Paradigm XR11, Owner'S Manual

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15
FINE TUNING
Once you have your speakers positioned in the room and have set speaker distances
and speaker level calibration with your Processor or A/V Receiver, it’s time for a
little fine tuning.
When fine tuning your subwoofer to best integrate with the rest of your system, use
music and video soundtracks that you know well. They should contain selections
with extended bass that is continuous and repetitive.
Assess subwoofer bass output for best blend with your main speakers. It should not
be overbearing or draw attention to itself, nor should it be thin and difficult to hear.
It should add ‘weight’ and ‘punch’ to the overall sound and keep pace with your
main speakers.
If you are using a receiver, preamplifier or preamp/processor with tone controls,
set them to flat (i.e. ‘0’) and switch loudness controls off.
Some subwoofer locations may result in bass frequency cancellations. If bass sounds
dislocated or weak, adjust the phase according to the Phase Alignment Control instructions
repeated in more detail below. If your electronics have an “auto phase/auto time alignment”
feature for subwoofers, this manual process can likely be ignored.
1. Wire the Front speaker that is closest to the subwoofer out of phase (reverse red
and black speaker wire connections) and then safely disconnect the other Front
speaker so it does not play during this process.
Note: If using multiple subwoofers, you can either choose to continue using the
same Front speaker the whole time, or pause and repeat Step 1 again so that you
are always using the Front speaker closest to the subwoofer. There are several
variations of this technique where you perform this process by wiring both Front
speakers out of phase (instead of disconnecting one) or even using just the Center
channel or other channel closest to each sub. For the sake of this write up, we
are assuming you are using the same Front speaker (with reversed polarity) the
whole time.
2. Play a test tone (with your system in Stereo mode if it is a multichannel system)
equal to your chosen low pass filter as selected in the subwoofer control app
or your electronics connected to the subwoofer if using the LFE Input(s) on the
XR subwoofer.
3. All listening/measurement should be done from the main listening position and
with only 1 subwoofer at a time. Balancing the speaker volume and subwoofer
volume using an SPL meter (or your system’s automatic setup microphone) ahead
of time is recommended.
4. With the Front speaker polarity reversed, and the other speaker disconnected,
listen from your primary listening position while slowly adjusting the subwoofer
phase control until the sound is the most quiet to you. Ideally, the subwoofer and
speaker will cancel each other out and the cancellation should be noticeable
resulting in very little or no sound.
5. Once this point has been found, simply repeat the process for each subwoofer
in the system making sure only 1 speaker and 1 sub are playing during the test.
6. Now rewire the Front Speaker back to normal polarity (positive to positive/
negative to negative) and properly reconnect any speakers or subwoofers that
were disconnected previously.