Subwoofer Crossover: Best Settings For Home Theater And Home Audio Systems

today i'm going to start a new series that i call quick tips for your audio or your video system and these things are going to not go into a lot of technical detail uh about the the whys or the hows it's really going to be sort of very quick tips that are trying to answer questions that i tend to get all the time or i see people asking all the time both in our comments forums and and on other audio and video forums and today we're going to talk about a simple but not so simple topic of subwoofer crossovers subwoofer crossovers or crossover points are confusing because many people encounter them in multiple places we have a subwoofer amplifier here and there's a switch at the bottom that is labeled crossover and there's this one is two positions 80 hertz and 150 hertz and you'll also often find a you know a rotary control that may range from let's say 40 hertz to 150 hertz and you may find some other switches or multiple rca inputs labeled different things you might see something called lfe etc etc where the confusion stems from is in the context of a home theater system you probably have an audio video receiver or avr and the avr if it has dedicated sub or subwoofer outputs is typically the way that you're going to connect the signal from your avr to the subwoofer but if you go and you look in the menu or in the manual of your avr you will find that there are crossover settings for all of the speakers and the subwoofer so the question is why do i have two places to set a crossover setting and which one should i use and this is where the quick tip comes in if you're using an avr and you're connecting to a sub or subwoofer output you want the crossover to be handled by the avr because it's going to help with the integration of the crossovers on the other speakers left center right the rear channels surround channel side channels at most channels whatever channels you want the avr to handle that crossover to the subwoofer between those other speakers in that case you really don't want the crossover in play that's built into the subwoofer what should you do well if you have a switch or you have an input on your subwoofer that's labeled lfe that's the one you should use the reason why is that lfe input is in most cases assuming that you're going to have an external crossover and it will let the subwoofer extend up as high in frequency as possible so there's no filter there's no crossover in play with an lfe input or with an lfe switch engaged many subwoofers don't have a separate input or a switch for lfe they just have controls like this one that give you two settings or like i said a rotary control or multiple settings in that case what you should do is set the crossover frequency point on the subwoofer to the highest frequency doesn't matter what it is if it's 120 hertz 150 hertz 200 hertz doesn't matter set it for the highest frequency typically the crossover between subwoofer and main speakers as a default in most avrs tends to be 80 hertz so if in this example we set the crossover point to 150 hertz it's going to be pretty much out of play uh at 80 hertz and that's the reason you want to set that to the highest frequency obviously if you have a traditional stereo receiver or an integrated amp or something that doesn't have a sub or subwoofer output the assumption is is that there is no crossover or base management built into that component so then you need to use the settings on the built-in crossover in your subwoofer now how do you make that setting unfortunately that's that one has to be done completely by ear unless you have some way of filtering some of the bass signals to the main speakers in that stereo setup you're gonna naturally have some overlap between the speakers and the subwoofer so it's a matter of changing adjusting positions and of the crossover control on the sub and listening for the smoothest and most linear bass so i hope that helps if you have any quick tip ideas you know a simple what should i do here without getting into you know really complex topics i would love to hear it as always i thank you very much for watching you

Channel: Axiom Audio

Views: 74,409

Keywords: ask the audio design engineer, ask the audio engineer, audio tech tips, audio tech tips and how to videos, know how audio, subwoofer setup home theater, tv sound system, andrew welker, axiom audio, home theater setup, home theatre setup, home theater subwoofer, subwoofer setup, home theater crossover, crossover frequency settings, audio advice, how to set up subwoofer, home theater subwoofer settings, subwoofer settings, home audio, home theater subwoofer setup

Id: FOToQWSWZsA

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022