Bass Management


I have Acoustic Research AR1's in front with powered subs.
I have full range non-powered speakers for surrounds, and therefore want all channels to be driven in full range.To do this, I must select "Large" speaker setting for my front powered towers in order to be able to select "large" for my surrounds. My Pioneer receiver will not allow for "small" fronts and "large" surrounds (if you select "small" fronts, all others including center, must be "small" also). In addition, AR strongly suggests that I use the Speaker connections for the mid/tweeter and the LFE
connection for the subs on my AR1's. When I use only the speaker connection, I still have PLENTY of bass volume on both music and movies, but I have recently plugged into SACD and DVD-Audio, which have the six channel output directly to the receiver's multi-channel input. One of these channels is specifically marked "subwoofer". My question is...what happens to this channel? Does the receiver mix the LFE info into all of my "full range" speakers, or is it only in the fronts, or is it possibly lost altogether? Please help me with any comments or suggestions!

Thank you!
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First, I'm currious as to "why you would want to run the powered mains as small and the rears as full range?" If anything, you should(assuming the mains are a full range speaker with powered woofers) run the mains as "large" and the rears(passive full range towers) as small! The powered toweres do a much much better job of handling "full range" than the passive rears!!! Unless the rears are ULTRA HIGH SENSITIVITY AND EFFICIENCY, this is definitely NOT AS DESIREABLE!(POWERED SUBS DO BETTER HANDLING DD/DTS BASS!).
BTW, how low do the AR1's play and how big are the bass drivers?...this makes a difference in how you might consider crossing them over, if at all.
Worse case scanario, I would run all the speakers as "small" and add a powered sub(s). You could to "full range" to all the speakers if the mains are large enough with big powered woofers. Normally, there's not so much bass info at the rears to sweat it that much if push comes to shove(although not ideal in my experience). Then again you could consider changing your reciever(which is always going to have less current capability to do proper justice to MOST ANY SPEAKER FULL RANGE FOR DD/DTS!(except powered speakers, or running "small + sub"). The possible exception is when you're running speakers that have very very high sensitivity ratings, like 96db+!
Bass management, If any for sacd along with dvd-audio would be in the player itself. Your receiver bass management is for DD&DTS. Music surround setup is a little different than for movie surround. I would only use monopole or bipole speakers for rears in a music set up. Also a lot of the pop and rock music that is out has deep bass in the rears as well as the fronts. It is not ment to be defuse sound as in movies (try Frankie goes to hollywood) and you'll hear what I mean, Also Pink Floyd dark side of the moon will be out soon as will lots of other stuff of this nature. If your player does not have good bass management or none at all then go to outlawaudio.com and get their ICBM, it is a bass management device that works very well, I think it sells for about $250. If you have full range speakers I would use them that way for multichannel music. Also it is much more important to have a very high quality center channel for music than it it for movies as a lot of recordings use the center for vocal only. Hope this helps.
(SoGood51)...With most receiver set up's there is no way to add the ICBM from OUtlaw to the system to all channels! Unless the receiver has "pre-out's" and "main-in's", you can't do this. If he was using pre-out's to another amplifier or something, he could indeed buy the Outlaw ICBM, and configure as he pleased using that device(simply setting the receiver to "large" for all speakers). But that's not the case from what's in question here I think.
foreverhifi, he only needs to hook his players 5.1 outputs to the ICBM and then the 5.1 outputs on the ICBM go to the 5.1 inputs on his receiver.
"Sogood51", can he do this? I didn't think you could. Funny, if that's the case, I guess it's workable then. I din't know you could do it that way, but I guess you are probably correct. Hummmm...that could work. I would like to ask Outlaw if this can be done. For some reason, I didn't think it was the same as a "pre-in" functionally.
"Sogood51", I just called Yamaha in Southern California(close to me), and they said that you CANNOT LOOP FROM YOUR PRE-OUT'S BACK INTO THE 6.1/5.1 CHANNEL INPUTS!!!! I don't think you'll probably be able to do this with any other receiver also...but could be wrong of course.
I just thought this might be helpful for anyone thinking of trying this to know!
Soogood51... correct me if im wrong but i think what
your saying is put the ICBM between the DVD-A
/SACD and the 6CH input on the Yamaha. Forever he is not saying to loop out and back in the reciever. The 6ch input is an analog bypass mode especially for DVD-A/SACD.
As far as I know (im 99.9999% sure) SOGOOD's theory will
work fine.
Voodoochile, yes that is correct, the other way to do it would be if you have pre outs for all channels. In thes case you would hook it in like you could a graphic eq.(between the pre outs and the amp in's. There are usually jumpers connecting them that you would remove. (do not lose them). In this hookup your player hooks into your 5.1 inputs on your receiver and the outlaw will do it's job just before amp. There is no loop back.
The ICBM does work as Sogood described and makes a huge difference on multi-channel SACD and DVDA. If the receiver has pre out/main in for all channels it will also work like Sogood stated. The ICBM has provision for stereo sub out as well. Sums all left side and 1/2 of center below individual crossovers and sends to left sub, same for right. Could be pretty neat for speakers will powered subs.