Cross over frequency ???

OK.What I did was run the mains and rest of the system ie. center and surrounds xover at 80hz.With the sub off I listened to a few well known sound tracks.Trying to ignore the unbalance sound it did not have that chesty sound I disliked before.It was tight and free from the peaks in the bass.It would appear that is my starting point.It also had tons of head room and only began to show signs of distress above 100db,well above my usual listening.Setting the xover higher also yeilded the same results.Gave me more headroom and my 6.5 inch drivers were very happy.I will go rent a pro xover this weekend and ease the subs into the system until I feel they are making a contrabution not an over statement.I never tryed to solve this problem from up high first and then the subs.This makes so much sense.Keep in mind I am stuck with the 24db high pass coming out of the processer.Thanx I'll keep you guys posted.

In my system the processor does both the high pass and low pass.Your advice if I understand it correctly is to use the processor to xover the ported monitors and a seperate xover to xover the sub ? I use Paradigm Mini MK3's as mains and center.The extra goes to the ES ch.The subs both sit in the same corner stacked.Funky stuff happens when I try to seperate them.The manual for my EAD say it uses a 24db/oct linkwitz riley.Seems steep enough to do the job ? The room has a very robust sound with films.I am very happy with it but my mini's tend to not like the lows of HT.80hz just didn't cut it.Oh well.

Problem #1 : My processor will allow me to adjust xover freq. but,that freq. is the hi pass and low pass.It won't let go of the LFE channel to adjust out board with out doing it it self.The unit is an EAD Ovation-8.I can run the front three large but that would entail three outboard xovers.I can't remove the low pass xover for the sub and fear redundence of cascaded xovers.I can run the high pass at 80hz (which means the bass has that freq.at the xover point ) And try to roll the bass off with an out board third octave eq. .But we are still cascading eq's.Rane makes that cool THX44 that eq's the 80-800hz for the front LCR ,to tame the xover bump.I'm going to sleep on it.Thanx.

Lions and tigers and bears oh my.Since the problem is in the sub woofer and associated electronics and the monitors seem to be doing fine on their own this is where I will begin.I will use the parameteric to tame room modes and an eq ( third octave ) to roll it off.Who the heck knows.I wish my processor had more bass management.........

To whom it may concern.Problem solved.The problem with switching xover freq. on the fly is that the room modes increase in amplitude as xover freq. increase in frequincy.Example...I switch from 65hz to 80hz and I now have to take into account the new freq. the sub is producing.One of them is an octave above the killer 42hz mode, smack dab in the middle of the xover point.Once I ran some sweeps with the trusty testocilator (thats not a joke,its a tone generator)and the rat shack meter I quelled some junk at 80hz and above.Alls well again and the system has gained some headroom with the new higher xover point.Nemo sounded outragous.