If you have full range main speakers can a single sub be enough?

[9radua1]

I think most "audiophiles" are really grown up kids who had (or wished they had) a car full of subwoofers when they were young .

Well, there’s a generational thing here, for sure. If one mostly listens to music from the 50s to the 70s, then subbass hasn’t been an issue, because those records were produced without much of it. Modern pop and electronic music is something else, even modern classical, right? There’s more information to be had in the subbass.

I’m listening to that ‘97 James Taylor-album “Hourglass” right now that Frank Filipetti won an Emmy for producing. Soft, vocal and guitar-focused record. Adding the subwoofer to pressurize the 20-40 Hz octave doesn’t change the message much, but it sure as hell changes the delivery. Weight and balance is added to the bass registers. If that’s so, the producer meant to do it. And so you need subbass to replay it. I think that’s why most of us have a sub. The difficulty with integrating it properly can be a PITA, but that’s not a reason to exclude them.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Actually, there are quite a lot of acoustical problems in many venues. We simply don’t have the ability to correct them. I play the tuba in a wind band, and we play(ed, thank you Covid) in village halls and so. Sometimes you have too much reverb, sometimes you don’t hear the bass notes, sometimes the clarinets are all but inaudible, etc, etc. Mind you, there are some very bad Concert Halls too...

I have made recordings in a lot of venues, and yes, the acoustics vary a lot, and some, particularly churches, have locations which are terrible, but these are known and not used for performance ( except weddings where some poor soul may have to sing in a dead location whilst the register is being signed.
OTOH I am speaking about my room, which I am told should be bad because of size, with awful audible problems which I am not hearing.
I must be deaf or exceedingly undiscerning.

 

[StefaanE]

OTOH I am speaking about my room, which I am told should be bad because of size, with awful audible problems which I am not hearing.
I must be deaf or exceedingly undiscerning.

Or you simply have gotten used to the sound in the room, and it no longer registers as "different". Our brains don't waste time worrying about a situation that has proved to be the reference (and safe) for years. I was pretty happy with my Infinity Primus 360 to the point that I didn't see the point of getting new speakers (I bought a new receiver to support my Apple TV 4K and Philips OLED). When I finally bit the bullet and bought the Nuberts, they were so much better I couldn't believe it. The first days I noticed that, for years, I hadn't been hearing the triangle (which I had started to notice when listening to concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker through the Apple TV -- they show the triangle player and I heard nothing). The same as far as the lower register is concerned. The flip side is that I notice how bad some of my CDs are, and how hopelessly some modern recordings exaggerate the bass register. But I always enjoyed listening to the Infinities, and never heard "problems" until there was something to point to them (such as a visual, or a better speaker.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Or you simply have gotten used to the sound in the room, and it no longer registers as "different". Our brains don't waste time worrying about a situation that has proved to be the reference (and safe) for years. I was pretty happy with my Infinity Primus 360 to the point that I didn't see the point of getting new speakers (I bought a new receiver to support my Apple TV 4K and Philips OLED). When I finally bit the bullet and bought the Nuberts, they were so much better I couldn't believe it. The first days I noticed that, for years, I hadn't been hearing the triangle (which I had started to notice when listening to concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker through the Apple TV -- they show the triangle player and I heard nothing). The same as far as the lower register is concerned. The flip side is that I notice how bad some of my CDs are, and how hopelessly some modern recordings exaggerate the bass register. But I always enjoyed listening to the Infinities, and never heard "problems" until there was something to point to them (such as a visual, or a better speaker.

Well I have been getting better speakers for the last 52 years, starting DIY as many did back then.
My room was built as a dedicated listening room over 20 years ago and the speakers positioned by an expert using MLSSA. I have used 3 way speakers since 1971 since I found 2 ways unsatisfactory.

I am not dissatisfied with the sound I am getting just woondering if some sort of room compensation may help, so far none has and I am speculating a psychological automatic compensation is inherent may be one reason and the corrections I have tried so far are not good enough.

The only speakers I have researched which almost certainly are better than the ones I have are ugly or expensive.
https://www.genelec.com/1236a
https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/speakers/beolab-90

 

[Soniclife]

OTOH I am speaking about my room, which I am told should be bad because of size, with awful audible problems which I am not hearing.

