Ep. 9 - Complete Subwoofer Home Theater Setup for the Home Theater Gurus!

alright guys welcome back to home feed of gurus this is episode 9 this episode is gonna cover subwoofers nothing like episode 7 where we were using you know room EQ wizard and measuring and aligning subwoofers and actually looking at responses this is gonna be geared more towards the guy or girl that doesn't want to get into that you know something not quite so advanced just basic simple subwoofer setup plate amp setup where to put multiple subs and things like that so let's go ahead and get started all right so for placement here we have a room it's not to scale or anything like that this doesn't need to be to scale so let's go ahead and put our so far seating in the room there we go so when we're in a room that's rectangular especially there are certain positions of the subs or locations we can use that are known to be good and what that means it's going to give you a consistent seat to seat response once they're properly aligned now that's key they have to be properly aligned so these are going to be based off the Harmon studies and a lot of work and a lot of the things that is used in professional home theater design is based on these studies you know the Harmon went in and you know measured a lot of different room positions and sub sub woofer placements in room and found locations that work well for smoothing you know Peaks not really Peaks but really smoothing Knowles and getting a seat to see consistency that you know so that everyone in the room and especially all the seats that matter they're all hearing the same thing now of course if you've got you know eight seats and two of them are next to a wall or two of them are next to an opening those seats are not going to sound like the other seats there's nothing you can do about it so those seats sometimes you have to ignore a seat and that's just the way it has to be because if it's next to a you know a boundary or an opening it's just not gonna sound like the other seats it's just not gonna happen but anyway so here we have like a rectangular room so let's say we have two subs alright some known good positions are gonna be front corners now you hear sometimes you know corners are bad corners are not bad if your corners replacement you know results in it being muddy and slow which is what we often hear that's because you didn't finish okay you can't just throw a sub in a room and expect it to perform well you know you have to align them first they have to be aligned and then what happens in a corner is you excite all the room modes so the base you know like this sub was designed say linear you know I sealed sub will roll off a you know a port itself is gonna be basically linear it could even rise to its tuning response and then it's gonna drop off so if this sub is tuned to 20 Hertz you stick it in the corner now from safe but depending on how big the room is and where a room gain starts from 30 Hertz on up I mean it could just take off and have way too much output and so that outputs gonna sound slow and it's gonna sound muddy and overpowering well what that sub needs is EQ to not get back down and once you not get back down it's gonna be nice and tight and you're gonna have a ton of headroom so there's nothing at all wrong with corners are actually very very good and can really help you especially if you have like sealed subs you know or you don't have as much output below 30 Hertz where you're really having to either boost the subs you know the levels you know using an amplifier and EQ or you're having to rely on roon gain you know it could really really help out some situations so when you are enough about that so front corners are good I can also go with opposing front in a rear corner of one other thing when you have a sub setup like this you have what's called a virtual sub and that virtual sub is gonna be here in the middle and it's falling off the wall there so you have a room mode here and this virtual sub is gonna fix that room oh that's just something to kind of keep in mind so when we have opposing front and rear corners we have a virtual sub right between them and so again that same room mode and then you have another room mode going this way so it's gonna fix two room modes which is a good thing where we're making the area of good sound larger by manipulating these subs around the room you know positioning them we're in specific locations when we put them in specific locations we're gonna make the area larger where we get good sound because right now before you set these sums up you've got room modes all through this room like every half quarter 1/8 you know fraction or spots in these rooms you know room modes are cutting through like like this and the same thing this way so when we place these subs were actually cancelling out some of these remotes and it gives us more options to find good base of the room but we don't want to get too complicated with this video so that's a good options for dual subs and also 1/4 and 3/4 those are also a very good option especially we have like a baffle wall you know when you need to put your mains over here in the corners another thing about corners they do excite room modes as we said before but with your mains there you're gonna be rolling them off to your subs so there's nothing wrong with putting the mains there because those modal frequencies you know where they really start to build that base you're gonna be cutting the mains off and rolling it to your subs by then anyway so so it's a perfectly fine place to put your mains in the corners you know cuz they especially if they get you in tolerance she gets the right width you need you to really want that 60 degree spacing for your mains but anyway so this works really well and again that's gonna put your virtual sub right in the middle you can't slim out that middle room mode there all right so let's say you have 4 subs okay what I have it in my room have a sub in each corner and