could be interesting to read a statistic here
myself i always prefer (except equal with 1 situation, see below):
FRONT LARGE (crossover at around 40hz)
CENTER MEDIUM LARGE (60hz ?)
SURROUNDS SMALL (80 or 100hz)
2 or more SUBWOOFERS

movies are mixed for cinemas: thus in proper theaters you have 3 LARGE TOWERS with often 15" gunner and powerful horns.
the subs do the .1 and infra bass from the towers
the surrounds are cut at 80hz or higher

there are two kinds of bass:
1. tight high "fast" bass, above 40hz (gun shots ? punches etc)
2. LFE or .1 and bass below 40hz. longer wave length, slower. (deep explosions, musical low tones/waves etc)

i also find more natural to hear the bass of the LCR coming from their point of origin.

this set up allows both different basses to be reproduced distinctly vs the subs having to do ALL kinds of bass.

of course: if speakers are monitors or bass weak, it's paramount to protect them and running SMALL is comulsory to protect them and increase dynamic.

all imho. so don't shoot.

there is one alternative to running LCR in full and still sounding amazing:
a line of subs which covers for instance almost the full width of the room.
or front left corner with a full height of subs and same on the front right corner. www.biosonic.fr uses this principle (thoght the mediums and highs are a bit "overshadowed" by the bass)

FRONT LARGE (crossover at around 40hz)


What does this mean? Large means no crossover. If you are using a 40 hz crossover then you are set to small??

Ed

What does this mean? Large means no crossover. If you are using a 40 hz crossover then you are set to small??I think he means he runs them as SMALL but with a lower crossover as he then says:

CENTER MEDIUM LARGE (60hz ?)
SURROUNDS SMALL (80 or 100hz)

Messed up terminology if you asked me. Unless he means he runs them with an LFE+Main or Both or Plus setting in which case the bass below that crossover setting is what will be duplicated at the sub(s).

And running individual and multiple crossover points is only doable on those processors which have that capability, Digital2004. Otherwise, you are limited to a single crossover setting.

yes the pt is the crossover. more and more preamps, receivers allow that.
denon onkyo lexicon sunfire nad (partially).
it's ideal to better match the front speakers. running them in full large without crossover requires big stuff when you consider how bass loaded are some tracks.

also running large big towers can be a lot (too much work) for most receivers who output often LESS at 4ohms while a good amp does MORE as impedance drops...
power amp is a must for a home theater, at least stereo for the towers. and if you room is acousticly treated, better have one too , even with high sensitivity speakers.
but this is another debate.
though often running all SMALL in a treated room is almost compulsory if you have only a receiver to power 7 speakers...

So, what's your point? :confused:

movies are mixed for cinemas: thus in proper theaters you have 3 LARGE TOWERS with often 15" gunner and powerful horns.
In movies theaters they have more than 3 stacks, I've seen pictures of theaters with 5, 6 stacks behind the screens.
But as for HT, a lot depends on the room as to what one will use.
I prefer identical speakers all around, I can run them more/less full range, but usually crossed at 80htz and let a pair of 15" subs do the rest.

youd need some pretty large speakers to legitimately set your speakers to large. its tough for a speaker to handle the lower frequencies as well as a dedicated sub.

All my speakers are rated for a frequency response only 8Hz higher than my subwoofers which are 20Hz and the amplifiers can handle it. Setting the 14 6 1/2 drivers to large gets some good chest pounding going on and there might be higher dB output (at this time) but much of it might be contributed to lower harmonic distortion. It could also be that most of that energy is around 50Hz-ish or higher in allot of films. I still set them to small but at many times (still occasionally do) I had them set to large during setup. The first time I set my speakers to small for a guest I had in the HT I had the comment "there is not as much bass" and I did not disclose the settings change. Most of time I would use the large setting because it was easy to do at low levels although there were some frequencies being lost. The guest were happy. I'm working on improving my bass management by getting more subwoofers and I set my other speakers to small unless I'm doing some kind of testing.

If I try to play The Matrix Revolutions Chapter 26 01:38:00 with my speakers set to large, they can't hold that sound long enough at reference level according to my copy of DVE at 75dB which = 85dB with my THX Optimizer that I currently set to 75dB, and it causes chuffing. That is besides the fact there is all that info lost bellow where my speakers would be capable of playing. If I want my subwoofers to play simply as loud, I will need about two or three more of them at this time although they are supposed to play at a higher SPL. I have no means of boosting my subwoofer signal.

small small small. If you have to ask the question, set them small. Very very VERY few people have speaker arrays capable of being run large for HT.