What is allegedly wrong about your room?
FWIW one of the best sounds I ever got was when I put my system in a 12 x 12 x 12 room with all solid walls, I expected it to be awful as the advice was always to avoid square rooms, but the system just worked in that room. Too long ago to know why now.

 

[Purité Audio]

Well I have been getting better speakers for the last 52 years, starting DIY as many did back then.
My room was built as a dedicated listening room over 20 years ago and the speakers positioned by an expert using MLSSA. I have used 3 way speakers since 1971 since I found 2 ways unsatisfactory.

I am not dissatisfied with the sound I am getting just woondering if some sort of room compensation may help, so far none has and I am speculating a psychological automatic compensation is inherent may be one reason and the corrections I have tried so far are not good enough.

The only speakers I have researched which almost certainly are better than the ones I have are ugly or expensive.
https://www.genelec.com/1236a
https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/speakers/beolab-90

Have you made any measurements yet?
Post them up, I have been experimenting with REW’s ‘EQ’ function just comparing what I set to REW’s suggested.
You would be most welcome to try Kii/BXT they have built in Eq now,
Bw Keith

 

[blueone]

I think most "audiophiles" are really grown up kids who had (or wished they had) a car full of subwoofers when they were young. Now they think a room full of them is cool. A huge amount of modern recordings really don't have much real bass anyway- it's just packed full of mid bass. And if it's movies with subterranean sound effects, that's surely for the home theatre, not the listening room?

I've got a pile of subwoofers that never get used. I've given several to my boys for their bedrooms so they can get "bass" out of their systems before they grow up. After going "extreme" and having SPL wars trying to crack the paster walls, they are bored with excess bass, just as I am. There's no system I have heard, ever, regardless of price, quality of installation or the room, where they do not betray their location and break apart the illusion of speakers disappearing. Even when placed directly under speakers (used as a speaker stand).

I see this obsessiveness of p#ssing around in the lowest few octaves, fighting a room, and yet accepting putrid midrange around crossover points and right at the point our ears are most sensitive.

Make some recordings of music playing on your system and listen to it on headphones. You'll hear way more problems which your brain happily compensates for subconsciously. Way more than a few room modes and suckouts.

I disagree. Getting the bass octaves to be smooth is critical to a lot of music I listen to. A solo piano in a medium-sized venue (a ballroom, not an auditorium) has important output in the 30-60Hz range, and some recordings on some pianos (e.g., the Bosendorfer Imperial Grand) have output in the 25-30Hz range. Many fusion jazz recordings have deep bass. I'm not into popular music much, but 20-40Hz bass is common nowadays. Am I'm not even mentioning large organs, because I'm not a big fan, but 32Hz bass is obviously foundational.

I also disagree that all subwoofers are easy to localize and break the illusion of speakers disappearing. Getting the lowest octaves right often means different positions for the L/R speakers and subwoofers, and without subs low-bass is almost always a compromise. A lot of people do run their subs at too high a level, in fact I would say most do, but that doesn't degrade the case for subs at all. It just means some people like over-wrought bass. I will admit that, obviously from my posts in this thread, I utilize my subs differently than common practice, by running the L/R speakers full range and using DSP to adjust the subs' output to fill-in only, but it is also completely possible to set up a system where the L/R speakers disappear with more conventional low-pass filters at 80Hz or less.

Personally, I will never have a music-only system without subs again. Depending on just L/R speakers is a compromise, unless you get very lucky with your room acoustics.

 

[Willem]