now you've already seen because you've probably seen episode 7 or if you haven't you might want to go back and watch it you see what's possible with 4 subs in a room and you see how consistent my seat - see consistency is I mean here it is right here I mean that's uh your if you beat that you know good luck this is you know but that's I can't really take all the credit that's based on the Harmon room mode you know study so it works so you've got four corners you can also do half points of each wall that's also a good good spider good placement and you can also do 1/4 and 3/4 on front and back wall ok now that's gonna be you know like a rectangular room so you have a bedroom or a dedicated room something that's you know doesn't have a lot of openings you know maybe one or two openings is fine but it's something that's not really open to another room that's naughty irregular shaped you can use these locations it's a really good starting point to layout your room and layout your subs and I mean if you got like a dedicated room and I mean there's it's really really symmetrical or a bedroom that you're converting that you're really symmetrical these are gonna work I mean it's you don't really have to there's no guesswork involved like you in my room episode 7 you know my room is really symmetrical I designed it that way I place my seats where they needed to be it was just it was too easy you know it is too easy whenever everything is set up right and you're following you know the guidelines of you know things like the Harmon study and known placement options so it makes it really easy and takes the guesswork out now one thing on placement whenever you know people use the crawl method the Crom method is really a very very poor method and the reason is you're certainly couch right here okay you've already seen in episode 7 how much the response varies seat to seat and so say you're you've got your sub right here and you're crawling around right here and you find a really good spot where the bass sounds good right here it sounds great because you're listening to music with that that's gonna be some bass heavy music say it's hitting at 30 Hertz 30 Hertz sounds great okay the only problem is when you put the sub there this person right here is gonna have a completely different response the thirty Hertz is not gonna sound like it did sitting right here and this guy completely different their response is going to change all over the place so the crawl method is basically again another way for sub companies to you know it's they don't have a lot of choice they've got to give you some method that's just what they give you it's just heavily flawed and they can kind of put it on the you you know in using some of them probably do tell you you know if it's a rectangular room they give you some kind of idea of known good placements but sub crawl method is very very flawed and another thing when you have dual subs is let's say you're listening to some bass heavy music and it's peaking at 30 Hertz so you crawl around on the ground and you find a response that it's got a good peak at 30 Hertz but let's say there's a there's a dip or a Knoll at 50 Hertz and you don't even realize it because you're not listening to 50 Hertz or it's not really kicking at 50 yards you know or anywhere you know could be 60 Hertz 70 Hertz but there could be a major issue in the response that you don't know about but 30 Hertz is sounding great because there's a peak there so when you're doing that method all you're doing is listening for Peaks and truly all you can do so you can crawl all around the floor and you're gonna find a couple different spots that the peaks sound good but especially with dual subs you know with one sub there's one response to worry about with dual subs you don't you're not looking for a flat response and what dual subs you're not looking for a response that had a peak or the first sub did you know the second sub you've got a dip to fix and that's what you should use it for so the second sub it may come in and look like this and it may even have a little dip here at 30 which that's okay because the other sub had an extra output at 30 you want something that's got some extra output where the other one had that dip because it can fix that dip if you can find a place what you could if you know what you were looking for and so when you sum them you know the summit response is going to look you know maybe like this and so that some response has no dips because you fixed them but if you didn't realize that you had a dip there you wouldn't know to fix that dip or you wouldn't know what location had extra output at that dip even if it was weak you know in the base area or at the 30 Hertz so that's why the kraal method is extremely flawed I mean it's a you know it's a way to you know give the end user something to do I guess you know but some manufacturer can kind of put it Kamiya you know you need to do this method but I mean it's just extremely flawed and to get that positive summation requires you to be able to align them but you can't do by here you're gonna have to use your you know your receiver or you know unless you want to do like episode 7 where we aligned it ourself but to do that we've got to be able to see the response which requires like Remy Chu wizard or a program like that so that's all I'm gonna say about the Krall method so now that you kind of have placement figured out we're gonna go over connecting the subwoofer so you're gonna have an L Fe or a sub out on your receiver you may have two sub outs okay let's say your receiver was advertised as a seven point two point four okay what that means is that point two means you have two sub outs it's still mo no it's still a seven point one if you've got 20 subs it's still a seven point one because it's a mono signal so the point two just means there's two outputs on the receiver now hopefully those outputs are independent of each other and you can actually set delay between them