Do you guys use small theatre large theatre or living room?

[Scaff]

I have a set of 5.1 Mordaunt Short Carnival series, the sub has a frequency dial at the back for 50 Hz to 150 Hz, should I set this to 80Hz, I have it at 60 Hz since new, watching Bluray movies is pretty good. Should I set my Harman/Kardon AVR crossover for LFE to 80 Hz ? My bi-wired speaker set can go as low as 55 Hz, I think, so should I set crossover for them at 60 Hz or 40 Hz, these are the only setting available on my AVR.

The Mordaunt Short Carnival set is the best investment I ever made, great quality at reasonable price, from $200+ per pair.

Do you have the floor-standers all round or the bookshelf Carnivals at the rear?

As the bookshelf and center in the carnival range will not get down to 40Hz (90Hz and 80Hz respectively I believe), given that I would stick with 60Hz as the crossover or risk some of the LFE getting nasty via the speakers when the sub should be handling it. Ideally you would want the LFE pushed to the sub before it reaches the cut off for your worst performing speaker (from a bass frequency view) so in this case around 90Hz, but it doesn't look like your AVR is going to let you.

I'm fortunate that my AVR will let me set the crossover by speaker across a 40Hz to 200Hz range, makes life much easier.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Do you have the floor-standers all round or the bookshelf Carnivals at the rear?

As the bookshelf and center in the carnival range will not get down to 40Hz (90Hz and 80Hz respectively I believe), given that I would stick with 60Hz as the crossover or risk some of the LFE getting nasty via the speakers when the sub should be handling it. Ideally you would want the LFE pushed to the sub before it reaches the cut off for your worst performing speaker (from a bass frequency view) so in this case around 90Hz, but it doesn't look like your AVR is going to let you.

I'm fortunate that my AVR will let me set the crossover by speaker across a 40Hz to 200Hz range, makes life much easier.

I have the front Carnival 2 book shelf one, the rear are the tower Carnival 8, and center is Carnival 5, Sub is Carnival 9. My old Harman/Kardon AVR has crossover setting from 40 Hz to 200 Hz for each front, center and surround, the Sub can use any of those.

I set my AVR speaker size to "Large" as the Carnivals are mostly full range speakers, Carnival 2 Front has 55-20 kHz response, Carnival 5 Center has 80-20kHz, Carnival 8 Surround has 39-20kHz, Carnival 9 Sub has 25-150hz. The fronts, center and surrounds are bi-wired. The SUB uses preout from AVR and using LFE+L/R setting as I have Large speaker setting.

Currently I set the crossover on my AVR like so : front at 40Hz, center at 80Hz, surround at 40Hz and SUB at 80Hz ( using center setting ). I tried 60 and 80 for the front, but I feel there are some frequencies being cut off. So I stuck with 40Hz.

I have another question, my SUB has frequency and volume dial at the back. I always set the volume at 50% as I think it's very loud already when watching movies or playing games. What about the frequency dial ? It has no notches or values in between-hard to discern where is 80 or 100, just 50 on one end and 150 on the other, I set it at 150 as I wanted the SUB to produce all frequencies from 150 and below ( great for music but not very good for movies ) Should I set this to 80Hz ? Thanks for replying

 

[Scaff]

I have the front Carnival 2 book shelf one, the rear are the tower Carnival 8, and center is Carnival 5, Sub is Carnival 9. My old Harman/Kardon AVR has crossover setting from 40 Hz to 200 Hz for each front, center and surround, the Sub can use any of those.

Why use the floor-standers at the rear? Common convention would have them at the front with the bookshelf at the rear, most audio mixes are front biased (films and movies) and as such you will almost always get the most out of your set-up with floor-standers (and the wider range they offer) at the front.

I set my AVR speaker size to "Large" as the Carnivals are mostly full range speakers, Carnival 2 Front has 55-20 kHz response, Carnival 5 Center has 80-20kHz, Carnival 8 Surround has 39-20kHz, Carnival 9 Sub has 25-150hz. The fronts, center and surrounds are bi-wired. The SUB uses preout from AVR and using LFE+L/R setting as I have Large speaker setting.

Does your AVR let you set the speaker size to large by channel or just overall? Often setting speakers to 'large' locks out some or all of the crossover adjustment and for your bookshelf and center you need to get that set right.

What HK model is your AVR?

Currently I set the crossover on my AVR like so : front at 40Hz, center at 80Hz, surround at 40Hz and SUB at 80Hz ( using center setting ). I tried 60 and 80 for the front, but I feel there are some frequencies being cut off. So I stuck with 40Hz.

Personally I would try moving the floorstanders to the front and setting them to 40, the bookshelf to the rear and setting them to 55/60 and the centre set at 80.

The sub would then need to be around 80~90 (I would go for 90 as that way you get some overlap and you don't get anything lost).

I have another question, my SUB has frequency and volume dial at the back. I always set the volume at 50% as I think it's very loud already when watching movies or playing games. What about the frequency dial ? It has no notches or values in between-hard to discern where is 80 or 100, just 50 on one end and 150 on the other, I set it at 150 as I wanted the SUB to produce all frequencies from 150 and below ( great for music but not very good for movies ) Should I set this to 80Hz ? Thanks for replying

Again I would set this to around 80~90hz to ensure a good spread with the rest of the speakers, but I would suspect that you will get a good difference by moving the floor-standers to the front.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Why use the floor-standers at the rear? Common convention would have them at the front with the bookshelf at the rear, most audio mixes are front biased (films and movies) and as such you will almost always get the most out of your set-up with floor-standers (and the wider range they offer) at the front.

My TV is on top of a large cabinet, so the bookshelf speakers are between the TV. The tower would not fit anywhere near I can adjust individual speaker set volume on my AVR, front, center, surround and LFE have their own volume setting, that's how I equalize the volume.

Does your AVR let you set the speaker size to large by channel or just overall? Often setting speakers to 'large' locks out some or all of the crossover adjustment and for your bookshelf and center you need to get that set right.

What HK model is your AVR?

Large is global setting, which lock the SUB with LFE+L/R, LFE only or none. Small has SUB or none for the LFE. Crossover adjustment is not influenced by speaker size, 40,60,80,100,120,150,200 can be selected on both speaker size. My AVR is old one AVR145, a small power entry level from HK, planning to get bigger one once this one die, maybe not for a few years more, this one is tough, no issues for the last 3/4 years.

Personally I would try moving the floorstanders to the front and setting them to 40, the bookshelf to the rear and setting them to 55/60 and the centre set at 80.

I can only set the front to either 40 or 60, I guess 60 is the closest, 5 Hz differences would not hurt. Center is at 80 Hz.

The sub would then need to be around 80~90 (I would go for 90 as that way you get some overlap and you don't get anything lost).

Again I would set this to around 80~90hz to ensure a good spread with the rest of the speakers, but I would suspect that you will get a good difference by moving the floor-standers to the front.

I have it at 80Hz on AVR, what about on the SUB itself, the dial at the back ? I should put it at 80Hz as well, but this will be hard, there is no indicator of where 90 is Might have to go by feeling and hearing.

I can't really move around the front and surround set, unless I put the tower at the front of the TV cabinet not a good sight. Thanks for the advice though, cheers.

 

[Hotrails17]

Living room. Although, I've not tried out any of the other options to be honest... I'm using a 5.1 system too. Maybe I should try them out...

Change to Large Theatre and you will thank me when you turn up the volume