Outlaw Audio 970 - Manual (Page 28)

8 Outlaw Audio
Owner’s Manual
Subwoofers
The fact is, proper subwoofer placement is more difficult than placing any
other speaker. Some say that you should place the sub away from a wall, other
experts advise putting the sub near a wall, still others (probably not experts)
just tell you to put the sub in a corner. Well, they’re all right. And they’re all
wrong! It all depends on the size, shape and furnishings and floor coverings
in the room your sub will be sitting in.
The culprits here are called “standing waves” that are generated every time you
introduce a sound in a confined area. They create pressure zones in all rooms
that are most noticeable in the bass frequency range. And they usually result
in too much “boom” in some parts of the room and not enough real bass in
others. In addition, these seemingly random effects are very difficult to predict
unless you’re a trained acoustician with a lot of experience.
But here’s some practical advice from Outlaws who’ve tamed many a room to
be downright docile:
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Never put your prime viewing/listening position tight against a wall
Walls create “high pressure zones” that will have your ears begging for bass
relief in short order. Likewise, a viewing/listening position in the center
of the room will most likely result in too little bass. So make sure your
comfy couch is somewhat free-standing in the room. (And that will give
you plenty of leeway to place your surround and back surround speakers
more advantageously, too.)
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Put the subwoofer where your ears are!
Forget about the advice to move the subwoofer all around the room until
you happen to find that one magic spot where the bass sounds “right,
tight, with lots of bite.” Instead, find this ideal position the Outlaw way.
Place the subwoofer on your favorite chair or couch (watch those spikes!)
then get down on your hands and knees and move around the room until
you hear the best bass. That’s where you’re going to put the subwoofer!
Simple, isn’t it?
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Consider using more than one sub
Even when you’re feeding the same signal to each one, multiple subs placed
in different parts of the room will go a long way to taming those standing
waves and will help to create very even and natural-sounding bass that just
seems to go all the way down to the, pardon the pun, sub-basement!
Speaker Size Configuration
Since you’ve just configured all the inputs you’ll be using, it’s time to move on
to the next item on the Main Menu: Speaker Size. Here, you tell the Model 970
how many speakers your system has and what their bass reproduction capa-
bilities are. When you see the words “Large” and “Small,” just think “lots of
bass” and “not much” respectively. (The industry’s use of the confusing term
“size” comes from the early days of HiFi when you just couldn’t get decent bass
response from small speakers.)
NOTE: To avoid errors, the Model 970 does not allow some speaker
combinations. For example, you can set the subwoofer to "none" only
if you have large front speakers. If you have small front speakers, the
subwoofer setting will automatically be "yes." If you have no side
surround speakers, the back surround channels are automatically
deactivated.
To enter settings for speaker size:
1. Press the MENU button on the front panel or the remote to display
the Main Menu.
The Main Menu appears on-screen:
MAIN MENU
> INPUT CONFIG
SPEAKER SIZE
SPEAKER X-OVER
SURROUND CONFIG
CHANNEL CALIBRATION
DELAY ADJUST
SYSTEM CONFIG
EXIT
. Move the cursor to SPEAKER SIZE by using the and buttons
on the front panel or remote.
. With the cursor pointing to SPEAKER SIZE, press SET on the front
panel or the remote.
The Speaker Size sub-menu appears:
SPEAKER SIZE
> FRONT L/R :SMALL
CENTER :SMALL
SURR L/R :SMALL
SURR BACK SIZE :NONE
SURR BACK OUT :NONE
SUBwOOFER :YES
RETURN TO MAIN MENU
. Use the and buttons on the front panel or remote to move to
each line on this menu.
5. Press the and buttons on the front panel or remote to change
the setting so that it shows the correct speaker size for each
position.
Select LARGE if the speakers at the selected position are full range speak-
ers, capable of reproducing the full spectrum of sound including low
bass frequencies. These speakers are typically physically large, but they
don’t have to be as long as they can handle the bass.
Select SMALL if the speakers are the popular “satellite” type with limited
bass capability that typically bottoms out between 80 HZ and 150 Hz.
Select NONE if there are no speakers at the position you are entering
the settings for. Remember that you can’t enter “NONE” for the front
left/right speakers, and you won’t be able to access the “7.1” modes unless
you chose a speaker type for the SURR BACK Speakers.
System Setup