and that would actually be like a real point two capable receiver where it you know that just means that it's independent you know control of each of those outputs now sometimes the receivers will go cheap and they're just trying to you know boost up their specs to compete with other you know receivers that are better than they you know their receiver and the point two doesn't mean anything like they're just fused together back there basically a Y adapter that's built in and the way you can tell is when you run your room correction when it runs the first measurement it's getting distances if it pings each sub independently during the first measurement then you know it's got two different you know sub outs independent sellouts and it's going to be able to align those two subs so there's two outputs if you run it and it doesn't it paints both subs together during that first one well you know you're not gonna say you got screwed but you got taken sorta because it doesn't have independent control between the two sub outs it's just fused together inside the receiver now after that it's only it's going to ping them together because all the measurements after the first measurement all it's doing is doing like a spatial EQ its sampling the area the bubble around the main listening position for EQ and that's that's all that's doing so after the after 2 3 all those other measurements after 1 it's gonna be sweeping and pinging the subs together so it's that first measurement that's gonna keep you in on whether or not you really have a point to receiver with independent control of each sub so in this video I'm going to assume that most of you guys aren't using you know something like a mini DSP to align yourselves which you know I highly advise that in that we do an episode 7 now if you were doing that you would only use one sub out but because you're gonna rely on your receiver to align them you're not gonna use your ear your ear sucks hate to break it to you you cannot do it by ear and if you go back and watch episode 7 you're gonna realize really quick is like yeah you can't do it by ear you're gonna get it so you're gonna use both sub outs on your receiver because your receiver is going to be using an impulse measurement which is basically a timing measurement to get you know when it first gets the signal from that sub each sub on each channel to align the subwoofers and get them time aligned now that's not nearly as good as what we're gonna do on episode 7 or what we did on episode 7 but that's all you've got until you're ready to step up to re W and you know that's use your receiver it's gonna do a much better job than you can do by ear so you're gonna use both of your sub outlets coming out of your receiver and you're gonna go course into your your subs now if you look at the back of your sub here you've got different options like here's just an example okay now sometimes you're gonna have an LFE in and of course that's where your RCA jack coming from your sub outs of your receivers gonna go let's say you don't have an LFA in or you don't have anything that says sub you need to look in your manual you know a lot of times it's gonna just tell you to put it in maybe the right or the left input okay and sometimes it's gonna tell you to put it in both Dayton has some amps like that you know it tells you to get a splitter I'm not sure why I didn't come with a splitter but it didn't and plug it into both so you're just gonna Y get a wide splitter and split into both inputs and does make a huge difference just look in your manual and see what it suggests all right now we're just going to look at some of these settings and I'm gonna tell you where to set them and then we're gonna go back and I'm gonna explain why all right the volume the volume is not a volume like in this example it says volume sometimes it's gonna say gain gain is actually more correct than volume they put volume on there to keep the phone from ringing okay they get tired of people calling and saying what is this game what do I do with this you know it confuses people what volume confuses people to really it's very inaccurate it is not a volume so for that I would just set it at half 50% and that way once you calibrate your system you always know that you know if somebody bumps it you'll always know that that is your default setting and we're gonna discuss that in just a minute okay your frequency now on frequency you're gonna max this out sometimes you can even disable it'll have like a disable switch next to it and that must be maxed out our receiver is going to set our crossover settings for us we're not going to be doing it in the plate amp okay now what that's for I'm just gonna tell you real quick if you see like the high level inputs those are for like the two channel guys say you have a sub by each main you would run the wires the speaker wires not the RCA wires but the speaker wires into the input and then back out of the output into your speaker your main and what that does is it's basically gonna get the same signal that the main gets and you're gonna use that crossover where actually you're gonna measure first would like to meet you wizard where you can see where that main begins to drop off and you're gonna set your frequency to begin picking up where that main drops off and then you're gonna use the face to dial it in just right something you need measurements for it's not designed for the LFE input that's why me just disable you okay and then let's see then you have phase sometimes you have a phase knob that's variable okay now if you had that you can actually do like what we did in Episode seven you actually do that without a mini DSP some of it it's not nearly as easy to do but anyway we're keeping this this episode simple so like missus zero in 180 just set it for zero your receiver is going to do whatever it has to do to align it even if it's behind you a lot of times you know 180 maybe the correct position I mean you can go ahead and do it