from the sub since the sub can probably deliver better bass at a higher volume with the bigger driver?  What is your suggestion?

BTW, I have an Onkyo 875 which allows setting Full Band to any speakers, but more importantly the fronts and the being able to set DoubleBass.  I have done, this, but wondering if I'm saturating with too much bass?  I do love bass, but I'd like to get your opinion on it.

When you set the crossover to 50 Hz you aren't taking away from the sub, but you are doubling up on the freqs between 50 and 80 since both the sub and the fronts are producing those frequencies.  So what can happen is a bit of a hump in this area.  Same thing when you set the fronts to fullband except now you are doubling up on all freqs all the way down to 20, although you really won't hear much below 28 from the 6Ts.  Also with the fullband setting you will be taking signal away from the sub if don't engage the doublebass setting. 

So really the way to get the smoothest curve between the fronts and the sub is to cross them both over at 80.  

Here's the thing though, some people (myself included) actually like to hear a bit of a bump in the bass region.  Technically it may not be as accurate with respect to the source material, but if your preference is for a bit more bass then my philosophy is to go with what sounds good to your ears, regardless of what the graph of the in room response would look like if you made one.  

So that's why I always encourage folks to play around with the settings and go with whatever sounds best to their ear, because at the end of the day the system is for their own enjoyment and I don't believe that any other set of parameters should take precedance. 

I tried playing around with my Onkyo 875 the other day and set all the cutoff frequencies for my 6Ts, 6C and rear speakers to just a bit above the -3dB level hoping to get that extra "hump" you were talking about.  What I noticed was that I got less bass compared to setting my 6Ts to Full Band + DoubleBass.  When I say less, I mean that there was quite a significant difference in thump (or lack of it) compared to my previous setting.  I understand that setting FullBand + DoubleBass will give me more thump (or twice the thump), but I would have thought that I would get something coming out of the subwoofer, but it sounded like it wasn't even active.  Even when I set everything to 80Hz, that sounded like it had more bass than allowing the speakers to get to their lowest spec frequency value.  This was strange considering what you were saying.  So, I've just given up and gone back to setting my 6Ts to FullBand + DoubleBass and the other ones at around 80Hz or a bit lower.  I guess that is what is "best" for my ears I suppose.  I was playing music on my PS3 using Neural 7.1 setting on the Onkyo as my sound test. 

JonL:

Jason Hicks:

JonL:

Jason,

So, I have 6Ts & 6Cs and I know they get down pretty low, but I also have a 12" sub right now.  Should I still set the 6Ts and 6Cs down to 50Hz or so?  Wouldn't that take away from the sub since the sub can probably deliver better bass at a higher volume with the bigger driver?  What is your suggestion?

BTW, I have an Onkyo 875 which allows setting Full Band to any speakers, but more importantly the fronts and the being able to set DoubleBass.  I have done, this, but wondering if I'm saturating with too much bass?  I do love bass, but I'd like to get your opinion on it.

When you set the crossover to 50 Hz you aren't taking away from the sub, but you are doubling up on the freqs between 50 and 80 since both the sub and the fronts are producing those frequencies.  So what can happen is a bit of a hump in this area.  Same thing when you set the fronts to fullband except now you are doubling up on all freqs all the way down to 20, although you really won't hear much below 28 from the 6Ts.  Also with the fullband setting you will be taking signal away from the sub if don't engage the doublebass setting. 

So really the way to get the smoothest curve between the fronts and the sub is to cross them both over at 80.  

Here's the thing though, some people (myself included) actually like to hear a bit of a bump in the bass region.  Technically it may not be as accurate with respect to the source material, but if your preference is for a bit more bass then my philosophy is to go with what sounds good to your ears, regardless of what the graph of the in room response would look like if you made one.  

So that's why I always encourage folks to play around with the settings and go with whatever sounds best to their ear, because at the end of the day the system is for their own enjoyment and I don't believe that any other set of parameters should take precedance. 

I tried playing around with my Onkyo 875 the other day and set all the cutoff frequencies for my 6Ts, 6C and rear speakers to just a bit above the -3dB level hoping to get that extra "hump" you were talking about.  What I noticed was that I got less bass compared to setting my 6Ts to Full Band + DoubleBass.  When I say less, I mean that there was quite a significant difference in thump (or lack of it) compared to my previous setting.  I understand that setting FullBand + DoubleBass will give me more thump (or twice the thump), but I would have thought that I would get something coming out of the subwoofer, but it sounded like it wasn't even active.  Even when I set everything to 80Hz, that sounded like it had more bass than allowing the speakers to get to their lowest spec frequency value.  This was strange considering what you were saying.  So, I've just given up and gone back to setting my 6Ts to FullBand + DoubleBass and the other ones at around 80Hz or a bit lower.  I guess that is what is "best" for my ears I suppose.  I was playing music on my PS3 using Neural 7.1 setting on the Onkyo as my sound test. 

That makes sense though because when you go Fullband + DoubleBass  you are doubling up on the frequencies all the way down to 20 Hz, so in comparison to the 50 Hz setting you are getting "maximum hump-age".