I’d like to gather some opinions (and I’m sure there will be many) regarding speaker crossover levels on the receiver.
I’m running a Denon AVR-X4400H, two Rotel RB-981 poweramps into two Focal Aria 948 fronts. Off the main receiver I have two large rears (Wharfedale Diamond 9.5), 4x Klipsch in-ceiling atmos overheads and one Klipsch RP-450C center. Lastly, two SVS-PB2000 subs to fill out the bass. I know, it’s a mismatched monstrosity, but it works beautifully in my space.
My question is: Should the Focal Aria 948’s be set to small, even though they’re capable of reaching down to 37Hz? Also, should they be crossed over at 80Hz, as the general opinion states?
Then also, how about my rears, they’re meant to reach down to 30Hz? Small/Large/80Hz?
I understand that experimentation is the best way to dial things in, but I’d be happy to go with good advice too and work from there. There are much smarter people on here than I am, so would love to know what you all think.
Vote for keep at small and go down to 60hz since you got amps to run the fronts. Every external amp gets a lower crossover setting in my book. My suggestion would be to external amp the center, set that to 60. Can your room do 7.2.4 ?
Like you mentioned, id say it’s more what you like and what is the overall systems possibilities and performance. Change settings and try and play little.
At Music settings with Marantz amplifier i have front speakers in “Full” settings.
Running front speakers and dual subs.
At Movie settings the lower surround speakers is set to Large and 40Hz.
Upper surround is set to 60Hz.
Basically then the amp gives what it can to speakers.
(… since it’s not possible to use Full + LFE only…)
Then the speaker system handles the crossover at 55Hz at this moment on lower level speakers (subs take LFE and L+R signals, depending if movies or music) and upper speakers are full range.
Since they are pretty small and handles around ±1db at 60Hz
If the speakers can handle “full” range (40Hz…ish) and have power behind them for the low end and bass. Why would some not use what is possible and send just LFE to sub.
It’s pretty nice when FL+C+FR and RL + RR can hammer and boom.
Just the lowest low’s comes from sub’s.
If speakers can’t handle everything and possible clip out the bass at high volume.
Let the subs have the load.
I’ve made a couple of changes, but still experimenting. It would appear that setting the speakers to “Large” is almost exclusively if you do not have a sub or two in your system. However, opinion varies wildly on that too.
I’ve got next weekend to myself, so don’t have to bombard my poor wife with house shaking bass, and will do most of the tuning and experimentation then.
For the moment, I’ve set my fronts and rears to 60Hz, the rest at 80Hz. Subs crossed over at 120Hz and LFE only (not LFE+Main). Sounding very, very good at the moment, but I’ll likely still tinker.
This is a very good article from what I consider to be a reliable source:
