Placing and setting up the Velodyne Digital Drive Plus
Contents
There are a few manuals in the box. One big manual would be preferred, as you have to read through them to get instructions on how to properly place a subwoofer in your home.
On all fours
The first step is to place the subwoofer on the spot where you listen. You need to place your chair or sofa to the side and position the subwoofer. Connect the supplied long RCA cable to your amplifier. Depending on your amplifier, you either have a LFE output, specifically for subwoofers, or a stereo RCA output. A stereo RCA output is for a connection to a separate power amplifier, an AV amplifier for integration into a surround system, or a subwoofer. In case of a stereo RCA output, you only need to connect one of the two channels to the LFE input of the Velodyne.
Play music, preferably with some constant bass, and now crawl on all fours across the floor in the part of the room where you want to place the subwoofer. Listen to how the bass sounds in different places. The place where the bass sounds nice and full but not too overpowering or loud is the ideal place to put the subwoofer.
Connectivity
The second step is to place the subwoofer on the spot you just found and connect it. You have a few options to connect the amplifier to the subwoofer: a set of (stereo) RCA cables, XLR cables, an LFE cable or by connecting speaker cable from the amplifier to the Velodyne. Speaker cable is preferred, but since the Naim Nait XS2 amplifier only accepts a banana plug in the speaker terminals and has a stereo RCA output, the Velodyne is connected over RCA inputs.
Alternative is to loop speaker cable from the speakers to the subwoofer, but that gets a bit messy in the room.
The Velodyne offers many ‘pass through’ options to connect more than one subwoofer.
Measuring for automatic adjustment
Now connect the microphone to the Velodyne and place it at the listening position. Use the supplied CD or download the file with the test tones from Velodyne’s website. Follow the instructions in the quickstart guide.
The difference between a ‘standard’ subwoofer and one of this performance level is that a standard subwoofer rumbles loudly and makes you shake on your couch while watching a movie. This Velodyne gives you the impression that a volcanic eruption is coming your way from deep underground. The weight and quality of the sub bass is impressive. You can hear and feel that a serious amplifier unit with a high-quality speaker is inside its nicely polished wooden exterior.
After enduring test sounds for 6 minutes at quite a hefty volume – warn your housemates and neighbours before measuring starts – the Velodyne is ready for use. Disconnect the microphone and store it neatly again.
You can finetune the Velodyne’s signal processor with software. A thick manual is included that describes how the software works. This is probably for a professional installer tuning a home theatre, for the consumer automatic tuning is the best choice.
I enjoyed reading your review 🙂 That’s a just about how i remember them, great subs, can’t go wrong with them.