Earlier in this thread, Jerry said,

"The way Meridian works bass management is mostly as follows

small- allows you to select a cross over and the rolled off bass goes to the sub, or any speakers designated as large if there is no sub present.

large- no roll off at all. You can use the protection circuit for analog speakers. I believe the DSP speakers have a version of the protection circuit in it. what this circuit does is allow the full frequency range to be played- as volume increases, the circuit attempts to limit dynamic range (difference between loudest and softest moments) so as to protect the drivers in the speaker.

Mono sub- this means all the rolled off bass from any speaker designated as small goes here plus any LFE channel

LFE sub- only LFE goes to the sub- nothing else

No sub- rolled off bass from small speakers goes to any speaker designated as large. lfe goes to those speakers as well. no large speaker and no sub, I thnk then you lose that rolled off bass and I dont know where the LFE goes."


Now here is my situation. I recently upgraded from Nautilus 804s and HTM1 speakers in an L-C-R configuration to 3 Gallo Reference 3 speakers in an L-C-R configuration. I was crossing over the 804s/HTM1 on my 861v4 at 65Hz with a Velodyne DD-15, which sounded great. When I upgraded to the Gallo speakers, the bass sound was way off. The bass was thicker, slower, and muddy. I fooled with the EQ on the DD-15 for hours on end with no improvement. Then I tried to lower the crossover on the 861 from 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 hertz. Each time I discovered the bass became faster and more musical. Once I realized what was going on, I changed the speaker size from small to large to great effect. *** Note: the speed and bass extension of the Gallos is FAR in excess of what the 804s can provide, even though their specifications are very close. Also, the bass of the Gallos is FAR faster than the Velodyne DD-15, which is very disappointing considering what the DD-15 costs. ***0

I also noticed that whenever I had the left and right speakers or the left, right, and center speakers set to large with the sub set to mono, I still heard low bass (lower than what the Gallos provide) through the subwoofer with a Redbook CD (thus no LFE), which is crossed over at 30Hz. Is the 861 "copying" the 20-30Hz bass from the signal and applying it to the subwoofer? This is in contradiction to what Jerry has said above. Can anyone else verify this? I believe that even with three "large" speakers, the subwoofer crossover is still active, and thus presumably functioning; whereas with the subwoofer removed from the speaker layout, the crossover controls are grayed out and inaccessible, which makes sense.

Now my question is with regard to running my system with no subwoofer. If I set all 3 of my speakers to large, I assume that they will all get LFE bass from a DVD. But how much? Will each of the three speakers get 1/3 of the LFE or will all speakers get the same LFE bass signal, which would amount to 3x the total amount of LFE signal present in the source? I would like to believe that each speaker would receive 1/3 of the LFE signal for 3 speakers, 1/5 of the LFE signal for 5 speakers and 1/7 of the LFE signal for seven speakers, but Jerry has mentioned hearing too much bass in his full range digital speaker system. Could this be because the LFE is not divided equally?

If I remove the subwoofer, how many "large" speakers would I need to approximate the LFE output of the missing subwoofer?

If I remove the subwoofer, should I check the "Off" box on the crossover page for 5.1 LFE and Music LFE as well? Or will this be grayed out when I remove the sub from Music, Logic, and LFE settings?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Damon