but the whole thinking that switch it to zero and see how it sounds switch it to 180 and see how it sounds don't do that because even zero is not a line because you can't align it you know all you're doing is listen for for peace and listening where the best peak is at you know you can't align it so just switching it back and forth isn't really getting it aligned it's just kind of picking the lesser of two evils so you just set it for zero and you're gonna let your receiver align the sub to the other sub and then once it does that you're gonna leave it alone because all you're gonna do is take it out of phase if you've adjusted okay then you got an auto on switch auto just means it's waiting for the signal you know when it gets voltage from your receiver it's gonna turn on that's all it means and if your say it won't turn on an auto a lot of times just because you've got that volume knob a gain knob when your receiver or I'm sorry on your amp turned up too high and so the receiver had to turn the voltage down so low that the plate amp doesn't even recognize it it's not picking it up it's not strong enough to turn EF on and we're going to get into that just a second because that kind of ties in on what that knob is fourth alright so that's gonna cover pretty much everything on your plate amp now if you've got like an SBS and it's digital it's gonna be the same thing now some of those SBS's and other brands you even have each you don't use the eq unless you can measure because you don't know what you're doing okay I mean you can't see it you really have to see it now if you just like tweaking and you want to do it by ears nothing wrong with that but if you're after an accuracy you really need to be able to see what's going on before you mess with stuff now that doesn't mean you know some subwoofers have like or hybrids they have ports you can plug and so they will tell you to set each you one eq to and all they're doing is they're adding boost in that plate amp to compensate for the different that you're that you're doing when you plug a poured you change the tuning you know you're lowering the tuning so they're gonna change the EQ because they eat you and kind of baked in from the factory you know so they sound good when the end-user gets it that's one little thing between DIY subs and the store-bought subs is we don't rely on heat you it's also why our boxes are bigger you know our response will be flat to tuning without each you in some store bots are like that too but with the hybrids they do rely on a lot of EQ and some boosting to get a nice response so the end user is happy basically okay now LFE now LFE is a discreet Channel now everyone's heard a 5.1 and 7.1 in that point one right there that is the LFE channel so LFE stands for low frequency effect that's what it means and basically that's just where your low frequencies go or where they're mastered you know in the recording you have certain information that's meant just for that channel it doesn't go to any other speaker it just goes to your subwoofer and so that's why you're gonna have the LFE out or the sub out and it's gonna go straight to your sub and it's like I said it's discrete just like you front-left is discrete so in the frequency response or the frequency band width that could be on that channel is anywhere you know could be down low and under ten Hertz which is very rare I mean really if you've got an in-room negative that goes down to negative 15 and not not uh some people just say a usable output which is basically a useless term it means nothing is because you hear a noise down there doesn't mean that's usable you won't like some needs to be as loud as the rest of the response so negative three is usually what is the standard so if you got it in room negative three of 15 Hertz that's pretty awesome you're good to go even an in-room negative three of twenty Hertz it's great negative fifteen I wouldn't ever wouldn't worry about going lower you're good so let's just say 15 Hertz two 120 Hertz I drink 20 Hertz at the top of the LFE channel and of course it could be below 50 so that's the LFE channel now base management is when you have a speaker and you set it to small and it basically small means based management on doesn't mean anything bad about your speakers you know that's going to do is it's going to route the information below the crossover you set to the sub and it's going to use the LFE channel it's like a highway to get there because it needs to find a route to get to your sub and there's one sitting right there called the LFE channel so it's different than the LFE it just uses the same route to get to your sub now why would you use LFE or why would you use a crossover and set your speaker to small if you have large speakers well we saw in episode 7 what happens when you have one source of modal or one source of bass you know your seat to seat consistency goes out the window okay every seat sounds different so if you've got a choice of letting your main your left main play 60 Hertz you know you're gonna if you choose that as your decision you're gonna have a different response at every seat everyone's gonna hear something different and you saw what happened here's what happens if you properly align your subs every seat here's the same thing I mean I've got it they're basically hearing the same thing up to a hundred hundred twenty Hertz so you're choosing quality when you set your speaker a small assuming your subjects properly set up you know if you say that you know sixty hurt crossover sounds better or forty Hertz crossover sounds better it's because your subs are jacked up that's just the way it is something's wrong with your subs or your your subs are not aligned to your mains something screwed up in your setup somewhere so that would be why you would set your speakers too small and in you know professionally designed rooms they're set too small because we want consistent seat to seat base and so you're basically as soon as that