Quote:
Originally Posted by
Raymond Leggs /forum/post/13894231
What if your Front speakers have Huge woofers?
How loud do you watch movies? It may not be a problem. But at the volume most people listen to and drool over the bass, I would be extremely careful about watching anything with a lot of (low) bass (WotW, Flight of the Phoenix, Hot Fuzz, etc.) with any speakers set to Large, at any decent volume.
Here are some things to think about:
-A subwoofer has a single dedicated driver (or more) with hundreds of watts or more, and its sole purpose is to reproduce the frequencies if about 100Hz and below. This makes them much more efficient at producing low bass, and can produce it at much higher volumes. That's the point of having a subwoofer - more bass.
-Woofers in full range speakers may go pretty low, but there are very few that go down to 20Hz or lower. There is bass in movie soundtracks at these frequencies, and the sub can do a better job of reproducing them than speakers.
-Woofers in speakers, no matter what size they are, are sharing 50~100 watts with the full 20Hz-20,000Hz frequency range. The lower the frequency, the more power it takes to produce volume (has to move speaker cone further). Trying to reproduce low bass eats up watts and can take away from the available dynamic range of power from the receiver for demanding movie scenes. If your sub has 300w for just 100hz and below, and your receiver has 100w for 20Hz-20KHz, trying to push low low bass through the speakers is very demanding on the receiver compared to how efficiently the sub can do it. If the receiver starts running out of power, that can lead to clipping, which can damage your speakers (tweeters). So you may not blow the woofer/driver, but you could end up blowing a tweeter.
-The woofers in the speakers themselves are reproducing maybe 500~1000Hz all the way down to 20Hz (if set to large). So trying to reproduce lower bass tones can possibly create distortion in the higher frequencies the driver is reproducing. You can also get distortion from the bass frequencies the drivers try to reproduce. You may damage your speakers, maybe not.
-Woofers in speakers don't usually go as low, or as strong, as subwoofers. Meaning that a 35Hz tone going to the mains may not be heard, or heard nearly as loud, as it would coming through the sub. So even if your speaker can play down to 40Hz, can it play a 40hz tone at the same volume your sub can (maybe 100~105dB or louder)?
-The placement of the speakers is probably not the best location in to reproduce bass, where the sub can be moved to the optimal location for bass.
-If you have large woofers in your speakers, instead of setting them to large and making them try to reproduce all bass frequencies, down to sub-20Hz, you can set them to Small and adjust the crossover lower (say 50 or 60hz instead of 80Hz), so they play more mid-bass but still leave the lowest frequencies to the sub. But rather than going by how big the drivers are, get a setup disc like Avia, along with an SPL meter, and run a bunch of tests to see what crossover point gives you the smoothest transition between sub and speakers, least amount of dips, etc. (will help you correctly set phase setting on the sub too). Based on where the sub and speakers are, there may be cancellations and phase issues (or weird bass peaks coming from the speakers or sub) at one xo frequency that clear up by raising or lowering the xo point in the receiver 10Hz.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sivadselim /forum/post/0
Now, I'm sure someone is going to argue that sending the LFE to the front speakers will cause them to explode, but this is just not true. You may not be able to achieve reference levels, nor should you try, but, as I said, if you use some common sense you will not damage your speakers.
You contradicted yourself here. You say it's impossible to damage the speakers, then say you need to use common sense. Well, there are always surprises and unexpected.
And at any rate, common sense would say "let the sub play those 110dB 20Hz bass slams, not the speakers."
What if you have the speakers set to large, are watching a movie for the first time, and find some crazy bass you didn't know was there?
The point of a subwoofer is to take the strain of reproducing bass off of the receiver and the speakers, assign that to a dedicated piece of equipment, and get much more volume. If you don't care about any of that, then why use a sub at all? If you don't have a sub, that's one thing. I would just be extremely careful about volume levels and pushing the speakers too hard - not having the volume too loud.
