Definitive Owners Thread - Page 948

Originally Posted by jlpowell84 

I just did drywall screws in the keyhole. At first I thought they were too heavy for that but it holds fine.

Originally Posted by ceh383 

Vibration over time may prove otherwise.
THIS is what I used...

Originally Posted by ceh383 

Vibration over time may prove otherwise.
THIS is what I used...

Originally Posted by jlpowell84 

I just did drywall screws in the keyhole. At first I thought they were too heavy for that but it holds fine.

Originally Posted by kerednai 

There should be a weight limit on the drywall screw so just make sure you are within that limit. Personally I use the drywall screw that will hold more than the weight of the item to be doubly sure its going to hold.

Originally Posted by rdclark 

I would never use a drywall anchor to hang a speaker. There are other easy solutions. If the speakers are on the same wall, for example, fasten a nicely finished piece of wood trim, like a chair rail, across the whole wall, firmly screwed to studs. Then you can hang the speakers (and other, decorative things) from anywhere on the trim.

If I were forced to hang a speaker on drywall without a stud underneath, I'd use a molly bolt. I've seen those plastic anchors pull out of drywall many times.

JM2c

Originally Posted by MNaudioguy 

Thank you all for the great help! I finally got my 8040 surrounds in the mail today. Now i just need to have monoprice deliver my wire, etc. I should be up and running by some point next week. One thing I noticed is the 8040s didnt come with any mounting hardware. What are people using to mount theirs speakers? I saw one person use a toggle bolt. Is everyone making sure they mount it to a wall stud or are others using other mounting options?

Originally Posted by UofAZ1 

Dvdwilly using two 5.25" drivers with a passive radiator is in no way going to get you sub 60Hz bass without adding a lot of distortion. The passive radiator at best should be treated as a port plug and not a separate driver. It's still just using the two drivers to get you mid bass and even then not great depths at mid bass. Even though the techs at DefTech claim my BP7001's can achieve 18Hz that's in an enclosed acoustic chamber with a high sensitive microphone picking up a signal the human ear can't hear. Real world testing puts the powered 1500 watt 10" driver at 27Hz before dropping like a anvil. I've tried my 7001's as Large and the bass response was bloated and muddy sounding and introduced distortion yet set to small and crossed at 40hz sounded tight and well controlled. My 7001's btw have far better bass response than the 8060's can ever achieve.

Personally I would rather have my speakers set to play tight and loud without straining the drivers harder than they can handle. An outboard sub is designed to handle extreme low frequencies without issue as compared to a way smaller driver or in the centers case two 5.25" drivers and a passive radiator. But if wanting your drivers to be pushed harder than they are designed for and you want to set to Large than by all means knock yourself out but even those who own the LCR3000 with the powered 150 watt 10" driver are smart enough to set to small with a 40 or even 60Hz crossover.

I have a separate Prosub1000 hooked up to my LCR2002 and even I won't set to Large as my Prosub with its 300 watt amp 10" driver and 10" passive radiator is only good to 37Hz so why strain the sub by asking it to produce 20-37Hz frequencies it can't handle and overdrive my sub. I set to small and cross to 40Hz knowing full well that the sub can handle those frequencies easily and then let my SVS sub handle anything below 40Hz.

Originally Posted by web05hitz 

Does anyone have a good recommendation on good in-ceiling rear surrounds to go with Mythos XTR-50s up front? I was looking at UIW RSS IIIs, but wonder if just an aimable single-pole speaker would be better.

It seems that within this forum, the recommendation almost universally is to run the fronts, center, and surrounds on “small” whether using Audyssey or doing a manual setup.

When you have to set a speaker on a ‘small’ [he makes quotation marks in the air] setting because they have small drivers that’s a challenge in getting that performance level up to where you want it to be.

Originally Posted by web05hitz 

Does anyone have a good recommendation on good in-ceiling rear surrounds to go with Mythos XTR-50s up front? I was looking at UIW RSS IIIs, but wonder if just an aimable single-pole speaker would be better.

When a full-range signal is panned to each of the loudspeakers in turn, and measurements are made at the listening position, we find hugely different bass responses for each of the loudspeakers. The differences are as large as 40dB in this room, and the biggest ones are all at low frequencies. The reason, the woofers each have very different acoustical “coupling” to the room resonances because they are in different locations. This will be different for every different room. Again, referring back to the “circle of confusion” the bass that was heard in the control room will not be the same as that heard at home. It cannot be.

Attempting to improve the situation by panning the bass to pairs of loudspeakers changes things, but does not remove the problem. Anybody think that an “ideal” room can help this? An anechoic room would, but none of us would wish to live in one.

And this is why bass management and subwoofers make sense. Now we can place the woofers where they perform optimally for a specific room with a specific listening position. We can place the satellites (a term that seems inappropriate for some of the large capable loudspeakers that we use in the high-passed channels) where they need to be for directional and imaging effects. In other words, we design the low-frequency portion of the system separately because rooms force us to do so. This is the only way that we can get good bass in any room, and have any hope of having similarly good bass in different rooms. Remember about preserving the art?

Originally Posted by ack_bk 

Small vs Large argument per Harmon:
http://www.harman.com/EN-US/OurCompa...ndRoomsPt3.pdf
Folks if you have a capable subwoofer, set your speakers to small and use proper bass management. Aside from the above, you are likely driving your speakers to distortion if you try to send low frequency bass to them, and you are certainly making your receiver work much harder and possibly having phase issues at the same time..