bass is not directional they're going to the sub they're gonna cross over and get to that sub ASAP because that sub there's going to be several sources of bass all aligned and are gonna give us that seat to see consistency that we want so that's going to be base management so it's any speaker spit set to small you can set the crossover point usually 80 Hertz is chosen just because that's where most does you know kind of feel that base is no longer directional now if you've got your subs upfront you know you can cross it over at 100 Hertz I mean it's really gonna be hard to tell what's up it's coming out of you know when they're all up front or even behind you it sometimes I mean that's something you can play with the crossover point and see if maybe you can get it to a hundred and you still can't tell if so you know chances are you're gonna have even a better I can see to see consistency you know if to 100 Hertz than you would at 80 Hertz because more of the content is being handled by the multiple subs so that's probably has getting a little too advanced there so we're gonna kind of leave it at that so another thing to remember that LFE has a filter setting in the car in the receiver okay or your processor it needs to be set no lower than 120 Hertz because remember LFE is 15 to 120 Hertz if you set that LFE low-pass filter and that's what it's called it LPF or it may say low-pass filter if you set it to 80 Hertz you're gonna get across you're gonna set a filter in there in this la fe channel and you're gonna cut it short you know you said it for 80 you're gonna lose a lot of output that should be there because it's encoded in that channel but you can't hear it that's also while you're played amp I told you to max it out you do not want that played amp crossover in the plate amp is the amp on your sub to affect this at all we want it to allow our receiver to decide what goes to the soap so another reason is if you set that at 80 not only do you affect the LFE channeling cut it off to the way a crossover works let's say here's your sub and here is your main so there's your sub there's your main and this isn't 80 Hertz crossover right here okay so what happens is when you set your receiver to 80 Hertz like for your when you set it speaker to small and you're crossing that content from a speaker to a sub it's gonna set the crossover whatever point we're set if ready so it's gonna roll the sub off and it's gonna roll that main offer that speaker off so that they intersect at 80 and the result is going to be a positive or a nice smooth response right across that point there it's not going to be a dipper anything's gonna be nice and smooth across it so if you were to set your plate amp or your your subs amp at 80 Hertz as well and say an 80 her crossover and the receiver now you have to cross over set on the sub so now it's gonna fall like this in your response your receiver is going to when it crosses it over you know it's gonna have a dip you're gonna have a weak base at the crossover point because you have two crossovers set two slopes being you know being engaged on the subwoofer and you're pulling it down too much and it can't get a nice transition from main or speaker to subwoofer so that's all the more reason max out that crossover sitting on your plate amp now if you've got speakers like def tech or definitive technology to have built-in subs with their you know their self powered if they have an l efi input and you can select it to l efi mode you can use those as subs in that case you would still set your speaker to small but you can use those subs that are built in by setting it to the l efi mode and just treat it like a so you'll just run that or a CA right into it just like another sub and you'll actually have to calibrate it along with the subs either through the auto setup or manually however you're doing it alright let's talk about the volume or the that's on the plate in that is not a volume okay I know they say that but that's just to keep them from the phone from ringing and it's not really a game even though they call it that it's actually an input attenuator and what that does is it adds attenuation to the input signal coming from the receiver and that allows the receiver to adjust its output voltage okay because it needs to find a happy place for the output voltage and it needs you know it doesn't want to clip the signal but it you know it needs to be strong enough to give you a good signal you know if you take the plate and cross or the plate amp gain knob turn it all the way up all you're gonna do is force the receiver to have to turn its voltage down because it's going to try to calibrate during an auto calibration or auto setup it's going to try to calibrate everything for reference so no matter where you put that volume knob or that gain knob the receiver is just going to compensate for it by adjusting its voltage to get the writing output at the subwoofer or what it measures from all the subs in the room so is does not mean yourself is more powerful because so you run Odyssey and it tells you to turn it down doesn't mean that you know a much smaller sub could have more output it just means that you're setting you know your knob was not adjusted properly and it needs you to turn it down so that or get it in tolerance so usually I'll throw up you know get it'll tell you to get this at SPL and tolerance and turning green it needs you to just adjust it so we can set its voltage properly if that's all it's doing it's a tool that knob is a tool to get the proper voltage out of your receiver of your processor full power and full output of your sub is available no matter where that knob is set that knob has nothing to do with volume no yes once it's set up you can go there and turn it and it'll get louder if you turn it right or turn it clockwise and that's just because you're reducing attenuation removing attenuation from the input signal that's all you're doing you could do the same thing by just