Hi All,
I've been offline this board for a couple years. I have an Anthem MRX720 receiver and Triton One's. I listen primarily to two channel stereo but have a surround setup. My question is whether or not I should buy a separate sub-woofer? Will the performance be really much better?

The room is challenging, lots of furniture so Anthem Room Control(2) has been helpful to fine tune the dynamics. I currently have my bass volume at 1 o'clock. I have the T1's set to Large Front, with no LFE connection or sub setup on the MRX. This I recall was the recommendation from Goldenear. Overall I am happy with the MRX (even Play-Fi !) and the T1's. However I feel there could be some low end I'm missing even with two channel audio.

Comments, suggestions, experiences welcome!

Best,
Mark

First, before we start, we have a huge amount of respect for Anthem's ARC and its creators. Used properly, we feel it is one of the best. Please note, from Sandy's setup tips, that he strongly suggests using any room correction only after the system has been properly setup manually, following the tips and manual. Then run room correction only if you feel something within the room-affected frequencies is amiss. Did you do this? How did it sound then? Was bass still lacking?

The system setup you describe is correct (large mains, no crossover), but we do suggest using LFE connection for multi-channel material playback (sub then set to Yes).

ARC can do a good job of reducing low frequency room anomalies if they are an issue. It is important before running ARC to make sure the bass level control is not up too high for ARC to run properly. That is often the problem with unexpected ARC results. Best to run the ARC test sweep on each speaker and play with the bass level control on each until you get a linear response curve (the low end part of the graph looks similar to the mid and high frequency in level (height) on the graph). THEN run ARC.

A few ARC tips to follow:

• - Make sure to force no crossover on fronts and subwoofer to yes


• - Make sure to reduce the ARC default correction frequency limit to something close to the room's Schroeder Frequency, and certainly no higher than 500 Hz (the default is 5000 Hz)


• - After running ARC play some STEREO (2.0) music tracks with no surround decoding and adjust the speakers' bass level controls to taste. Then, assuming you wired the LFE inputs and set subwoofer to Yes....


• - Put on an Atmos track and adjust the Anthem Receiver's subwoofer level (which will be LFE track only) as desired

This scenario is the only way we can guarantee the expected results. Adding outboard subs to augment LFE channel bass only is easy and perhaps desirable if movie bass (effects channel) is not adequate, but will have no impact on stereo 2 channel music playback. If you are looking to add bass to all channels, there is really no good solution that involves fully utilizing the subs in the Tritons and maximizing the speakers' overall full-range performance.

Hello Mark,

Your questions are interesting.

I have a question: When you listen to music, are you listening at loud volumes or softer volumes?

I do not have References, but I do have Ones.

I drive my Ones with a 2-channel stereo amplifier and use them exclusively for listening to music. I have found that a change from a volume setting of "minus 45 to minus 35" makes a huge difference in the bass level from my Ones.

Hence, my question about your normal listening volume level and perceived bass response.

Best,

Art

Hi Mark,

I have a similar size room with T1s in front, T2+ sides, SCXL, and four 7000s for Atmos. I have the mrx1120 receiver. I do have the Lfe connected to the four tritons. The moderator has given you great advice on using ARC. I would only add that for me I am happy with the bass from the four towers and don’t feel I need a stand alone sub.

Happy listening, Hagman

Thank you Hagman and all, appreciate the sanity check!