Hey everyone -
I am "looking" into the possibility of picking up new speakers. I have JM Lab Cobalt 816 plus the center for my fronts. I have been doing tons of reading and review watching. I had been mostly looking at floorstanders, but recently, a few things went through my head which is making me question the concept of bookshelf. I am looking at replacing the front three of my home theater/audio system. For the last number of years, I was mostly on the HT front, but I have swung the pendulum back in favor of audio over HT this past year.
Based on where speakers sound good in my room and my seating location, I think I will keep my speakers 'roughly' in the same location. I have recently picked up a mic and I have been using REW, In doing that, I have noticed that I get a very good blend in and relatively flat response with both subs active at 80Hz x-over. However, when I change the x-over to 60 or 40, there is quite the hole. There is a big dropoff in bass response when I turn the subs off.
So looking at my REW data, I started playing around with Room Simulation. I get pretty good response across the full bandwidth when I have both subs added, but when I remove the subs, I notice the same simulation data dips as the real-world data. So this makes me question getting another tower speaker. If my "new" speaker is in the same rough location, shouldn't it too be affected by the room mode and I would have the same dip in bass?
Here is a screenshot of no sub in my room (speaker can play reasonably well to 40-50Hz, but not from my MLP):
Here is a shot of the mains with the subs blended (I have since improved the flatness of the 35Hz dip by moving a sub, but I didn't get a screenshot of it):
And here is a shot of the Room Simulator. Note the same dip as I saw with my speaker without sub:
So... long-winded way of asking, but with my room, relative speaker position and MLP, wouldn't much of the benefit of a tower speaker that plays lower than what I have now be "just as lost" as the dips I have now? So, would a "better" bookshelf speaker with subs be something that I should be looking into? Might that be a better value proposition? I understand that mid-bass above the 80Hz x-over would be different with my current vs. potential future speaker, but could the thought of going to a better bookshelf be a/the possible correct path?
I hope this long-ish question makes sense. I might be overlooking other elements altogether.
Thanks.
I am "looking" into the possibility of picking up new speakers. I have JM Lab Cobalt 816 plus the center for my fronts. I have been doing tons of reading and review watching. I had been mostly looking at floorstanders, but recently, a few things went through my head which is making me question the concept of bookshelf. I am looking at replacing the front three of my home theater/audio system. For the last number of years, I was mostly on the HT front, but I have swung the pendulum back in favor of audio over HT this past year.
Based on where speakers sound good in my room and my seating location, I think I will keep my speakers 'roughly' in the same location. I have recently picked up a mic and I have been using REW, In doing that, I have noticed that I get a very good blend in and relatively flat response with both subs active at 80Hz x-over. However, when I change the x-over to 60 or 40, there is quite the hole. There is a big dropoff in bass response when I turn the subs off.
So looking at my REW data, I started playing around with Room Simulation. I get pretty good response across the full bandwidth when I have both subs added, but when I remove the subs, I notice the same simulation data dips as the real-world data. So this makes me question getting another tower speaker. If my "new" speaker is in the same rough location, shouldn't it too be affected by the room mode and I would have the same dip in bass?
Here is a screenshot of no sub in my room (speaker can play reasonably well to 40-50Hz, but not from my MLP):
Here is a shot of the mains with the subs blended (I have since improved the flatness of the 35Hz dip by moving a sub, but I didn't get a screenshot of it):
And here is a shot of the Room Simulator. Note the same dip as I saw with my speaker without sub:
So... long-winded way of asking, but with my room, relative speaker position and MLP, wouldn't much of the benefit of a tower speaker that plays lower than what I have now be "just as lost" as the dips I have now? So, would a "better" bookshelf speaker with subs be something that I should be looking into? Might that be a better value proposition? I understand that mid-bass above the 80Hz x-over would be different with my current vs. potential future speaker, but could the thought of going to a better bookshelf be a/the possible correct path?
I hope this long-ish question makes sense. I might be overlooking other elements altogether.
Thanks.