Help!

I'm a newcomer to the 950 relative to many of you guys. And a complete newcomer to home theater as opposed to audio.

One of the features that appealed to me about the 950 was its (apparent) bass management.

But according to my ears, the bass management is not what it appears. (The manual, by the way, is pathetic - a definite but not unexpected consequence of going with a cheaper supplier relying on off-shore [i.e. Pac Rim] manufacturing).

I've looked over the various threads and combined with my ears, do I understand the following correctly:

Despite the apparent great flexibility of the system, in fact the only choices are to either send all sub-80Hz frequencies to a subwoofer, OR to suffer double bass if one disables the overall bass management and attempts to micro-manage the crossovers.

To wit, I would like in a perfect world to send sub-60 from my mains to the sub and sub-80 or even sub-100 from my center. Can I in fact do this?

Sure you can Norman! Go to Main Menu and select "Speaker Config" and set the xovers for front, center and surround as you see fit (See page 22 in the Owner's Manual). Best...

Steve, thank you, but do I make this selection with the overall bass management toggle swtich "on" or "off"?

You might be confusing the analog 80 Hz (only) crossover, only applicable to the 5.1 analog inputs (switch on the back), with the software config crossovers, which have nothing to do with the 5.1 analog inputs, and everything to do with CD and DVD sources brought in digitally, and 2 channel inputs (except for bypass mode). ??

(Sorry about that sentence! )

In one sense you are correct: double bass with the analog crossover turned off, or no double bass but with the switch on. Just for the 5.1 analog inputs though.

I think much of the manual was written and edited here in the good old U S of A. That thar is American workmanship, feller.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited November 07, 2002).]

Norman, like Kevin mentioned, the switch is only used when analog bass management is required for a 5.1 channel source (SACD or DVD-A)which is connected to the 6 channel analog inputs for multichannel playback. See page 34. Good luck!

If you look at page 26 it says:



I'd say it's unclear at best how the low-pass is handled in the triple crossover config. I think soundhound was going to do some measurements to see what happened in various configs.


brianca..

[This message has been edited by brianca (edited November 07, 2002).]

I haven't bought that Dolby Digital encoding software yet. It costs almost a KiloBuck When I do, I plan to make a very extensive test disc.

I would tend to believe what that guy in the article you pointed me to says, that the low pass to the LFE takes place at the _lowest_ of all the low pass settings, which could result in a 'hole' in the bass region of the smaller speakers.

I've set all my speakers to 'large' except for my center to avoid this whole thing when playing DVDs. I set the center crossover to 150Hz so the image is sort of 'spread' to the left and right fronts, which takes the onus of the center speaker being a 'point source'.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited November 07, 2002).]

Thanks for your posts. As a newcomer to HT, I'm struggling to understand which controls work with which inputs! Sure makes my stereo pre-amp look simple.

I'm using an optical digital input from my CD/DVD player to the 950. The analog signals from CD, tuner, and turntable all go to my stereo pre-amp; I don;t use the 950 at all for analog stereo hi-fi.

Let's see if I have this straight:

(1) In this configuration, the crossover toggle on the back has no effect.

(2) To avoid double bass, I should select "small" for my mains and center channel, then select my desired crossover for each one.

Right? Wrong? In between?

In between.

For any input that is being digitally processed there is no double bass issue.