When building a system with 533-PTs that have the built in subs, does that mean these subs only respond to sound fed to their channel, in this case the front left and front right? Meaning that they won't give support to the center and rear speakers, like the 522D-LR and 522D-C?

My worry of this comes from the thought of a movie where you might have something like a T-Rex stomping from the rear speakers and they won't sound as low as if it came from the front speakers with their 8" subs.

Or do the 533-PT have a spot for connecting the subwoofer out from the reciever so it responds to bass from all channels? Or would I just need to add another 8" subwoofer to the mix?

Brian, the 522-PT has speaker binding posts connectors only.  In your receiver set-up, you should set your mains to LARGE and sub to NO.  This will route the LFE to your mains.  I have had great results with the 522-PT's and no sub in my listening space!

Hi Brian,

This is a great question. The PT's are designed to reproduce all the bass in your system with only one speaker level connection. All the bass management is handled by your receiver. You simply hook up the left & right speaker inputs to the PT's. In your receiver set-up menu, you set them up as "large" speakers. This means they will receive a full range signal for the left & right.

If you are using a sub, you select "on" or "yes" for in the speakers set-up menu for the subwoofer and select the appropriate crossover frequency. Depending on the size of your sub you might select, 80, 60 or 40Hz for the crossover freq.

If you are not using a sub you simply select "no" or "off" in the speaker setup menu for your subwoofer. This will route all of the bass information in your system to the main left & right (large) speakers.

In addtion, you don't really need to worry about the localization of bass effects because frequencies below 80-100Hz cannot be localized so you won't be able to hear where they are coming from regardless of what speaker or subwoofer is producing those bass frequencies.

Good luck and let us know if you need anything else.

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Cheers,

John Wanderscheid

Thanks for your replies

So if I set subwoofer to off on my receiver it will then route all low frequencies to speakers that have been set as large, such as the PT's.

With that done, if I had 522D's as rear and center, or a VAC, what should they be set to, small or large?

I'm assuming since they have woofers they should still be set to as large to get full use out of them and the PT's will still receive those low frequencies.

Brian, you can experiment with the center and rears as to which setting sounds best to you, but I would recommend setting them all to small.  This will allow them to perform their best with a smaller frequency range (one they are intended for) and allow the woofers in the PT's to accurately control the bass.  Asking too much of a speaker over a fuller frequency (if not intended for full frequency) will usual bring negative affects to the sound, as opposed to letting them shine on a smaller range.

Okay, small sounds right, don't want to overload them with large. I was worried that setting them to small might put too much of a handicap on them, not letting them fully express their capabilities.