Parasound Halo C1 Controller manual Speaker Setup

Main speakers, the left and right front speakers, may be set as “Large” or “Small.”

Center speaker may be set to “Large,” “Small,” or “No.” If your system has no center speaker, set this to “No” so the C 1 will divert any center-channel signals into your front left and right speakers. This is sometimes referred to as a “Phantom” center because, even without an actual center- channel speaker, you will still hear sound apparently coming from between your front speakers.

Surround speakers, which are placed at the sides of the room, may also be set to “Large,” “Small,” or “No.”

Back speakers are used for 6.1- or 7.1-channel soundtracks such as Dolby Surround EX, THX EX, and DTS ES. Here, a single speaker (6.1-channel) will suffice for many listeners, so the options are “No,” “1 Small,” “1 Large,” “2 Small,” and “2 Large.” Back-channel information is always derived from the information in the surround channels, so those sounds will be heard in the surround channels if you select “No” back speaker.

Subwoofer, select “Yes” or “No.”

Subwoofer filter (On-Off): A low-pass crossover filter that passes only the low bass (which sub- woofers are designed to reproduce), and blocks upper bass, midrange, and treble (which subwoofers reproduce very badly). Most self-powered subwoofers, and many passive subs, have such filters built in; still, you might prefer to use this filter instead, because it works in the digital domain and therefore filters (at 12 dB per octave) without creating phase alterations. Don’t use both the filter

in your sub and the filter in the C 1, or some frequencies you want may not be heard at all. If your sub doesn’t have a bypass switch for its crossover filter, adjust it to its highest frequency setting to minimize redundant filtering.

Subwoofer freq. sets the subwoofer filter’s cutoff frequency, in 10-Hz increments from 40 to

140 Hz. The optimum setting will depend on your speakers, your sub, and your room’s acoustics.

Enhanced bass gives you the option of sending bass from channels with “Large” speakers to the subwoofer as well. (When all speakers are set to “Large,” the subwoofer normally gets only the Low Frequency Effects, or LFE, signal.) Switching Enhanced Bass on will give you more bass energy, but switching it off may make the sound clearer–or even louder, in some rooms

–because it eliminates the possibility of phase problems that can occur when speakers in differ- ent parts of the room reproduce the same bass tones.

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Small Small Small No Yes On

100 Hz Off

Main speakers Center speaker Surround speakers Back speakers Subwoofer Subwoofer filter Subwoofer freq. Enhanced bass

Size setup

Though not the first item on this menu, it is the first one you should program; it’s used to adapt the C 1 to the number, locations, and types of speakers in your system. “Small” speakers are those with limited bass capacity; to avoid distortion, the C 1 diverts bass signals from any channels with “Small” speakers and sends them to the subwoofer; this diversion takes place at the frequency set on the “Size setup” menu. The bass from “Large” speak- ers, which can handle it well, is not normally sent to the sub. If you’re not sure if you should classify your speakers

as “Small” or “Large,” try both settings and see which sounds best.

Level setup Distance setup Size setup

Aux channel setup

Level autocalibrate? Dist. autocalibate?

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Size Setup

ADJUSTMENTS, MENUS, AND SETUP continued 27

Speaker Setup

Speaker setup

To hear the closest possible match to what the filmmak- ers heard when they mixed their soundtracks, your home theater must be set up so that each speaker gets the proper signals, that no speaker is louder or softer than it should be, relative to the others, and so that the sound from each speaker arrives at the proper time.