Replaced broken klipsch promedias with new stuff

[poopy]

So after unsucessfully attempting to repair my klipsch promedia ultra subwoofer/amp, I bought a yamaha rx-v365 receiver and a bic v1020 subwoofer, retaining the klipsch speakers. Either something I bought is defective, or my expectation for what the bass would be like was way too high. I have to set the LFE level setting on the receiver as high as it goes, add +6db (out of 10db) to the bass tone control, and crank the volume to 8 or 9 on the subwoofer in order to get only mediocre levels of bass. If I go any higher with the volume on the woofer, the bass gets muddled. Is this normal?

The bass on the promedia set up (while it worked) was capable of going much louder and deeper than what I have now.

 

[PM650]

What do you have the crossover set at on the sub & receiver? Adding 6dB with the tone control only boosts 100Hz, so it'll just make it sound more boomy.

 

[Tosicc]

I recently got a KSW-10 with a Sony DG510 and I'd say I'm somewhat underwhelmed with the bass also.. Not as in the Z2300's I was using before were comparable/better (ha) but I got the Klipsch because I remember loving the volume and clarity of the sub on his Promedia 5.1... That was many years ago and maybe I'm just too picky.

What sound card are you using to connect the receiver and do you have an encoder enabled?

 

[poopy]

I have the crossover set to 120hz.
I took off the feet on the subwoofer and that made a huge difference in terms of getting the sound of the sub to coincide with the speakers. With the feet on, it was a total mess. I can now listen to music and whatnot. This subwoofer needs more of a "pow" to it.

What sound card are you using to connect the receiver and do you have an encoder enabled?

I'm using an onboard adi 1988 and using the stock Vista sound drivers because ASUS totally sucks at releasing driver updates for their onboard audio. I'm also running an optical spdif cable from the card to the receiver and the sound from the speakers are certainly a lot better with the receiver powering them, but the sub is underwhelming. I'm not using any codecs.

 

[obobski]

the receiver is basically trying to cross the sub in, there is no dedicated LFE channel (unless you've got DDL or DTS:C (you also need these for 5.1)), try analog connections, and adjust the LF in the drivers as well, might make a difference

as far as a lack of power, the PM Ultra sub, iirc, is a dual 8" affair, fairly punchy, most 10" - 12" HT units should be comparable, but won't have that upper LF "boom" that is so familiar with Logitech and Klipsch subwoofers, you might just be missing that hump

also, how is the sub placed? is it in a corner or out in the middle of a room? carpet or hardwood? etc

 

[poopy]

It's placed against a wall on a hardwood floor. There isn't an available corner in the room, so it is mid-way across.

 

[obobski]

It's placed against a wall on a hardwood floor. There isn't an available corner in the room, so it is mid-way across.

ok, so that shouldn't be a problem (was just hoping you didn't have it sitting in the middle of a gynasium or something, and were wondering why you can't hardly hear it)

I'd try the analog connections, or if you have some other source for the receiver (like a DVD player) that can put 5.1 out, try that, its probably just some silly configuration setting that you haven't seen yet (or something equally mundane like that)

 

[poopy]

After a lot of fiddling, I got the bass to output at a decent level. However, I ran into a new problem. My onboard sound card doesn't have dolby digital live or dts connect and so games are all in stereo. I installed analog cables from the computer to the receiver, which solved the stereo-in-games issue, but brought about yet another problem! There is no bass management for analog connections in my receiver. Thus no subwoofer output playing stereo sources, and playing sources with a dedicated channel for the sub (like games) there is output. I thought this wouldn't be an issue, since I am using the analog connections only for games anyways, but it turns out that it is because some games apparently use stereo music and other various non-dedicated channel effects. Ugggghh.

The vista audio driver includes a bass management option in the Speaker Properties menu, but for it to appear you must uncheck the "full range" boxes (i.e: set the speakers to small) when you configure them in vista. The problem is that for some reason setting the speakers to small in vista makes them sound muffled, even though the speakers that I'm using are indeed small.

Is there some sort of registry hack that would allow me to have the speakers set to large in vista while keeping the bass management option? Otherwise, I'll have to spend more damn money on either a new soundcard or speaker wires to use the high level input on the subwoofer.