Will running my towers on Full Band ruin/damage them?

I don't know those specific speakers but to answer your question, no. You can run any speaker "full" but what you get out of it depends on the speaker design. If the speakers are rated down to 60 Hz (-3 dB) there is no point to do so however if you have the cross over set to 80 or above Hz.

Hello flick, good to see you are enjoying your set up. Running them at full band wont hurt your Pl's at all. They only thing it may hinder is the front sound stage... or your sub performance with imaging that is. As far as your 808 your fine there as well. I have a set of Pl-76's as I use them for surrounds now but I had them for mains at first ( I have the Klipsch KG 5.5's as mains now) but... I still use the Bic Pl-28 for center. I have played around with all types of setting's as I find 60 to 80 for the front stage seems to work the best... for me anyhow.

I am curious to see how the PL-89's are for bassas a 2ch thou? If you get a chance could you give me a little fed back? Place the setting on stereo so only 2ch are driven but you have to go into the setting and set it to "no sub woffer" .. I believe it autosets the mains as large. That way all the LFE goes to the mains. If by chance you cant or dont want to thats ok too, I am just curious to see how the 89's are. The reason I ask is because when I did that for my KG's it opened up the woffers to where "wow"... now I understand the bass the the others have mentioned about the KGs.

Anyhow... have fun!

If your AVR allows you to run the towers full range + output to the sub, try that to hear how you like it. And play around with the XO point of the sub.

It depends on the specific drivers, listening level, and what sort of low frequency peaks you get in your source material.

Maximum displacement limited output from a monopole in free space is 102.4 + 20log(one-way driver travel) + 20 log(driver area) - 20 log distance distance with travel, area, and distance all in meters (squared for area).

SPL at one meter for various example drivers around their linear limit (where the length of voice coil within the magnetic gap drops) is listed below for 80/40/20Hz.

Size Driver Sd (cm^2) x xmax (mm) 80Hz 40Hz 20Hz
5 1/4" Peerless 830873 88 x 3.5 88dB 76dB 64dB
6 1/4" Seas L16RN-SL 104 x 6 94dB 82dB 70dB
7" Seas W18EX001 126 x 5 95dB 83dB 71dB
8.5" Seas W22EX001 220 x 5 99dB 87dB 75dB
10" Peerless 830452 352 x 12.5 111dB 99dB 87dB

At your listening position you probably loose 3-5dB (it's not the 6dB/doubling you get outdoors due to the reverberant field) and there's a similar margin between xmax (around where the driver stops being linear) and xmech (where it runs into your mechanical limits) so those are close to the points where drivers stop making louder noises.

When reaching those limits some drivers will be damaged, often by their voice coil former banging on the motor back plate.

Got it!

No problem at all Flick, I just thought I would get your opinion is all as I was informing a friend of mine to look into the 89's is all, no need to run them any more than mid level . Have fun my friend

Instead of changing multiple settings switching between music/movies your Onkyo may have a Tone Control setting in the audio settings portion. You will have the ability to adjust bass and treble for all channels here. It's kind of like a simple equalizer, if you will. What I do is I run my sub a few decibels hot via sound level meter and bump the subwoofer up 2 points in the Tone Control menu. I find this a decent balance. It CAN get a bit boomy during some movies, and in this situation I have to bump down the tone control settings. It may just work with your current crossover scheme while bumping up bass to desired levels. Hope this helps.

I completely agree. I would like to be able to customize settings and save them, then switch on the fly. There is a complete difference between movies and music, and I always find the bass to be lacking in music unless you go to a ridiculously high x-over; which introduces a number of other problems. I found this method to be the best compromise I could find.

Don't most avrs allow you to save two different sets of EQ settings?

Does your Onkyo allow you to set an equilizer curve for all channels seperately? Even the sub? Mine does, you may want to look into that.

Hey Flick, I've got the 807 version of your 808, great AVR IMO! Like you, I do the switch back and forth.

My Audessy has my mains XO at 40Hz and sounds awesome in my set up. For 2ch listening, I hit the remote set up button and go to speaker config. I push "no" sub and the system automatically sets the mains to full band, and I have double bass "on" already.

That's all I need and I'm set for "Pure Audio" mode. My mains do an incredible job.

When back to movies, I just hit the remote again and set "yes" for sub and one click to put the mains back to 40Hz.

It's a small pain but the switch takes place in under 30 seconds, I don't even consider it a chore.

Glad you're liking your set up.

Pure audio by default on onkyo puts your mains at full range and turns off your sub. There is no reason to go through config menus, just switch to pure audio.

Yep, and the doublebass doesn't do anything in pure audio either.

Unfortunately pure audio does not use the subwoofer, which we do want to include in this application.

Thanks, that's good to know! I couln't find that anywhere in the maual


Thanks, that I did know. When my sub is on and mains set to small, the intention was to try and send extra bass to the sub.

There is no extra bass. When you set your mains to full range, and the sub is also connected, the double bass setup just splits the bass signal and sends it to both.
If you have the mains set to small, then the bass is only going to the sub.
If you want more bass output then you need the mains set to full range as well.

Thanks, my sub is more than capable. I set my "double bass" option to off, my mains are not full band.