What should my Denon receiver be set to when installing a powered subwoofer?

Question

I recently purchased a Klipsch ksw-10 subwoofer and was wondering what should my Denon avr-1907 receiver be set to, to get the optimum sound from my home theater system. I also have front and back Klipsch speakers and a Canton cd50 center speaker. Crossover settings? etc.

Answer 1

your subwoofer is powered so you should keep it set to powered/active instead of passive? is that what you needed to know?

Answer 2

hi.  One thing about HT speakers. They should be all the same brand and series. ie ( don't mix and match)  as for your sub  the fewer connections the better   purchase a good quality  sub cable . don't use parts , the less connections the better and if you want to make a sub cable use  a high grade copper R G 59  and solder the RCA ends on.   never use RF ends  with RCA  bullets its a gamble with quality .

Answer 3

(sigh)

You have a poor mix of different brand speakers and want us to advise you how to get optimum sound.

Get identical speakers all around. This is rather important.

Second: Tell your receiver all the other speakers are SMALL and that you have a powered subwoofer.  This will off-load all subwoofer frequencies to the sub.

Location (this is often critical).

Make a long RCA cable with CATV coax and "F-to-RCA-Male" adaptors from radio shack.

Move your main couch/chair away and place the subwoofer in this location.

Disable all other speakers except the sub.

Fire up a bass-heavy music track or a bass-heavy movie like the lobby shoot-out scene of "The Matrix".

Crawl along the floor near the corner with the 2 longest un-broken walls.  Listen to the sound.  There will be places where the bass is smooth & tight, other spots where it will be soft, other spots rough and boomy.  Mark the smooth/tight spots with post-it.

When you have picked out a few good spots (usually 1/3 or 2/5 along a wall), relocate the sub here. Re connect your 5 other speakers.

Use a Radio shack analog sound meter and the receiver test-tones to get the speakers:

- All 5 speakers to 75 db

- Subwoofer to 83 db

Fire up a movie (turn down the volume to taste as 75 db is use for calibration, but not for movie watching) and enjoy.