adjusting increasing the voltage in the receiver by turning the sub trim up you know it's potato patata you're not really making it a more powerful sub you know now if it's already being calibrated you're taking it out of calibration because now it's louder than it should be but that's okay - I mean subs are kind of one of those things you do by ear if you like it a little hot it's nothing wrong with it you just need to understand you know thinking the thinking that because you had to turn it down means it's a powerful subwoofer is you know nonsense doesn't mean that whatsoever you know you could have a home feed or in a box and it could tell you to turn it down because you've got in the corner there's a room mode there you know or whatever and it just needs you - it needs to set its its voltage settings you know it needs to get its settings set up properly that's that's all it means okay if you've seen episode seven you understand there is no way in the world you can align subs by ear it's just not possible I mean if it is I would sleep with some KY jelly because the aliens you're gonna come abduct you because you're not normal it's just doesn't work that way okay Remi Chi wizard or something like that where you can measure is going to be needed to align subs you know yourself manually and that's the way I prefer to do it but if you've not if you're not ready for that it's totally fine use your receiver it's gonna send out an impulse and that's what it's going to use is impulse measurements to align the subs the time align them so just let your gear do its job it's much much more accurate than you're gonna be by here and if something doesn't sound right you know try to run it again sometimes it gets it wrong but the point is you're helpless by ear you can't beat measurements I mean there's just you can't if you don't believe me go watch episode 7 okay so now just a little rundown on your played amp we're gonna set the frequency all the way up we're gonna disable it okay max it out the volume the gain may be said it for 50% set in a place where you can always go back if someone bumps it you can go back and set it where it needs to be because you know that's your default setting and remember that has nothing to do with output doesn't take away from your output full power full output is available no matter where that's it you know we're going to go into the LFA input if it doesn't have an LFA in stamped on it we're going to look at to see exactly where we need to put our input it could be on the right the left or we could be told to get a splitter and use both phase set it for 0 then our receiver do the work okay especially after our receiver does our auto setup don't go adjusting things the reason is so you flip that switch okay now you've taking them out of phase because the the receiver actually set the phase for you so you said it you may get a boost at 30 Hertz but it's probably going to cause Knowles somewhere else it's gonna have negative summation between your two subs because you went flip that switch and not only that it also is going to take domains in the subs out of phase because when you run the auto setup your subs distance is how it aligns means to subs or your Center to subs if you go and mess with the distance of the maing of the distance of the center or the distance of the subs themselves she's now taking those speakers out of alignment so where they're crossover point remember it gives them a smooth transition here you're going to cause issues around that point because now you've in time you've moved them not physically but if you think of it in the time domain you now move those speakers so don't Jack with your settings in your receiver for distances it's best of the sub sub knockin is the sub is not gonna have the right distance it's not supposed to it's a time alignment not a distance alignment okay I think that's it in the back of the plate amps in your receiver low-pass filter it needs to be set at 120 or higher you can set it for 200 it doesn't really matter because the LFE line goes up to 120 anyway it's kind of a goofy setting it really shouldn't be there don't go any lower once you get your speaker's set up once their receiver aligned your subwoofers especially if you have multiple subs if you have one sub I wouldn't worry about it too much because your seat to see consistency is not going to be great anyway but if you've got dual subs there properly set up hopefully you have a good seat to seat response if that's true keep that crossover setting set all of your speakers are small keep the crossover setting at 80 Hertz and don't go Neil if you can bump it up to 100 and you don't have any audible you know you can't tell this where the subs are located keep it at 100 there's nothing wrong with that because you're not after bragging rights you know that I've got you know 13 foot towers and you know they go down to negative 5 Hertz nobody cares ok we're after a consistency to seat response in quality we're not after bragging a lot of people don't understand how this stuff works so they don't want to set their speaker too small because you know it's like it hurts there you know you know it hurts somewhere in there you know they feel a pain when they said that speaker they spend all this money on the small well if you're after quality sound you know that's just what you're going to have to do so set the speaker's just small set the crossovers at 80 maybe a little higher if you can because we want a consistent seat to seat response this is home theater this is not to channel listening what we're just one person sitting in a room so we have to think differently than like a two-channel guy that's only worried about one seat sounding right we want all the seats to sound good we don't want to be the only one smiling in the room and our neighbor you know your wife girlfriend daughter whoever your kids are sitting there and they think they don't know what's going on and you're smiling with a goofy