I am similarly convinced that subs contribute much to the sound quality, although admittedly my Quad 2805s do not go that low on their own (in my large room they fall off a cliff below 38 Hz). And yes, you notice the increased realism with large pipe organ, but also with much small scale jazz. And as @blueone says, modern recordings have a lot more low bass than earlier and often analogue recordings. I would not bother if I was just playing vinyl.
Thus far, I have failed to localize the sub: subjectively the deep bass comes straight from the main speakers. Until very recently I used the sub in traditional REL fashion, connected at high level, and therefore with a pretty low low pass filter. I have just changed that to line level, with a 80 Hz high pass filter and a 80 Hz low pass filter (I probably still need to do some adjusting there). I still fail to localize the sub. I equalize the sub with an Antimode 8033 dsp room eq for just the sub, and with a higher crossover frequency I obviously benefit more from this equalization that only works on the sub. The plan is to add one or more smaller subwoofers to smoothen the response over a wider area than is possibile with just one sub, and hence benefit more from the dsp room equalization. For that, I first need to do some measurements, to see how far down these smaller subs will have to extend (see the thread on the Audiokinesis Swarm system), and experiment with adding the small KEF Kube8b sub that I have just bought for my desktop system: will it extend far enough down, or will I need the larger Kube10b?
I recognize Frank's idea of using the main speakers as de facto small subs, and he would not be the first to do this, but I have no idea how to do this properly. It implies playing them with a large overlap between the main speakers going down to some 20 Hz, and the sub playing all the way up to 80 Hz. The traditional wisdom is, of course, that overlap between mains and sub should be as little as possible, but isn't using multiple subs also a version of such overlap? Archimago's experiment with adding a small sub to a system with a large sub is here: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2020/05/musings-measurements-subwoofers-to.html

 

[Frank Dernie]

What is allegedly wrong about your room?
FWIW one of the best sounds I ever got was when I put my system in a 12 x 12 x 12 room with all solid walls, I expected it to be awful as the advice was always to avoid square rooms, but the system just worked in that room. Too long ago to know why now.

Sorry, I meant the proposal here that all domestic living rooms have problems which need DSP to ameliorate below about 200Hz.
I consider my room not bad.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Have you made any measurements yet?
Post them up, I have been experimenting with REW’s ‘EQ’ function just comparing what I set to REW’s suggested.
You would be most welcome to try Kii/BXT they have built in Eq now,
Bw Keith

No, the whole idea bores the living f*cking daylights out of me. I still need to go out to my cable store and find a long enough cable to go between the computer and amp input and it is cold and raining.

 

[Jdunk54nl]

Floyd recommends room correction for the bass, though. I believe he says it’s almost a requirement to get good sound.

Agreed. My comment was more of we can listen through rooms for the most part after we grow accustom to them. Big issues are still going to be big issues though and need to be adjusted for. Standing wave issues are big issues that we can hear by moving about the room. Many ways to fix these issues as discussed in Floyd's book.

We also can't listen very well through multiple speakers negatively interfering with each other (unless done on purpose to fix other issues), which can/will be the case here if not properly accounted for.

I am similarly convinced that subs contribute much to the sound quality,

Floyd's research showed as much as 30% was associated with bass notes.

 

[richard12511]

Well, there’s a generational thing here, for sure. If one mostly listens to music from the 50s to the 70s, then subbass hasn’t been an issue, because those records were produced without much of it. Modern pop and electronic music is something else, even modern classical, right? There’s more information to be had in the subbass.

I’m listening to that ‘97 James Taylor-album “Hourglass” right now that Frank Filipetti won an Emmy for producing. Soft, vocal and guitar-focused record. Adding the subwoofer to pressurize the 20-40 Hz octave doesn’t change the message much, but it sure as hell changes the delivery. Weight and balance is added to the bass registers. If that’s so, the producer meant to do it. And so you need subbass to replay it. I think that’s why most of us have a sub. The difficulty with integrating it properly can be a PITA, but that’s not a reason to exclude them.

Indeed a lot of modern pop and electronic music has plenty of sub bass, often extending well below 20hz, and even some below 10hz. I’ve yet to hear a subless system that sounds great with those types of recordings. Bass is always uneven and peaky, and just doesn’t disappear the way a system with 4-8 well placed and integrated subs does.

 

[sigbergaudio]

I think most "audiophiles" are really grown up kids who had (or wished they had) a car full of subwoofers when they were young. Now they think a room full of them is cool. A huge amount of modern recordings really don't have much real bass anyway- it's just packed full of mid bass. And if it's movies with subterranean sound effects, that's surely for the home theatre, not the listening room?

I've got a pile of subwoofers that never get used. I've given several to my boys for their bedrooms so they can get "bass" out of their systems before they grow up. After going "extreme" and having SPL wars trying to crack the paster walls, they are bored with excess bass, just as I am. There's no system I have heard, ever, regardless of price, quality of installation or the room, where they do not betray their location and break apart the illusion of speakers disappearing. Even when placed directly under speakers (used as a speaker stand).

