Large or Small setting for the receiver?

After you run your auto-EQ calibration (YPAO on the Yamaha), set all speakers to "small" and let the sub handle all the lower frequencies and the LFE.

My personal experience leads me to say: Try them both. And also experiment wiith the sub crossover setting. In my situation, following the generally accepted practice of setting them all to small and X-over at 80Hz didn't sound as good as "Large" and 50 Hz.

Do you have a sub? If so, which one?

I think if he didn't have a sub there would be no point in setting speakers to small (if I understand things correctly. No guarantee of that by the way).

Thinking further about this question. It's very interesting. Specs for your mains go down to 35Hz (similar to my own mains). If you set them to Large and X-over at 50Hz, you might actually prefer the sound, its up to you. This would be running contrary to usual advice which says that unless you have MASSIVE mains, set everything to "Small" and X-over at 80Hz.

But I notice that your surrounds are rated to 83Hz. That would imply, that there would be a hole in the response from the surrounds from approx. 50Hz to, well, 83 Hz. I'm not sure what would be the result in that case. With my receiver I could set my mains to Large and my Surrounds to Small, and that's the way it's set up. But I'm not sure of the implications re: the frequencies sent to the surrounds. I kind of assume it would still be only above 50 Hz (even though they are set to small) and consequently you would lose the 50-83 Hz which might normally be sent to the surrounds. I.e. if your X-over was set at 50Hz your sub would not reproduce the "missing" 50-83Hz.

I have to say again, I'm much happier with the crossover at 50Hz. I find the blend between mains and sub completely seamless. But I have not been paying much attention to bass content from my surrounds.

Does anybody know if there is indeed much LF typically sent to the surrounds? I kind of assume there isn't much if any, but I'm curious.

Yes, if you set a speaker to large, you are saying, "This speaker can play down to 20hz with high volume peaks."

Don't do this if you only have a receiver, without beefy external amps. Low bass takes incredible amounts of power. Even then, look at subwoofers: hundreds of watts of power, big boxes, and ~12" drivers, and they STILL have trouble with 20 to 25 hz bass!

The other reason for Small is to place the bass producer where it yields the smoothest response due to room modes. If you send low bass to the front, you lose that flexibility. Unless you don't mind placing a front-right speaker in really odd locations!

Its been a sore spot with me for years because it has led to confusion ever since it was termed .
Mfg's should have labeled it full range yes or no then steered it to the crossover point.
There is no way the amps in any receiver can handle speakers set at full range or large without distorting and possible damage at decent levels.
Crossing over to a sub at 60,70 or 80 then thats another story most quality
upper end receivers can handle it fairly well.

If you don't have a sub, you should set your front mains to large. I'm suggesting this under the assumption that you have tower speakers up front...not familiar with Synergy. Once you get a sub, set front mains to small, crossover at 80hz and see how that sounds and/or adjust from there.

"Small" sends any bass below the crossover to your subwoofer...if you don't have a sub, you have to run your mains full range. By the way, you should set "Subwoofer" to "No" in your receiver, if it's set that way it shouldn't even give you the option to set the speakers to "small" or "large."

As far as the discussion above goes, I prefer running my towers as "large" even though they roll off below 35Hz. I'd rather lose that bass than deal with a crossover to my sub because I can not seem to get my HSU dialed in perfectly no matter what I've tried. I have the rears cut off at 80Hz and the sub handles that plus LFE but my fronts are full range (no center in my system).

Yes, this was a terrible mistake by manufacturers. I wonder how many of them are correcting this as suggested above with "Full Range" as the label?


Having a sub, is the LFE channel at least going there?

Getting bass right is hard!

With Audessey XT 32 at least the receiver has a chance of EQing the sub and other channels. Without that, you're left with buying some other auto correction device, or hope your room only has one peak that some subs' built-in parametric EQ can tame.

And still, you have:

• position front three speakers where you don't sacrifice imaging but still might yield a smoother response
• position the sub for smoothest response
• position listening positions for smoothest response
• choose a crossover to minimize localization, and also get smoothest response (many people even choose 100hz, not because their speakers can't handle bass, but because the bass going to the sub can be positioned for fewer peaks and nulls)
• purchase a second sub to help even out response, like one in front and one in back (per Floyd Toole et al research)
• nail the phase / distance for smoothest response for two subs
• Bass traps in corners
• Maybe more bass traps

Most of this is pretty hard to do without something like Real-EQ Wizard!


I've always said that a phantom center can work for those who just listen alone in the center. For off-axis listeners, the sound stage will collapse to the closest front speaker.

But in re-reading Toole's book last night, I read where he really recommends against going phantom also because when the same sounds are correlated in both front speakers, they will either interfere with each other constructively or destructively, and make for a strange response.

Speaking of center speakers (not specifically about you, Remonster) I see so many people stuck in two channel thinking but in a multi-channel setup. They buy big front left and right speakers, and they don't pay much attention to the center. Since the center and sub are the two most important speakers for home theater, they've created a weak-link in the entire system, where they can't turn up the master volume up any higher than the center can handle before it gets harsh.

eg: If the fronts deserve 12" woofers so that you can play loud without distortion, why doesn't the center?

When I was playing with the BFD trying to EQ the sub and main channels (I have the crappy old MCACC that only has 5 bands) yesterday, I had the center connected and the front pair disconnected. I was playing an action movie and a LOT of the soundtrack was in the center. Gun shots, explosions, voices, music.

That suggests to me if any speaker needs to be beefier than others, it's the center (after the sub, of course).

In his scenario he should find a sub that at least plays well up to 100hz and set the crossover there at least since the rears can only go down to 83 which is more than likely embellished anyway.