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I've just been looking at the Dolby site, Dolby.com. Where it is recommended that you set smaller bookshelf speakers to 'small', allowing your subwoofer to deal with low frequencies. According to one industry expert, this processing will introduce distortion (obviously). Said expert also notes that HiFi loudspeakers have been designed to reproduce low frequencies for many decades (of course). There is obviously a limit to the size a loudspeaker can be in order to reproduce low frequencies faithfully, taking into account enclosure volume, driver diameter, sensitivity, driver excursion etc. Therefore anyone with a basic package with very small speakers should indeed set their processing to 'small'. But i would recommend anyone with even medium sized stand-mounters should try turning off their bass-management in a bid for higher sound quality. That is afterall what we spend our hard-earned money on, is it not? I'd appreciate any opinions on the above.

 

[Messiah]

I agree. I have always set the front speakers to Large and tuned the bass myself. Like you were told, speakers have been designed to produce bass so why stop them??

 

[Anonymous]

This information is completely wrong.

The distortions imposed when a speaker is trying to play too low or too high, and resulting distortions in the amplifier, are far, far worse than what the crossover might do to the sound.

Sound, in nature, music, or movies, can be from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. If your main speakers - all five of them - play that low, by all means set them to large. In 99% of systems, your main speakers do not go that low and your subwoofer can play the bottom two octaves with flatter frequency and power response.

 

[Anonymous]

There are three main distortions in a drivers motor assembly, of which non-linearity is arguably the worst. This is caused by the voice coil moving in the magnetic gap. The distribution of the magnetic field is not linear so when there is any excursion the force applied to the coil from the magnet changes. The greater the excursion, the greater the non-linearity. This causes negligible distortion in the amplifier.

So yes, when asked to play low frequencies, there will indeed be distortion in the loudspeaker.

The afformentioned expert is the editor of HiFi news magazine (i also read what-hifi ofcourse). He has designed measuring and test equipment which has become industry standard. All his reviews are accompanied by extensive testing of every aspect and specification of equipment. His knowledge of these things is extensive and he has measured said distortion. In his opinion this distortion should be avoided, as it is more detrimental than driver distortions (provided the driver is operating as designed without amplifier clipping). He has also measured the distortion caused by using automatic setup with supplied microphones in both the time and frequency domains. Which would shock any of us!. But that discussion is for another time.

Ultimately it is up to each individual which way their system is set-up. I'm just recommending the use of as little processing as possible.