The original post is a little confusing.

'There are 2 types of bass' ?!!!
LFE or .1 is not a type of bass, but a discete assigned digital channel which 'handles' the bass content. The crossover controls which part of the bass audio spectrum is filtered out.

Also there was something about 'LCR' and hearing the bass from the point of origin?!

I though bass below 80hz was 'undetectable' as far as locating the point of origin, which is why 80hz is the starting point for setting crossover frequency?!

What was the question again?

'There are 2 types of bass' ?!!!
LFE or .1 is not a type of bass, but a discete assigned digital channel which 'handles' the bass content. The crossover controls which part of the bass audio spectrum is filtered out.He is making the distinction between the LFE channel content, which IS separate and specifically encoded low frequency information and the bass information that is encoded and present in the other channels. Bass management is able to reroute and combine the bass from the other channels with the LFE channel information for output via the subwoofer output.


I though bass below 80hz was 'undetectable' as far as locating the point of origin, which is why 80hz is the starting point for setting crossover frequency?!In an anechoic chamber, this may be true. But in practice, in most of our rooms, there are all sorts of acoustic anomalies introduced which allow bass, even below 80Hz, to be localizable.

My receiver will only let me controll the speaker levels. So it essentally sends the full load to all the speakers i guess. The sub is Connected to the speaker-level subwoofer output on the back there is also a pre-out for a Second sub. :D

So in essence my speakers are set to large I guess. :confused:

The SMPTE Digital Cinema document that 'underlies' the HDMI AudioFrame specs, plus Blu-Ray, dts, and Dolby eight channel audio implementations, actually contains references to 20 'standardized' speaker locations including two distinct LFE channels (which I have only seen described as LFE and LFE2.) [The addition of a second LFE channel might have been influenced by Tomlinson Holman's 10.2 speaker configuration experiments and theater implementations.]

It appears that dts is not allowing/supporting the authoring of any two LFE channel speaker mixes at present [and I have not seen enough eight channel details from Dolby to form an opinion...]

All my speakers are rated for a frequency response only 8Hz higher than my subwoofers [snip]

My configuration issues are probably the reverse of your's -- and of most people's...

My mains are [nominally] rated 28 Hz - 20 kHz, matched with a powered sub 35 Hz - 150 Hz capable...

I have a Yamaha AST-A10/YST-A10 2-channel amp and a powered sub both Y-connected to the receiver's L and R main pre-out terminals, and nothing attached to the sub RCA terminal. This is the only way to route LFE to both a sub and the L/R mains from my Yamaha HTR-5860 (rebadged RX-V657).

The Yamaha AST-A10/YST-A10 2-channel amp and complementary AST-S1/YST-S1 speakers use the same bass/LFE reproduction technology as do Yamaha subs, but the speakers are difficult to place. Except in a dedicated listening room/home theater, placing the speakers for correct Front L/R imaging usually compromises bass/LFE room surface coupling [my speakers must invariably be placed on bookshelves rather than on ("recommended height") 22" floor stands!] [This is probably one of the reasons Yamaha stopped using Active Servo Technology (AST) aka Yamaha Servo Technology (YST) except in subs...] So I've added a [conventional] sub for a little 'in fill'... In some ways, this is more like a 3 sub configuration problem.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=112782&stc=1&d=1213430254
As an aside: One consequence of NOT using the receiver's sub terminal is that ALL redirected bass is also routed to the front main channels. However, with my crossover set to 80 Hz, there is no sense of inappropriately redirected rear bass being played through the front speakers!

7 Channels set to small &
Subs set LARGE :D

80hz- Nuff said.

My mains have built-in subs which for some reason don't appear to react to the LFE inputs... so I run them as large but also send the L & R signal 60Hz and below to the subwoofer (I set my subwoofer to SUB+L&R in my AVR speaker set up).

So in effect, my mains are getting 100% of the L & R signal, and my subwoofer is getting the L & R signal 60Hz and below.

Center & Surrounds are crossed at 80.

Now I have a 12" subwoofer under each left and right surround and one on each side of the center channel. My surrounds and center are set to large (they are at 0dB to 30Hz in-room) and the left and right are set to small. The subwoofers are down to 25Hz +4.5dB with a house curve to the 80Hz crossover @ 75dB -30dB FS with -3 on my subwoofer output. There are four surrounds.