Localization? Distortion?
Dual subwoofers or not ??
- Thread starter armyslowrdr
- Start date
Localization? Distortion?
valvenator
curious bystander, serious procrastinator
That pretty much describes what I heard. The bass was coming from the room not the individual speakers, but the music came from the front, and with a bigger, more realistic soundstage. I'm not a bassacholic so to me great bass is more about balance than volume.
valvenator
curious bystander, serious procrastinator
Interesting:scratch2: Seriously, I never thought about that. Aside from pop and R&R that's probably pretty common.
Then allow me to share this. I run my subs (two on the back wall, two on the front) in stereo. I am a sound stage junkie and pay very close attention to this component of reproduction. With all my acoustic treatments I get a very good depiction of sound stage and a pretty high degree of image resolution so I'm constantly observing what's going on in the recording wrt this. Now, one thing I CAN'T STAND is when one recording depicts the drum set as if you're in the audience and another depicts it as if you're behind the drummer (I have no idea why some engineers elect to deviate from the standard). It's easy to tell when this is going on because the hi-hat moves from the right side of the sound stage (as viewed from the listening position)...where it's supposed to be (unless Phil Collins happens to be the drummer on the recording)....to the left and the floor tom moves from the left side of the sound stage to the right. I'm so intolerant of this I'll get up and reverse the audio cables at the amp to set it right when it occurs. So when I do this I change the channel assignment between the subs and mains, effectively changing the phase relationship (in theory, at least) yet I hear no diminished quality to any element of reproduction whatsoever.
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Kingshead
Professor
That pretty much describes what I heard. The bass was coming from the room not the individual speakers, but the music came from the front, and with a bigger, more realistic soundstage. I'm not a bassacholic so to me great bass is more about balance than volume.
The reason for this is the true nature of a true sub-woofer. The very lowest register is made up of sound waves that are farther apart than the distance between your ears. The reason we have two ears is for sound location, and this works by the difference in arrival times and sound pressures. With sound waves that exceed this distance it's impossible to locate them.
That said, being as a subs low pass filter isn't a shear cliff it will produce sounds that our ears can locate as evidenced that you could when the main speakers were shut off. The ONLY reason you can't locate them when the mains are playing is just that the mains are drowning out the upper frequencies originating from the rear of the room.
It seems I'm more sensitive to this than most and can still locate the sub's location with the mains on and this ruins the sound stage for me. This is just one of the reasons for my setup in my main listening area. To eliminate this problem with my other setup with only one sub I either set the sub between the main speakers, if that's not possible then I set it to one side or the other with the sub firing along the front wall. This makes the sound from the sub appear to be coming form the wall behind the main speakers if the variable phase control is set properly.
Two isn't nearly enough. Four should be considered the bare minimum.Six or eight would really be ideal for a proper distributed bass system capable of reproducing 20 Hz fundamentals at 125+ dB.
But that's really not the point of having a distributed bass set up.
Kingshead
Professor
Two isn't nearly enough. Four should be considered the bare minimum.
The reasons I posted above are most likely why you find multiple subs arranged around the room sound better than just one sub alone. If the bass is distributed equally around the room it will be almost impossible to locate the subs even though they are playing frequencies that can be located.
I know I know, it's all about the bass man, the bass, LOL
Believe me, I know. My living room is the black hole of bass. I've had two JBL 2245s in 8 cu. ft. boxes driven by a couple of 600 watt E-V power amps and the standing waves were so severe that in some places in the room, there was almost no perceptible bass. Whereas in other places in the room, the ceiling cracked, and the SPL would knock all of the shampoo bottles and whatnot off the side of the bathtub and they would be laying in it. Not to mention dishes working their way out of the cupboards.
armyslowrdr
I don't want one..LOL
Great discussion. I am satisfied for now just repositioning my speakers. But I know one day I will say let's get a sub and see what changes. From what I gather, if set up properly, really with a sealed type, I should just "feel" some deeper frequencies.
Oh yeah...you get it! :yes:
Kingshead
Professor
Yes, the seating positions in my listening space are totally free of any anomalies with an expansive sound stage with instruments in clearly defined spaces and that's all I care about. As I stated, I've tried more locations and configurations than you can count and two subs in stereo trump two subs in mono every day. When listening to music I never sit on the floor in the corner, or between the bookcase and the adjacent wall so I really don't care what the music sounds like in those areas, some here might but I don't.
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Nope...you should hear them, too. The whole "you shouldn't hear a subwoofer, you should feel it" is a bunch of bullshit.
That's practically impossible unless your room is very, very large. Have you measured the response?
No matter what, you will get room nodes/standing waves unless your room is an anechoic chamber.
Well, then consider yourself extremely, if not impossibly, lucky. :thmbsp:
bossmustang7
Active Member
I tried the dual sub thing today.great with cd playback, but was not feasable with turntable use.where ever I posistioned the subs, I got woofer feedback.i have turntables on bicycle innertubes, totally oblivious to my big velodyne ,, using just one sub.no go for 2...??.
