Pioneer Elite Sc-37 Ticking Me Off - Forced Frequency Cutoff

You have to tell any modern AVR your speakers are "small" to engage bass management. Small and large really means "bass management" vs. "no bass management". Without bass management engaged, only the LFE channel goes to the sub, and stereo has no LFE (low frequency effects, for movies) channel.

I am pretty sure you can change the crossover frequency in the SC-37, not sure how (and too lazy to go look it up in my SC-27 manual). What you cannot do, and this is a well-known issue with Pioneer, is set the crossover independently for different channels. That is, if you had mains caable of solid 40 Hz but surrounds only good to 80 Hz, you must compromise one or the other.

You might want to post in the SC-37 thread instead.

Look into the manual for subwoofer settings. On my Pioneer, there is a set up for subwoofer which is called "subwoofer plus" which tells the receiver to send the bass frequencies to the subwoofer as well when speakers are set to large.

^ The problem with that approach is it can lead to muddy bass if implementation is not very careful... Bass from the mains interferes with bass from the sub, leading to peaks and valleys in the response. It is something the OP can certainly give a try, however.

Trying to use a xo at or near the speaker's lower extension is not necessarily advantageous. Someone already pointed out speakers set to small means bass management and large is no bass management. A good sub should always do a better job with LF than the main speakers. Speakers set to Large can cause phase and cancellation problems. Sub plus setting with speakers set to large usually does not make the bass in the room better. The use of individual xo is not that advantageous. Can one really hear a difference in a xo of 70 vs 80. Consumers demanded that xo's for eaach speaker be included in avr's but Pioneer places more emphasis on phase control and total system integration. I have had 2 Denon avr's in the last two years and Audyssey did not lead to a better sound in my situation. As you approach the speakers low frequency extension, distortion rises.

^^^

this...

also, note to the op that when "giving it a try", that includes measuring the results by a method other than your ears... it is very easy for the novice (and the experienced, ftm) to mistake a peak for "good bass", especially since they never hear the big dips/nulls...

edit: even though you should be crossing at 80hz anyway, are you SURE there is not a lower option? iirc, there shold be a 50hz xover as well...
Edited by ccotenj - 9/24/12 at 2:58pm

Even my pioneer vsx919ah-k had an option to cross over at 50hz

You can either cossover at 50/80 and set your speakers to small or run the sub at plus. Even going by ear my system never sounded as good runnign bass out of both the mains and the sub. Always sounded better running out of the sub. sinse you are running a .3 system you have 3 subs?? I have no idea why you would want to run anything under 80hz from your speakers when you have a sub to do it.

How to set the crossover frequency is on page 116 of the SC-37 manual. I did not find crossover frequencies listed in the manual (when I searched on "crossover") and do not own an SC-37 so can't say what frequencies are possible. I strongly suspect more than just 80 Hz...

^^^

you are failing to understand the concept of bass management...

The Dolby site has (or did, have not looked recently) some good articles describing how bass management works. It has also been discussed once or twice here at AVS Forums...