What volume do you keep your subwoofer?

Just got my 340SE fronts and center, 4 HTM-200s for surrounds, and the big VTF-3 HSU sub. Sounds great, but I still need to tune my room for bass and plan to do so after all the furniture is put in place later this week.

Just curious what volume setting you all use for your sub. My sounds about right between 3-4 (pointing toward 10 on a clock face). I set the crossover at 80 through my Harmon Kardon amp. On some recordings its too loud and others not loud enough. Most sound fine. My room is 13x24 and I know I have bass peaks and nulls.

Anyone use a feedback destroyer? Anyone use the radio shack SPL meter to tune their system?

K.

A SPL meter is a must IMO for setting the subwoofer and speaker levels correctly.

How other people set their sub volume is going to vary.....it is not only the setting on the sub, but also the sub setting on the receiver.

I have a VTF-3 and use Avia and an SPL meter to calibrate.

After getting the sub, I added bass traps from GIK Acoustics, then a BFD. The bass traps really cleaned and tightened up the bass, and the BFD let me eq the sub flat.

I used to have the sub's level at about 1/2 way between 0 and the first mark on the gain dial. But with the BFD, checking Ch 5 of WotW, I reset the levels in the receiver so I don't get clipping, and upped the gain knob on the sub. Now the sub level in the receiver is about 13 notches below the others speakers (-10 compared to +2 ~ +3 for the speakers).

I set my sub VTF-3 to straight up (1/2 way), then used the Audsessy feature of my Denon 3806 to balance the system. Is this not a good approach?

As long as it is balanced, either equally or your preference of "hot," and not way too hot (over 10dB), that's fine.