Thread: Problems with subwoofer & New Onkyo TX-SR606

I hooked up my speakers to my new Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver and ran the Audyssey automated setup system the prescribed 3 times. While it did a good job with the surround sound speakers my Klipsch KSW-10 subwoofer sounds distorted. Is the only solution to turn the volume down or do I need to adjust some of the other settings (Phase 0 - 180, Low Pass 40-120, Level 1-11).

Thanks for your help.

Dennis

Looking to pick up a 606 myself. Still having audio problems? How is the SD DVD upscaling? I heard when connected hdmi in/out it upscales well. True??

True. It's an incredible receiver.

Originally Posted by Dennis Brown

I hooked up my speakers to my new Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver and ran the Audyssey automated setup system the prescribed 3 times. While it did a good job with the surround sound speakers my Klipsch KSW-10 subwoofer sounds distorted. Is the only solution to turn the volume down or do I need to adjust some of the other settings (Phase 0 - 180, Low Pass 40-120, Level 1-11).

Thanks for your help.

Dennis

I believe there is some text in the Onkyo manual that addresses this problem. I believe the solution was to manually turn down the sub volume and re-run. The phase switch is in case you hooked up the wires backward. You generally try flipping the switch and see what is giving the cleaner bass.

The cutoff is something you adjust in conjunction with your amplifier and speaker setup. Is the amp setup to do a cutoff, or are you passing through the full range of spectrum to the sub port. I believe the default is full range. You should set your cutoff frequency to the frequency where your mains are starting to drop off. The Onkyo will let you set a cutoff frequency for the main cutoff. If you have the typical satellites, a good cutoff is generally about 100 Hz and this is where you should set the cutoff for the sub as well.

Thanks for your help. I went into the Onkyo menu and made the following adjustments:

Confirmed that "full band" is the default setting.
Confirmed that the "LPF of LFE" is set at its default of 100hz. I set the low pass on the subwoofer also at 100hz.
I switched the phase to both positions and it didn't seem to make a difference.

In the Onkyo menu I noticed that the "Double Bass" function was set to "on." This boosts bass output by feeding bass sounds from the left, right and center channels to the subwoofer. Do you think this should be turned to "off."?

I believe you also recommended that I turn the volume on the subwoofer lower and run the automatic speaker setup function again. I'll do that in the morning.

Aloha from the Big Island,

Dennis

The manual says "This setting can only be set if the subwoofer enable is set to "yes" and the front setting is set to "full band". It also says this is not set by the automatic levelling (audessey). They say the double bass is useful when you have a subwoofer AND full range fronts.

This works for me as I am running Klipsch KG5's for mains. They have a 12" passive driver and an active 8" hard cone woofer. The bass is good, but not punchy. I enhance it with a Velodyne SPL12 sub. I actually have the double bass feature turned off and the front crossover freq set to 80 Hz. I have the crossover on my sub set to 100 Hz, giving just a bit of overlap.

Again, I don't know what you are running for main speakers, but if they are the typical satellites, you might want to set the settings in 2."Speaker Config" to a higher crossover frequency (100 Haz) and let the sub handle all the bass. This is explained in Advanced Setup/Speaker Setup which is on page 70 of my 605 manual.

The next reference comes from 'First time setup/Automatic speaker setup'. Right at the end (page 45 of the 605 manual) is a paragraph on using a powered subwoofer. It contains a bunch of weasel words about adjusting crossover frequency to full range or using the direct position to disable the low pass filter. It also says to have the level set to a point where the speaker can be detected, but not so high that it distorts.

That isn't where you are going to use the thing, so I am not sure what they are trying to accomplish here. Time for a confession. I did what they said, and then went and manually tweeked the sub to get it to a point where I was satisfied. All the adjustments I made were on the sub itself. Hey, its a tool, and you are the one who needs to be happy with the results.

I also made minor adjustments to the main and surrounds as well. I think the audessey setup gives you a good starting point, but the results aren't going to be perfect. I found the center volume to be a little low for good dialog. I also found the surround volume to be way too low for my tastes. I like having the starship sweep out of the rear channel and the audessey setup just gave ambience instead of an experience. The audessey setup did do a good job of setting delay and in getting relative levels correct in the left and right channels.

Good luck. I hope this helps, and let us know how tomorrow's experiments turn out.

I've been playing with the settings all morning.

1. Turning the double bass function "off" improved the performance of the subwoofer;
2. Changing the x-over settings didn't seem to have any effect. So I left them at 100hz on both the receiver and the subwoofer;
3. Played around with the volume levels-anything less than level 10 seems to eliminate the bass entirely--Level 11 REALLY distorts;
4. I followed your lead and raised the volume on the center and the surrounds.

I think it's probably as good as it gets.

Thanks so much for your help. You've taught me a lot.

Aloha and Mahalo from the Big Island,

Dennis

Originally Posted by jayn_j

I also made minor adjustments to the main and surrounds as well. I think the audessey setup gives you a good starting point, but the results aren't going to be perfect. I found the center volume to be a little low for good dialog. I also found the surround volume to be way too low for my tastes. I like having the starship sweep out of the rear channel and the audessey setup just gave ambience instead of an experience.

Audyssey always sets my center too low for movies. At least 3dB too low. Sometimes it's even too low for TV shows, but not nearly as much as theatrical movies. They must assume that everybody has a massve room and will be listening to movies at theatrical volume -- which to me simply isn't comfortable even if I didn't have to worry about disturbing anyone else. I've set the center permanently higher, as high as I can without making it too unnatural for music listening, but still have to bump it up a little more for certain movies with particularly large dynamic range. What really irks me is that I have both Dynamic EQ and Cinema Filter on, so there really shouldn't be an issue. In fact, dialog works better with Dynamic EQ off, but if I didn't want to hear the full dynamic range I wouldn't have bought a new receiver and new speakers!

First of all, I just would like say I'm sorry for the noobness of my question but I am in the dark when it comes setting up my bass frequencies. This is my setup:

My room size is 19'x13' ( I normally sit at the far rear of the room)

Receiver" Onkyo TX-SR606

Speakers: 5.1 setup with Energy Take Sat Bookshelf speakers, and an Energy S8.3 Subwoofer.(the subwoofer is setup to the far right of the receiver, and right of the front right speaker.

I used the automatic setup feature(using the microphone), and it all went well. I have my subwoofer setup with the crossover to 110hz, the phase control setup to 0 degrees. Now while everything sounds fine, I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to fine tune it.

Thank you in advance for any tips or links.