26-Jun-2020, 01:11
The wiring connection for the high level input to the REL is straight forward, as per the manual. There's no problem there.
Balancing the sub against your speakers is tricky. I just checked the specs for your Guaneri Traditions and they indicate a -3dB point of 40 Hz in the bass, just a little higher than my old Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs which I used with a REL years ago in my pre-Devialet days. Set the crossover frequency on the REL to as low as it will go, don't set it to 40 Hz or higher. The REL and your speakers are going to be running together so you want both rolling off over a similar range so they add together to the same level as the speakers above the range where the crossover is occurring. You'll probably find adjusting the gain setting on the REL tricky if you're doing it by ear but it's probably going to need to be higher than you think it should be. REL say that the biggest mistake people make is setting the crossover too high and the gain too low and that was my experience. You may find it easier to get into the ball park for the gain setting if you can get a test CD and use a cheap sound pressure level meter, even an app on your phone. Set the meter to the C weighting option, not the A weighting option, or preferably to Flat if the meter has a Flat or no weighting option (not all meters offer flat/no weighting). You may need to do some fine tuning by ear over time.
What I found to some degree is that I spent time increasing the gain setting in small increments and then ended up finding I'd gone a bit too far and backed off a bit in order to get it right. It can be hard to judge if you don't have experience with listening to a system with a sub where the level between the sub and the speakers has been optimised because you're starting from a position of not really knowing how it should sound. You're probably going to be initially impressed by what more bass does for the music and there can be a tendency to think that if more is better then even more is even better. It is, up to the point where even more is actually worse but it can take you a while to work out where the "just right" point is. Overall I found that I was happier if I erred on the side of a bit too little bass rather than on the side of a bit too much bass because I was used to listening to bass with roll off before I added the sub. It really can take some time, probably longer than you have the sub on loan for if you've borrowed it for the test, to get things into the ball park if you haven''t got any experience with subs so if you know someone with a REL who's getting good results with the high level connection it might be a very good idea to invite them over and ask them to help get the settings right.
You may also find that whatever gain setting you come up with, it will deliver a bit too much bass on some recordings and a bit too little on others. Some recording engineers like more bass than others and they mix according to their preference. There's also some evidence that a lot of people like the bass to be elevated slightly (only 2-5 dB or so) above the mids and highs. How much will probably depend on how loud you like to listen to music at. The ear is less sensitive to bass at low levels than it is at high levels but it's still less sensitive at high levels than it is to the mids at the same high level so turning up your listening level acts to some extent like increasing the bass level because your ear's sensitivity to the bass improves.
There's a bit, perhaps even a big, element of the subjective in dialling the sub in to suit your tastes, and it probably depends a bit on what type of music you listen to as well because bass levels can be mastered quite differently on recordings of different types of music.
Balancing the sub against your speakers is tricky. I just checked the specs for your Guaneri Traditions and they indicate a -3dB point of 40 Hz in the bass, just a little higher than my old Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs which I used with a REL years ago in my pre-Devialet days. Set the crossover frequency on the REL to as low as it will go, don't set it to 40 Hz or higher. The REL and your speakers are going to be running together so you want both rolling off over a similar range so they add together to the same level as the speakers above the range where the crossover is occurring. You'll probably find adjusting the gain setting on the REL tricky if you're doing it by ear but it's probably going to need to be higher than you think it should be. REL say that the biggest mistake people make is setting the crossover too high and the gain too low and that was my experience. You may find it easier to get into the ball park for the gain setting if you can get a test CD and use a cheap sound pressure level meter, even an app on your phone. Set the meter to the C weighting option, not the A weighting option, or preferably to Flat if the meter has a Flat or no weighting option (not all meters offer flat/no weighting). You may need to do some fine tuning by ear over time.
What I found to some degree is that I spent time increasing the gain setting in small increments and then ended up finding I'd gone a bit too far and backed off a bit in order to get it right. It can be hard to judge if you don't have experience with listening to a system with a sub where the level between the sub and the speakers has been optimised because you're starting from a position of not really knowing how it should sound. You're probably going to be initially impressed by what more bass does for the music and there can be a tendency to think that if more is better then even more is even better. It is, up to the point where even more is actually worse but it can take you a while to work out where the "just right" point is. Overall I found that I was happier if I erred on the side of a bit too little bass rather than on the side of a bit too much bass because I was used to listening to bass with roll off before I added the sub. It really can take some time, probably longer than you have the sub on loan for if you've borrowed it for the test, to get things into the ball park if you haven''t got any experience with subs so if you know someone with a REL who's getting good results with the high level connection it might be a very good idea to invite them over and ask them to help get the settings right.
You may also find that whatever gain setting you come up with, it will deliver a bit too much bass on some recordings and a bit too little on others. Some recording engineers like more bass than others and they mix according to their preference. There's also some evidence that a lot of people like the bass to be elevated slightly (only 2-5 dB or so) above the mids and highs. How much will probably depend on how loud you like to listen to music at. The ear is less sensitive to bass at low levels than it is at high levels but it's still less sensitive at high levels than it is to the mids at the same high level so turning up your listening level acts to some extent like increasing the bass level because your ear's sensitivity to the bass improves.
There's a bit, perhaps even a big, element of the subjective in dialling the sub in to suit your tastes, and it probably depends a bit on what type of music you listen to as well because bass levels can be mastered quite differently on recordings of different types of music.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
