Question for those with large fronts

Those large speakers can't do nearly the amount of quality bass that the SVS sub can do. Set them as small and put the crossover at 60hz. Let the PC12-NSD do the rest.

Which 130 watt Onkyo receiver do you have?

I have Klipsch RF-7's which have dual 10" woofers in each, and even though they have a 102db sensitivity rating, I am using them with a Emotiva XPA-3. I would almost guarantee there is no receiver out there that can push them they way they are meant to be. I have my receiver set to large cause I know they XPA-3 can handle it. When I was using just my receiver I had them set to small. If I has smaller bookshelfs I don't "think" I would be able to get the massive dynamic in your face sound I am getting with these huge towers without spending $5K+.

I run my fronts and all my other speakers on full range most of the time. Which is continuous thunder on their own. I also have three passive subwoofers with subwoofer amplifiers connected directly to my speakers which can add low end to just my speakers alone without any crossover during sub "off" mode. If I want even more room jarring bass I hit the "sub on" option on my onkyo receiver during movies to incorporate my 15" powered sub and a 12" powered sub I run off a splitter to take care of the low end. If I want to feed the subs the bulk of the LFE during movies I cross over all my speakers at 60-80hz. Just depends on If I am watching movies or music and what level of bass I feel like dealing with for the day. I can do just speakers only, speakers plus passive subs, or speakers plus passive subs plus powered subs for an endless abyss of bass.

Get the Rti12s bro, they are a nice speaker. I have them and am currently driving them with 525 wpc with a D-Sonic Icepower amp. As mentioned you will still want a nice sub though, I run dual SVS PB12/plus 2 subs.

get what sounds best to you!

Bigger is better. When you crank them up, it will all become clear you made a wise choice.

Like a lot of these guys have already mentioned, it depends on what you're going to be using them for. I've got an Onkyo 707, Klipsch RF-35's, and 2 Klipsch Sub 10's. The towers have good bass response on their own, if the receiver can keep up with them on the music or movie I'm listening to.

For classic rock like Floyd, Zeppelin, etc..., I don't even bother turning my subs on. If I'm listening to modern rock or metal that has a lot of bass and it's fast, I have to turn the subs on, the receiver just can't push out that much power. I don't what the speaker size setting is on the receiver, but I cross the towers over to 60hz and let the subs take the beating. Doing that, and cranking it up, you really notice a HUGE improvement in dynamics.

For movies, I keep my subs on and leave them crossed at 60Hz. The towers just can't get that low for some movie and game sound affects. I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 last night and the subs hit so hard during a mortar strike, it choke me up a little from the air pressure change. That's what I call a realistic gaming experience!

I haven't had near the experience with modern receivers as some of the other guys on here, so they can probably give you a better answer than I can. I also don't know if this is something new or not, but my 707 doesn't have a setting for the size of the speakers. The crossover has settings for full range and then settings of 10Hz increments. So you're not really "wasting" your tower speaker, your just fine tuning it's performance. A lot of towers can dig really deep into low frequency, but they may not be able to perform there best that low all the time.

There's a lot of factors that play into it. Unfortunately, you won't know until you have them. Once you have your towers, and get the time and sit down and play with them for awhile, you'll know which cutoff works best for your setup, and let the sub(s) take up the rest.

I know how you feel though. All the options and configurations can be overwhelming. Some of your choices are actually educated guesses. You just never know until you get'm home and set up.

Here's how it works.. larger drivers or a combination of smaller drivers move more air with less effort making them more dynamic and generally more effeceint....crossing the speakers to a sub takes the hardest thing for any speaker to do which is play low.... moving the drivers at these low frequencies (the lower the freq. the more the drivers move) stresses your amp as it takes gobs of power and gives your entire system a workout.

Crossing it over to the sub instantly lightens this load and you have more amp power to power the rest of the speakers frequencies. This will improve dynamics ..midbass punch, and effeciency. Keep in mind that Pro speaker like the Popular JTR triple 8s only extend to like 70hz yet they have incredible dynamics.

That's kinda what I was getting at, you'd need to replace the receiver if you plan to buy an amp. That receiver is nowhere near 130watts/channel despite what the manual/specs says. Its basically the equivalent of the TX-SR502 which is really about 75-80 watts per channel. Still with a good sub it should handle your RTi8 or A7 fine. Not sure about the rti12 though, I've read they are power hungry.

I don't think there are a whole lot of towers that size under the $2k price per pair that aren't power hungry to some extent. The RTi 12 has 6 total drivers, that's going to chew up some watts as is, even if they are really efficient. I admit I'm not an expert by any means on how speakers operate, but the basic understanding I got was, they get rms input by adding together the rms watt rating of all drivers in one speaker. Even if each driver in the RTi 12 has a minimum of 20 per driver, that's still 120 watts rms per tower. That's probably a lean estimate. The 3 7" drivers are probably double, if not triple that rating, and the 5 1/4" drivers are probably well over that as well.

That adds up to a very power hungry set of towers that need that kind of juice to perform at their best. My uncle's Klipsch RF-83s are the same way. He's using 4 Marantz MA 500 power amps, 2 bridged for each tower, and the sound difference is night and day w/out those amps. He has a higher end Denon from a few years ago, and it just can not keep up with those towers.

Generally, it really is the efficiency spec that tells you how "power hungry" a speaker is, not how many drivers it has, or what the RMS power handling rating is. The efficiency rating tells you how loud it will play for a given amount of power. Given the same amount of power, a massive tower with 12 drivers and 90 dB efficiency will play louder than any bookshelf speaker with 2 drivers and an efficiency rating of 86 dB, for instance.

That said, it is likely true that the big tower will probably keep getting louder and continue to play clearly as you add more power, while the smaller speaker might "max out" (starts distorting, stops getting louder) at a lower amount of power. (Speaking very generally here -- I am sure that exceptions abound.) So I agree that you might want to run more power to maximize the performance of some big speakers. But it certainly isn't a necessity, and there is absolutely no reason to avoid big speakers just because your current amp won't be driving them to their peak potential if the alternative will give you less performance but will be running closer to their limit. (I am reminded of the Top Gear test where they run a Prius at the limit and followed it in an M3 at the same pace... and the M3 used less fuel.)

Some folks even pick massive speakers because they can be more efficient, specifically so that they can use very low power amplifiers that have some characteristics they favor.

-Max

That's a crazy statement.... there are tons of effeceint speakers in that price range...and the number of drivers has zero to do with it.

Setting your speakers to large or small has nothing to do with speaker size. It only relates to where your bass is being redirected to. If you search, you can find many articles outlining why setting to small is beneficial. Also remember, that the crossover setting will effect LFE as well. So, using 60 hz as an example in 5.1, the .1 would not be sent any information above 60hz.

I have Sudio 100's and set my crossover to 100hz. Let your sub do what it is designed to do! Very few towers out there can reproduce bass like a subwoofer.

This article is one that has some useful info for you.

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messa...79/128214.html

Here is a great statement from another source I found:

"Unless there are unusual circumstances, set all speakers to small and send all the bass to the sub, always. If that sounds unnatural, then your speakers are probably poorly matched, badly placed or not properly balanced."

This was sometimes true in older receivers. However, modern receivers have a separate LPF of LFE that is independent of the speaker crossover. The LPF of LFE should be set to 120 Hz regardless of what the speaker/subwoofer crossover is set to.

Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your post.

Craig