grin on your face you think something's wrong with you so we don't want that now a lot of your receivers have something called like LFE plus mange or a double bass and what that's going to do is let's say you set at 80 Hertz crossover for your Mane's and you've got that engaged and something that sixty Hertz happens on the screen your Mane is gonna get treated like a full-range speaker so it's still gonna play everything but it's gonna cross over to the sub at 80 Hertz as if it was set to small so it's gonna be playing out of both at the same time well whenever we align our subbed we're lining the subs by themselves so you see here my response seat the seat everybody's hearing the same thing as soon as I throw another source of sound in there like that main if it was also playing to sixty hurt tone that seat the seat right there it goes out the window okay I mean now there's another speaker in there that is not aligned to all these other speakers or to my subs so basically you know throwing a wrench in it okay so that's not really going to be Goethe either now sometimes people are like oh it sounds better well the problem is when LFE hits when there's something on the LFE channel if you've got four subs okay that's for subs playing that are perfectly aligned seat the seat is perfect now something happens at 60 Hertz on that main now you've got five sources of base my four subs in that main so now that but one of those speakers is not aligned to those subs so now my seat to see is not good so it goes back and forth to a good response a bad response okay now here's a really good example of the yellow feet channel by itself and what happens when you set it to LFE plus mains or double bass so you see the blue line that's the LFE channel it's already been aligned that's for subs they've already been aligned we have a really tight c2c consistency so anytime like if we set a speaker to small and roll it off to the subs anything below our crossover point that we choose is going to get what we have at the blue line so we know what we're getting and we're getting really really accurate bass so if we were to select LFE plus main and something was to happen on just the LFE channel we would still get the blue line but now when something happens on the mains or either one of the mains because we've selected LFE plus main will get the red line because now that main is being thrown in and playing along with the subs and so now it's unpredictable and you see what we have now all of a sudden we have a response that's in no way accurate because there's another speaker that's playing with our main tarah subs you know our subs that we spent all that time and getting them calibrated and getting them set up right now we're just slinging a wrench into them and this is what we get and now keep in mind that my mains their HTM 12 the only they're tuned for like 7 60 70 Hertz or they don't go that low so that's why around you know 50 Hertz it starts picking back up and you know because it's really just the LFE or just the subs plane if you had some mains that went lower that nasty response would go much lower than what you see here it would look even worse because it would be affecting more the of the LFE or more of the subs than what you see here but I mean that's bad right there I mean that's that's horrible what we've done to that response by selecting LFE plus mains so it's much better just to not use that just leave it at small and let the subs handle everything because you know the sub they're going to be accurate and they're predictable because you measured them you know if you've measured them like I said episode seven if not at least you know if it's in rectangular room you can set them up properly and rely on your receiver hopefully it's going to do a good job so and again some people you know or say well it sounds better when I use that when it's engaged if that's the case again something's wrong with your subs you know in your sub region nothing you should sound better than multiple subs with a seat to see consistency that's really tight I mean that's just be able to beat that okay you can put a house curve on it to the sound just how you want if it sounds better you know set to large or set to double bass or anything like that you need to look at it you've probably got dips and nulls or you've got some Peaks that were knocked down because maybe you don't have sub EQ in your hu system software you know you need to make sure that your processor is able to EQ the subs that's really important too for knocking down those you know those excessive bass that you may have by putting your speaker even next to a wall can excite room moves and makes a kind of bass heavy you know you need EQ in the motor region in the base region you alright guys that's gonna be it for this episode I think next episode we're gonna go over ramose and that's gonna help us decide where we can sit so that we stay out of the room ot issues that are going to be above the subs because remember in the sub-region we can fix those room modes with the sub location are properly aligned multiple subs but above the subs you know the rooms gonna dominate there's not much we can do about it so we want to avoid them so we're gonna learn how to do that that's gonna be it for this episode guys I'm gonna leave you out with a bunch of awesome subscriber room pics enjoy [Music] [Music]

Channel: Home Theater Gurus

Views: 149,732

Keywords: home theater setup, Home theater, home theater speaker, subwoofwer setup, LFE, home theater bass management, home theater house curve, multiple Subwoofer placement, subwoofer alignment, home theater subwoofer, subwoofer placement, subwoofer crawl, home theater gurus, home theather setup, home theater setup budget, home theater setup 2020, Home theater setup ideas, home theater subwoofer placement, subwoofer setup, home theater subwoofer settings

Id: HQMl5kradA4

Length: 45min 30sec (2730 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019