To sub or not to sub. That is the question.

[bpape]

I'm not at all convinced at the need for stereo subs - provided you use a sub properly.  For a music system, you should be crossing over at 60Hz or lower, preferably lower depending on your monitors.  As long as the sub is in the front with the mains, you'll hear no difference between that and stereo sub.  If you're crossing over higher, then there can be issues.

Bryan

[RichardS]

To me, the foundation presented by good deep bass provides a sense of reality to the performance that just isn't there without it, no matter how good everything else is, even on recordings without a lot of deep bass.

Years ago I had some large Proacs in a medium-sized fairly square room. Even with 'bass busters' I could never tame the bass boom that overpowered the room and muffled and obscured the mids. I switched to Genesis V with dipole subs (eight 8") and couldn't get over the improvement from dipole bass -- much better. Then I tore out a wall for a better rectangle -- still better. I've used singles and pairs of (same) subs and without exception found the pair to be better -- just more natural.

Best bass I've heard in my room was from a pair of double-stacked Linkwitz Phoenix (four 12" Peerless per side in dipole configuration). But they're big with poor WAF and need to be way out into the room, so a pair of RBH 1010 in the corners have now displaced them. A pair of VBTs were quick and musical but didn't move quite enough air for my taste.

For the last four years I've been using a Tact 2.2x (modded) and for me, this does the trick better than anything else I've come across. For me, the trade-offs are more than made up for with clear, clean, deep and extended bass. Get rid of the room bass and the mids come alive. I've become very sensitive to boomy and muddy bass and I find that I can't get past that anymore in most people's rooms/systems that I listen to.

I've had friends say that the bass in my room is too lean, but I think that's because most people haven't heard clean, room-corrected bass and gotten used to it. But if I wasn't using Tact, I'd definitely consider dipole bass (subs).

[rosconey]

i have no issues with my vmps large sub and my 3.5 way stand mounts playing together-

i like to think having all speakers powered with a mono block is why-lol

 a pair of extreme monos for sub duty and se extremes for my mains--all i use are those rca plug things for a low pass filter-im more than happy 

[_Scotty_]

RichardS, I think you have bass that is closer to live sounding from your system and that is what your friends are not used to hearing. I have never heard live bass that had boom or overhang. Live unamplified instruments don't have distortion products like boom or muddiness in some part of their frequency range. Live bass from a percussion instrument doesn't linger around either. It hits you with a pressure wave and is gone. Pipe organs on the other hand can fill all of the air around you with energy and pressure even in large cathedrals.
I think you have to be able to reproduce the pressure wave from percussion without muddiness and fill the air in the room with energy or pressure when the music calls for it. 
Scotty

[richidoo]

Don't 30Hz sound waves go right through sheetrock and wood? Concrete will reflect though right? Bass trapping seems most effective for mid bass and up. Anybody ever seen serious bass nodes below 40Hz in a decent sized room? Curious.. I play organ music with steady pedal tones right down to 20Hz (low E) and I can hear them loud and clear, with tone and texture very evident. That sound makes me very happy. A Reference Recordings CD called Bells for Stowkowski has a piece with contrabass sax or clarinet, I don't know, but it is as low as any organ music. It makes a lot of other noise, clacking and rasping on the low notes, but there is so much character to the note. That's when I appreciate the short throw, large diameter drivers, making the low stuff sound effortless.

Interesting link: http://www.contrabass.com/pages/frequency.html

[bpape]

To a certain extent, anything from 80-100Hz down goes through a standard drywall wall.  This is why it's so hard to ACCURATELY predict room modes as it's also dependent on the distance from the wall to the next hard boundary and how that will interact as an absorber/resonator.

Deep bass peaks and dips can absolutely happen in a normal sized room.  Remember that there are other modes at play besides just the axial (one dimensional - 2 parallel boundary) ones.  Tangential and oblique modes in a normal sized room can be down into the 20's or lower with no problem.  For instance, in an ugly (too lazy to do the trig I can't do in my head right now...) 12x12x12 room.  The tangential path is 4*(1.414*12) or approximately 64 feet!  25 feet results in a mode at approx 20Hz.  And, that's only for a 2 dimensional tangential mode.  The oblique (3 dimensional is way down there). 

Now, realistically, tangential modes are several db down from axials and obliques are several db down from tangentials.  But, if you happen to get into a place where you have a tangential and oblique overlapping, it can be very destructive - not to mention what happens when that same place contains an axial (or close) that is a multiple of that tangential and oblique.

Bryan

[richidoo]

I think most super low freqs will go through sheetrock and wood frame, but thick concrete will reflect them. Am I right? Maybe this is why I have never seen serious nodes at these <40Hz freqs in stick houses? Or should I just keep looking?

I have some recordings with musical tones down to 20Hz. They sound natural and have detailed texture. One is organ (Ref Recordings Felix Hell Organ Sensation), the other is some kind of low clarinet or sax, (Ref Recordings' "Bells for Stokowski.") That's why I like the short throw, large diameter drivers which achieve very low distortion even at these low freqs. At 75dB pink noise I am flat to 20Hz on 70w stereo tube amp, and -6dB at 16Hz. I should measure it again with the new amps. 

