How to adjust speakers

[rayh78]

Have HT setup with a Samsung C500 receiver and my old Polk rm6600 speakers with sub.
The samsung has a auto setup with a remote mic to set speaker size and calibrate.

It set the surround speaker sizes to small, but I remember Polk had said to set the receiver to large for the surround speakers.

What is correct?

Thanks

[jjp735i]

I'm not sure this will help, but my Yamaha has settings also for size of surround speakers, The manual states anything over 6 inch woofer to set to large, which I did, because my surrounds have 8 inch woofers.

I haven't been able to find much info on this, if it send more base to the surrounds or not.

[BadAssJazz]

Have HT setup with a Samsung C500 receiver and my old Polk rm6600 speakers with sub.
The samsung has a auto setup with a remote mic to set speaker size and calibrate.

It set the surround speaker sizes to small, but I remember Polk had said to set the receiver to large for the surround speakers.

What is correct?

Thanks

If the Polks are a sub + satellite speaker system, I would set all of the sat. speakers to "small." The point is to have your subwoofer handle the main duty of delivering the bass (LFE).

It's not about the size of the speakers per se, but their bottom end extension.

I doubt those Polk sat speakers can deliver convincing bass. You're welcome to test the theory. Just put on a movie like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, turn the volume all the way down on your subwoofer module and just listen to your speakers. Instead of the room-shaking boom of cannons, you'll likely hear the "Ppfft" of a hamster passing gas. Setting the sats to large will inevitably reveal the weaknesses in those speakers, as opposed to letting your sub shine.

FWIW, even with my main speakers -- which can put out respectable bass -- I configure everything so that my sub is doing most of the work.

[rayh78]

If the Polks are a sub + satellite speaker system, I would set all of the sat. speakers to "small." The point is to have your subwoofer handle the main duty of delivering the bass (LFE).

It's not about the size of the speakers per se, but their bottom end extension.

I doubt those Polk sat speakers can deliver convincing bass. You're welcome to test the theory. Just put on a movie like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, turn the volume all the way down on your subwoofer module and just listen to your speakers. Instead of the room-shaking boom of cannons, you'll likely hear the "Ppfft" of a hamster passing gas. Setting the sats to large will inevitably reveal the weaknesses in those speakers, as opposed to letting your sub shine.

FWIW, even with my main speakers -- which can put out respectable bass -- I configure everything so that my sub is doing most of the work.

I did finally get a response from POLK but dont know if to trust them. see below. does it make sense?

"Actually having the RM6600 satellites set to “large” is correct. The satellites contain a built in high pass filter preventing them from playing sounds below 120Hz. The problem when setting them to “small” is that the filtering imposed by the receiver would cause “double filtering” with the speaker’s built in filter causing a gap between the upper frequencies produced by the sub and the lower capability of the satellites."

[markw]

I did finally get a response from POLK but dont know if to trust them. see below. does it make sense?

"Actually having the RM6600 satellites set to “large” is correct. The satellites contain a built in high pass filter preventing them from playing sounds below 120Hz. The problem when setting them to “small” is that the filtering imposed by the receiver would cause “double filtering” with the speaker’s built in filter causing a gap between the upper frequencies produced by the sub and the lower capability of the satellites."What they ar esaying is that no matter what you set them to, they will not, under any circumstances, produce anything lower than 120hz.

Point in fact is that they are "small" speakers

The onus now is to assure that you can set your receiver's crossover to 120 hz. I don't know your receiver (Samsung isn't one of the big players in that market) so you should check your manual to see how to accomplish this.

BUT...

If your Polk setup is designed so that the front mains are connected to the subwoofer, then all bets are off. Yo would connect your receiver's front R/L speaker terminals to the sub's speaker inputs and your front R/L mains to the sub's corrosponding speaker outputs.

You should tell your receiver (again, check your manual) that you have NO sub and, on the receiver, set your speakers (the front's at least) to LARGE. Then, what Polk said will make some sense.

[edit] Looking at your speaker's manual (see here (http://www.polkaudio.com/downloads/manuals/home/RM6600Manual.pdf)) on page 3, they recommend the second scenario. You won't be able to use the self-adjusting feature in the recei ver then.

If you're really concerned about getting the "best" sound, I suggest trying them both ways to see which sounds better. You may actually prefer the Polk method, and that's perfectly fine, because they were designed to work that way. In either case, those satellites won't be producing any bass.

[michal89]

Nice one............!