User manual OUTLAW SMS-1

[. . . ] The Velodyne Digital Drive Outlaw's Guide to the Subwoofer Management System SMS-1 THE OUTLAW'S GUIDE TO THE SMS-1 pLEASE rEAD fIrST WArnInG: IMpOrTAnT SAfEGUArDS CAUTION: To reduce the risk of electric shock, do not remove the cover (or back). WARNING: To reduce the risk of fire or electric shock, do not expose this appliance to rain or moisture. The lightning flash with arrowhead, within an equilateral triangle, is intended to alert the user to the presence of uninsulated "dangerous voltage" within the product's enclosure that may be of sufficient magnitude to constitute a risk of electrical shock to persons. The exclamation point within an equilateral triangle is intended to alert the user to the presence of important operating maintenance (servicing) instructions in the literature accompanying the appliance. The contents of this manual are Copyright © 2006 by Outlaw Audio, LLC, and may not be duplicated or reproduced by any means, whether physical, electronic or otherwise without prior written consent from Outlaw Audio. [. . . ] next, check the channel trim setting for the subwoofer in your receiver or surround processor's speaker channel calibration menu. you may want to set this 0db or a few db below zero to let the SMS-1 volume control handle the fine-tuning. THE OUTLAW'S GUIDE TO THE SMS-1 17 Once you've checked out the subwoofer trim at the amp and receiver (or not), let's take a minute to set the volume for the receiver and the SMS-1. Earlier, you turned the receiver's volume down and muted the SMS-1. The SMS-1 has been playing its test tone ever since you entered the System response screen, but it's been at low volume. As you do so, the right side of the response curve will start to rise. keep increasing the volume until the right side is up to somewhere around 80db (a little more than halfway up the screen). Adjust the SMS-1's volume up or down until the left side of the curve matches up reasonably well with the right side of the curve. Don't mind the dips and peaks in the curve ­ we'll get to those shortly. There are some slick tricks that you can do with the System response screen (covered in our Tips and Tricks section on page 7), and of course we'll return to this screen in a few pages to smooth out that curve for you. for the moment, though, we're more interested in the System Settings screen. Highlight the "nExT" button on the top right corner of the System response screen (it is probably already highlighted) and press "SELEcT" on the remote to move from the System response screen to the System Settings screen. There's no test tone here, but we make up for that with a whole lot of settings to play with. SySTEM SETTInGS MEnU The System Settings menu screen is home to a wealth of options. It is also the best place to clearly see the differences in the six presets. Unfortunately, that wealth of adjustments and those six presets make for a great deal of information, so we've given you a nice big screenshot below to refer to as we walk you through the menu. THE OUTLAW'S GUIDE TO THE SMS-1 18 This screen may look like a crazy mass of information, but there's actually a very straightforward structure to it. Aside from a few individual settings at the bottom, most of the screen consists of a table of settings. There are seven columns of identical settings in the table: Setup and presets 1 through 6. The six presets obviously relate to the six preset buttons on the remote. As you will soon see, there are a number of settings that will typically need to be applied to all six presets, so the Setup entry will save you a lot of time. nine rows of settings make up the rest of the table, but those nine can be grouped into five categories. These categories are low pass crossover (frequency and slope), subsonic filter (frequency and slope), subwoofer phase adjustment (phase and polarity), volume, and contour (frequency and level). The low pass crossover is a handy tool for systems in which the receiver or processor lacks bass management. The crossover is applied to the input signal and information above the crossover frequency is filtered out of the signal sent to the subwoofer. [. . . ] With "Sub+L/r" the mains still get a full-range signal, but the subwoofer gets a copy of some of the low frequency material from the mains. When setting up an SMS-1, we do not recommend having the mains set to large ­ doing so will steer all of the test tones to the mains, which the SMS-1 equalizers have no influence over. Setting mains to "Large" and the sub to "Sub+L/r" will mitigate this only slightly, as the subwoofer will get some data but the mains will still operate down into the range normally handled by the subwoofer and interfere with the equalization process. At least for the purposes of configuring the SMS-1, we recommend setting your mains to "Small" (which will require the subwoofer to be turned on). [. . . ]