# BFD weird behavior!



## brouham (Sep 3, 2009)

Help me understand what's going on with my system. I have a Pioneer SC-05 receiver connected to the BFD which in turn is connected to a Dayton HPSA1000-R subwoofer amp. The amp is connected to an SVS CS20-39 sub. If I have the the operating level switch set to -10 dBV, the BFD clips with strong LFE signals and causes the Dayton amp to go into protection mode which results in no output until I turn the amp off and then on again with the power switch. However, if I change the BFD to the +4 dBu setting, the BFD never clips and the amp never shuts down. In fact, at the +4 dBu BFD setting, with a super strong LFE signal the soft clipping circuitry of the Dayton amp becomes temporarily active (indicated by the power button's blue light turning red) and the amp gracefully clips without going into protection mode. When this occurs, the subwoofer is outputting much higher LFE bass than it does when the BFD is in the -10 dBV mode. That is, the -10 dBV mode causes the amp to go into the protection mode at not so high of a subwoofer LFE bass output. I therefore now keep the BFD at the +4 dBu setting. Can anyone explain this?:scratch:


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Only thing that comes to mind is that if the BFD is clipping hard, it’s sending something of a steady-state voltage to the amp, rather than the usual voltage that fluctuates with the audio signal, and the amp apparently doesn’t like that. If it’s working better in the +4 position, then there’s no harm in using it that way.

Regards,
Wayne


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## brouham (Sep 3, 2009)

I kind of thought that something like that was happening. I wanted to make sure that it was okay to run the BFD at the +4dBu setting. My amp sure seems to really like that setting!


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