A Madonna track on Ray of Light has a bass synth glissando from mid bass down to 35Hz, then it fades out instead of going down down down to the bottom. Producer is a wimp. hehe

Check this out: http://www.contrabass.com/pages/frequency.html
and
http://www.contrabass.com/2002/2002-06-08.html   I think this guy would make a great audiophile. haha

Rich

[_Scotty_]

richidoo,my old town house was an end unit and my listening room was on the ground floor. The common wall at the end of the room which was a double sheetrock wall air-spaced off of the adjoining wall which was another double sheetrock wall would reflect 20Hz. I had a standing wave at 20Hz. back there that was at least 14dB in magnitude. If you stood back there when playing certain pieces of music loud enough you would feel ill if you were back there long enough. I called it the death zone. The room was 18ft. x 24 ft.x7.5ft. with a stairwell leading to the basement and to the upstairs opening off of it. The stairwell made a good bass trap.
Scotty

[rollo]

richidoo said,

If the room is big enough, then having in-phase, quasi point source (in same cabinet) bass is unbeatable, IMO.

I have to agree with richidoo, I replaced DIY sat/sub system with a full range system about 3.5years ago and there is no going back. In addition to the positive qualities richidoo mentioned I now have a top to bottom focus of energy at the listening position that greatly improves the realism of everything the system reproduces. I think the coherent wave launch is what has made this such a large improvement over my previous system. Real life does not have frequency and phase discontinuities
fracturing the the wavefront that reaches our ears. The system sounds like a single full range loudspeaker with no crossovers.
  In response to rollo's question, I can enjoy speakers that have about eight inches of cone area covering the bass and reaching 32Hz in smaller rooms but they don't have realistic dynamic scaling or image size. In my experience it takes a lot of cone area devoted to frequencies below 150Hz to realistically reproduce the lower midrange and bass regions of musical instruments. The size of an instrument doesn't shrink when it plays softly. My current speakers have two 12in. woofers,two 6.5in. midranges  and a 7in. planer tweeter. This seems to be about the right ratio of cone area to frequency range to create accurate image scaling. Having enough cone area also provides for accurate dynamic scaling proportional to the size of the instrument being played. I think having the ability to reach 20Hz
or lower with LOW distortion is very important to having realistic music reproduction. 
Scotty

 

  Agree 100%. Should be in same enclosure. What speakers are you using?

rollo

[richidoo]

Sorry for the double post, my browser was hosed, I thought the first got eaten.

Wow Scott, that is where you want your mother-in-law to sit at dinnertime. Thanks for the info.

I think you're right about the low distortion at low freqs being the key. The easiest way to lower distortion in a cone driver is to reduce excursion. Long excursion drivers (small area) add distortion the farther the signal gets away from a pure sine wave, which is how the driver physically wants to move when in long excusion signal. Moving mass travels faster at center of throw and resulting higher momentum is harder for smaller voice coil to control, thus detail is lost. A large driver capable of 100dB at 20Hz is hardly moving at 80dB so it can easily trace a harmonically rich waveform at decent SPL. A small driver at the same SPL has too much kinetic energy in it to show subtle details.
Rich

[_Scotty_]

rollo, sorry about the slow response. I am using a pair of Reimer Speakers Teton GS {home theater version} 12in. woofer 18.9Xmax, 24mm est. Xmech . The standard Teton GS has an 11in. woofer. See links http://www.reimerspeakers.com/tetons_gs.htm
http://www.sixmoons.com/audioreviews/roadtour10/roadtour10.html
See links to system
http://www.audionervosa.com/index.php?topic=195.45
Link to my AC gallery
http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1851
Hope this info fills in some gaps.
Scotty

[rollo]

Scotty,
          Nice speakers. You have a dead SACD 1000 as well eh. Mine makes a great door stop. Phillips should be hung out to dry. No parts available and they do not know how to fix it besides. A $2000 bomb. Too bad since the SACD section was darn good.
           Back to the speakers. IMO $6800 is a very fair price for a real full range in one box. I would love to hear some vinyl through them too bad your so far away.
            To date I use a single sub, an M&K looking for another. The pair will be equalized through a Berhinger EQ. After hearing a demo of the EQ for the subs only its no going back. In all my years of listening, never have I heard bass sound so real. Amazing actually. The Berhinger, does not do justice to the rest of the music IMO [ digititus=thin,hard and bright ]. Bass however another story.

rollo   

[miklorsmith]

I agree on the EQ'd bass, it's fantastic.  Anybody using a Squeezebox can try this with Inguz.

[richidoo]

Reference Audio Mods does a Behringer upgrades. Same treatment as CDPs - upgrade the PS, clock, bypass output stages. Not too expensive. The PS caps need upgrading anyway, after a year it will be a doorstop when the big junk electro shorts. The Behringer software is fantastic and sounds good when the outputs are bypassed. I would like to see if digital outputs could be added on the crossover product DCX2496.

[Brian Bunge]

I honestly prefer having full range speakers and also adding a subwoofer for any type of HT use.  My big towers have dual 10" woofers in each cabinet and in most circumstances are more than enough for music playback.

I'm still contemplating building a dual 15" subwoofer nice SPL's for HT.  I sold my little 10" sub to Rich and still haven't built anything else for myself.