Speaker settings and Bass management

Posted by: Felty99 on 04 February 2012

I'm using my Denon 3800 blu-ray M/C analogue outputs fed into a Naim/Pioneer amp & processor and interested in how others have set up the bass management. I've assumed that setting all speakers to SMALL with sub set to ON is the preferred way of doing things.

I've read several HiFi News reviews, some going as far back as 2002, where Paul Miller has recommended setting all main speakers to LARGE with the sub set to ON, otherwise the bass management causes problems. Specifically he talks about the induced DSP of bass management causing distortion within the Front and Sub channels when 1 or more of the main channels are set to SMALL. A recent review citing thoughts on BM by him can be found on the Primare website http://www.primare.net/assets/_manag...2HFN212web.pdf.

Within my own system I did an A/B check comparing the 2 setups using Casino Royale and several music blu-rays, and felt that with all main channels set to large rather than small tonal timbre was more realistic, dialogue and effects became more open and easier to follow whilst maintaining plenty of dynamics and body. This was after re-checking db levels using an SPL meter within the player 7.1 menus.

Posted on: 05 February 2012 by tonym

The size of your speakers makes a difference to how this sounds best. It does seem to vary, depending on how the frequencies are split in your particular processor and personal taste.

When I used subwoofers I found it best to set the surround speakers to "Small", centre speaker to "Large" and main speakers to "Large" too.

Posted on: 06 February 2012 by Felty99

Thanks, I'll see how it sounds with the surround speakers set to small.

Anyone else using the multichannel analogue outputs for Blu-ray/DVD/SACD playback compared their setups in this way?