My Deftech speakers are rated to 22hz, and I have tried setting them to 40hz, 50hz, 60hz, etc. I have settled on 80hz as I have four capable 15" subwoofers in my room that can play flat to the low teens. I really like my Deftech speakers, but asking them to handle low frequency bass is too much..

Originally Posted by boondongle 

I'm interested to see the subject of speaker 'size' and crossover settings coming up as I recently upgraded my Harman Kardon HKTS-15 5.1 HTIB Front/Center channels (3.5" driver 1/2" tweeter in the satellites, Dual 3.5" Driver 1/2" tweeter in the center) with a ProCenter 2000 and 2x SM350 bookshelf speakers.

The HK stuff was all set to 100hz Crossover by my Harman Kardon AVR 247 EzSet EQ a while back. Plugged in the DefTech speakers expecting a huge difference and was kind of underwhelmed. I remembered to changed the crossover settings down to the recommended by DefTech (not THX) to 60hz and notice slightly tighter midrange.

My whole goal was to make it so I did less volume management while watching movies - raising the volume to hear the dialogue, then turning it back down when action scenes would happen. I have a 3year old so the only time I really get to watch 'daddy movies' is when he's asleep upstairs.

After doing some research I came across articles like this one:

http://www.audyssey.com/blog/2009/05/small-vs-large/

It seems like the speakers aren't to fault - it's due to the way a 5.1 system works, the theory is to let the sub handle the bass and everything else goes out to the other 5 speakers. Kind of a bummer and makes me wonder why people buy huge speakers if you're going to have a sub - unless you plan to do the 2 channel stereo thing and listen to only the two speakers.

I've listened to my SM350s in 2channel stereo and they do sound better by themselves than the old 3.5" driver HKS9 satellites I had, but if you turn the sub back on it's honestly hard to hear a difference. The speakers are getting broken in a bit now - have had them for a couple of weeks.

Not faulting the DefTech speakers at all. They sound very good for what they are. My old cheap 6.5" driver Aiwas out in the garage have a lot more bass - maybe a little boomy and not necessarily as good of highs, but they're 20 year old cheapies that have survived 4 moves and a flooded NYC basement.

My original dialogue problem isn't really solved - I've tried changing distance settings etc. The center dialogue sound isn't as 'harsh' when certain things like gunshots happen. But I still have to turn it up and down depending on the scene. Maybe I'm just getting old and deaf.

I've tried setting my crossovers to 80hz but it got closer to the sound of my original system. Put it at 100hz and it sounded a lot like my old HKTS system. If I did that I'd just sell the new ones and put my old speakers back in place.

I guess I'm curious as to why people would spend a bunch of money to get huge speakers when running a 5.1 or 5.2 or 7.1/7.2 system. If you're just going to toss out the ability to play those lower frequencies to a sub, why even bother? Just get a sub(s) and small satellites, right? I guess that's why the surround sound systems are so popular?

Sure am glad I didn't go on a shopping spree. I was about to get some floor standing speakers with larger drivers/subs. Unless the mid range is that much better I think I would have supposedly set them to small crossover set to 60 (or 80 if following THX recommendation), then just had drivers sitting in a floor standing speaker barely doing anything while the sub in the corner does all the work.

Again not faulting DefTech. It's just the way surround sound systems work. Just wish I would have read up on it a bit more before purchasing.

Maybe I need to find some time and try to do some A/B testing. Perhaps there's a more drastic difference than I remember.

My original dialogue problem isn't really solved - I've tried changing distance settings etc. The center dialogue sound isn't as 'harsh' when certain things like gunshots happen. But I still have to turn it up and down depending on the scene. Maybe I'm just getting old and deaf.

I have a Harman Kardon AVR 247. Works ok.

It's only rated at 50w per channel but with very low distortion. Considering I rarely get the chance to really open it up the power is good enough. For now. I've tried turning the center channel up and that sort of works but the overall seems out of balance. My Sub is set for LFE. I get plenty of non directional bass. My rear surrounds are still set to 100hz. I've got the left rear set to 4 feet, right rear to 3 ft (it's a little closer), front left/right at 9feet and center channel set to 10 feet (it's really only 8 feet away from the viewing position).

I was hoping a larger center would help. And it does a little. Not dramatically to my ears but somewhat.

He fronts are at +3, center at +4 (or 5), surrounds at +2, sub at 0. I vary these depending on source media.

I understand having large floorstanding speakers for 2 channel stereo. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but, for the 5.1 (and up) systems, it seems like everyone agrees all surrounds should generally be set to 80hz. If so, how much low end is a floor standing speaker with a powered sub going to output if it's set to crossover at 80hz? Is it less of a "hard cutoff" at 80hz and more of a gradual roll off of 80hz? So that way you can still take advantage of the low end abilities of those speakers?

I'm not an expert (obviously) so I'm really trying to understand.

And I have to say when I get the chance to really turn it up to around -15db or more the Def Techs do sound. much better than the satellites they replaced. Just have to turn em up to get there. Not so cool for Daddy time at night.

Thanks,
The village idiot

Originally Posted by ensignlee 

New member here.

Got two Definitive Studio Monitor 65's used from an ex-Magnolia employee who is here at avsforum for $650 including Sanus stands, and then picked up a Definitive Supercube I for another $500. Paired it up with a Denon 890/2310 . Sounds good to me so far.

I don't seem to notice the difference between using Audyssey and not, but maybe that's just me being dumb? :?

Thinking of going to a 3.1 . Any recommended center speakers? Was thinking the ProCenter 2000 but it's a little too tall and would slightly obstruct my view of the television. Maybe a Definitive Mythos 7?