I see this obsessiveness of p#ssing around in the lowest few octaves, fighting a room, and yet accepting putrid midrange around crossover points and right at the point our ears are most sensitive.

Make some recordings of music playing on your system and listen to it on headphones. You'll hear way more problems which your brain happily compensates for subconsciously. Way more than a few room modes and suckouts.

You obviously never heard a well integrated system with subwoofers (which I'm sure you will dispute), but if you did, you wouldn't be writing this.

A subwoofer (or a number of subwoofers) can be made to be completely "invisible" in the sense that you get the illusion of only listening to the speakers, while at the same time adding critical information that very few speakers could reproduce on their own.

 

[sigbergaudio]

This.

The first system I ever heard that blew my mind had a single sub (some Velodyne model, which accompanied Sanders loudspeakers). Couldn't tell it was there.

This is the most fun (and often possible, allthough sometimes difficult) to achieve with smaller speakers, even 2-way models. You can close your eyes, and the fullness and depth of the soundstage makes you believe you must be listening to large floorstanders, and then open your eyes, and your brain goes "what is going on?"

 

[Willem]

As an experiment I recently put up my little Harbeth P3ESR mini monitors in our large living room, driven by the 2x140 watt power amplifier in my main system, and combined with the main system's subwoofer. The illusion of listening to large speakers was unreal indeed. They did not quite fill the really large room, but the deep bass (down to about 13 Hz) was bizarre, seemingly coming from these little boxes. Integration was pretty easy.

 

[BDWoody]

This.

The first system I ever heard that blew my mind had a single sub (some Velodyne model, which accompanied Sanders loudspeakers). Couldn't tell it was there.

What I consider my first real 'I have real Hi FI in my own humble abode' moment was when I got my new Velodyne DD12+ (still have it) set up with the Paradigm Titans I was using as mains. It has a mic and internal processing and a video connection to see what's going on, etc...and when I finally got it dialed in, it was truly amazing to me how big those little speakers suddenly seemed.

I've been a big believer in them since. I have my JBL708P's sitting on top of a pair of older HSU 10" subs (the tubular ones), and I'm very happy with the resulting sound all across my seating area. Been playing with the crossover settings to see what changes that brings in casual listening, but I really should learn how to properly use REW and see what's really going on. Frank has inspired me...

 

[Willem]

Add the Velodyne to the Hsu subs. The more the better. And yes, measure and use some dsp room eq. The Geddes approach would be to put the biggest sub that goes deepest (the Velodyne?) in a corner for some additional reinforcement and have the others quite randomly distributed.

 

[stevenswall]

As per the title, can a single sub added to a pair of full range speakers be set up to behave like a system with 3 subs, and if so which software would do it best?
I realise in such a system two of the "subs" will have a fixed location.

Dirac Live Bass Control/Management would do it, but it's rare to see that on a unit with regular Dirac, and DIRAC refuses to keep a running list of current and upcoming units that support that.

Regular Dirac and all other software strangles full range speakers, mindlessly cutting them off whether or not they can produce bass or compliment a subwoofer.

 

[BDWoody]

Add the Velodyne to the Hsu subs. The more the better. And yes, measure and use some dsp room eq. The Geddes approach would be to put the biggest sub that goes deepest (the Velodyne?) in a corner for some additional reinforcement and have the others quite randomly distributed.

I've been thinking I'll do that as I get the room organized. I also have a Genelec 7261a that I'm working out how to best mix in (AES in only). I put together a minidsp 2x10, so I *could* run my processor Sub out into that, use the analog outs into the Krell for the HSU's and the AES into the Genelec, then I would use MSO and REW and time and swearing and a lot of Beer to get it all put together.

I have the GLM kit but not sure if it makes sense to mix and match. There are a few options on how to get it all hooked up, and I'm already over my head.

 

[MZKM]

(not just a polarity adjustment)

I’m still baffled that REL only offers polarity switches on their subs, even their $7500 flagship; yet they go thru the trouble of advocating their unique hookup connection as:

you capture the sonic signature of your main system, including the tonal balance and timing cues of the entire electronics chain. This is a very important point and together with REL’s Active Bass Controller (ABC), ensures far superior system integration of the sub-bass with the main system.