I've got a pair of Triton 2 towers I'm almost extremely satisfied with, except my room (living room, not designated listening) has some less than optimal attributes that really makes the bass response suffer. The bass output gets very peaky around 40Hz, giving a sort of one-note-bass feeling.

The speakers and listening position are in a 12' equilateral triangle. The speakers are 12" out from the front wall, and there are no walls directly to the side of either speaker, rather there are openings out to corridors left and right.

My previous speakers did not have internal subwoofers, so I ran them as 'small' and used two external subwoofers carefully placed and DSP time-aligned in the room to give the smoothest response. This technique does work extremely well both for music and LFE, but I obviously can't relocate the subwoofers built into these Tritons, so I would like to add a 3rd subwoofer elsewhere in the room to help fight these room modes.

I'm having an issue trying to best setup the receiver to deal with this scenario. Here's what I've come up with:

1) Most commonly recommended, set the Tritons as "Large", "Subwoofer: Yes", "LFE" mode. Connect the sub preout to the external sub, and run only speaker wire to the Tritons. For 2-channel/music only the Triton subwoofers are active. For movies/LFE only the external subwoofer is active. This method is fine for some, but doesn't achieve my goals of running multiple subwoofers at once to improve room modes.

2) Variation of 1, set the Tritons as "Large", "Subwoofer: Yes", "LFE" mode. Then split the sub preout to the external sub, and to the LFE inputs on the towers. This works for the LFE track, as all 3 subs will be active. However for 2-channel content (music) only the Triton subwoofers will be active, not the external, so this isn't a complete solution to me.

3) Adressing the primary issue with option 2 above, keep Tritons "Large", "Subwoofer: Yes", but enable "LFE+Main" (or double bass) mode. This will send everything below the LPF to the external subwoofer(s), so all three subs are active for both 2-channel content AND LFE content. Unfortunately now we're 'doubling' the bass to the Tritons on music, once from the full-range speaker-level input and again from the LFE input. This is undesireable.

4) Taking a different approach here, set the Tritons "Small", "Subwoofer: Yes", in regular "LFE" mode. Choose a crossover point for the Tritons, e.g. ~80Hz. When the fronts are set as 'small', the AVR sends the remainder below the crossover point to be summed with the LFE on the subwoofer preout. We split this preout to both Tritons and to the external subwoofer. Now, theoretically, everything below the crossover point should play on all 3 subwoofers, both for 2-channel music as well as the LFE track on movies. It doesn't really match with what's in the manual, but is there anything particularly wrong with this setup?

Hi Creyc,
VERY good questions here and I know exactly where you are coming from!!!!
Or I think so, I have been known to misunderstand things some times, just ask my wife.
I have the Triton 2s up front and Triton 3s in the rear. And I added a ForceField 5 in the middle of the rear of my home theater.
I have tried all the above as you so clearly laid out.
I am now going with the 4th option with a splitter on my sub outputs, but set my crossovers on the Tritons to 40 Hz. I have LFE running to all speakers, the T 2s, the T 3s and the FF5. (I have T 7s as rear surrounds, 7.1 system, but they do not get the LFE input).
I like the sound better than the 1 - 3 choices. But am not totally there.
For movies I am totally happy. For deeper Cello and Upright bass on down to deep organ pedal notes I am not quite happy yet.
I still need to tame the bass a little more in my room (thinking I will go with a Emotiva XMC-1 and correct the room with Dirac).
And then I hope to adjust all the players to play more seamlessly together.
Let us know how you are getting on with your experimentation. I think you are on the right track. Eager to hear your experiences.
And happy listening, God Bless,
Wayne

Re-reading the review from Stereophile, I noticed they took nearfield measurements of the highs/mids, as well as active subwoofer drivers (blue) and passive radiators (green), to produce the combined bass response (red).



With the crossover center point around 150Hz in this graph, would it make any sense to use a higher crossover in the AVR, say 80Hz or 100Hz or higher? I will have to experiment and see.

I realize adding an external subwoofer to a Triton system is not exactly a trivial endeavor, as the wrong phase and timing can easy do more harm than good for the overall system response. Nevertheless I think it's worth pursuing, at least for me.

I'd like to hear an answer to this question myself. This question has been asked before, but a definite answer has never been given. Below is the only suggested way to do set up with powered bass Tritons, running LFE input cables, and no other external subwoofers.

1. Set Triton L/R mains to large (full bandwidth, no crossover )
2. SET subwoofer to YES
3. Subwoofer crossover setting ( if there is one in your bass management menu ) should be 120 HZ and to Bypass.

Now the question is, " how do you add an external sub to the mixture"? This seems to be a somewhat complicated question.

#2...?

OK gang, let's just call the Tritons the main speaker (ignore built-in sub, its just our way of making the speaker really full range). How do we add an outboard sub? Same way as with any other speaker, set the Tritons to SMALL and add an external subwoofer. LFE/Sub-out goes to external sub only. The standard 80Hz crossover is a great starting point for maximum use of the outboard sub and maximum improvement in system dynamics. Lower will give you less of both, which may not be helpful if you're dealing with a room node above the lower frequency.

So where's the rub?

1) Sub location and center crossover frequency can be an issue if center is needed to be crossed over above 80 Hz, as is the case for a SuperSat center.
2) You will be wasting the low bass capability of the Tritons (the bigger the model, the more wasted) and ignoring the benefit of: a) no subs in the room (which may not matter to many of you but is a reason many buy or powered Triton towers), and, b) exceptionally well integrated bass.
3) If its a Triton One system, it will have to be a mega-buck sub (or a couple really) to equal the performance of the Triton One by itself.

Hope this helps a little.

So let me get this straight...it is not possible to run the powered T's and external subs simultaneously, with all subs being utilized...in other words, I have 2 T2's and 2 standalone subs...I can't have all 4 subs playing in unison? It's either the T2's playing low bass, or the standalone subs playing low bass (one or the other) but not together?