audio help please!

[krazeyeyez]

i have plenty of questions and any answers suggestions or links to informational sources would be appreciated.

what are the general tips to hooking up your system, calibrating speakers, and getting your sub to match the rest of the system while still being able to rumble the house?

can you blow a subwoofer now a days? if so things to avoid damaging speakers would be a helpful tip.

my sub has a phase dial, crossover, and a power knob.

what does the phase dial actually do and how?

as for the crossover, my receiver has what i think is a crossover, it has speaker config setting where i can set my speakers to 80hz (says thx) and my lpf of lfe to 80hz (also says this is the thx level) so my question is does my receiver actually do the crossover, and therefore should i just turn the dial on my sub up.

are the above the right levels......80hz the optimum setting? also i have the option of setting my left/right speakers to full band which my audyssey speaker calibration thing said to do, but 80hz is thx or whatever and i have heard that mentioned before.

in my receiver settings there is also a setting for speaker distance, this should be accurate to how far they are from your sitting position, correct? because my audyssey set my sub as 2 feet away when its actually like 8 or 9 feet away.

the individual speaker level settings are also strange since everything seems to be set to very low levels, left/right = -8db, center= -5db, surround= -11db which is the lowest it goes, and my sub was set at -15db, which is also the lowest option available.

these are just a few of my thoughts and if anyone can explain these different settings, how they interact with each other, and any advice with getting the most out of my specific equipment or things to avoid damaging them would GREATLY APPRECIATED.

thanks guys!

also when my sub is at the level where it seems to blend well, it will go from offering some good bass, to damn, very quick. like some scenes you immediately look over to the sub like good god lol! is there anyway to make it so i can still get good quality loud tight bass without having those parts of movies just ungodly rumble my sub!


EDIT: one more, if you click the link on my stereo equipment list, a few pictures show some of my ceiling, its that tiled stuff, my room is in the basement, and those ceiling tiles rattle like crazy....any tips on reducing noise from these.