I haven't switched context. If you think that, it's probably due to a failure to communicate clearly on my part. Just to be clear, when I'm talking about the benefits of multiple separate subs, I'm strictly speaking of situations where you have full control of where those subs will go. Otherwise, you might as well just attach them to the mains and live with the sound that results.
I'm sure those are fantastic speakers. The problem is, sound quality at those frequencies isn't about the speakers, it's about the room, and the speakers position within that room. Remember, you're hearing the room, not the speakers. The speakers themselves are somewhat irrelevant. Once you have sufficient output, the best bass speaker will be the speaker with the most placement flexibility, hence why attached subs are at a huge disadvantage.
Now, that's not to say you can't get good bass out of full range towers, but it's gonna take a lot of luck(with the room), and a ton of EQ(which limits headroom). I can guarantee that those Mythos towers would have terrible bass, compared to what I have now with separate subs in two of my rooms.
Not sure what point you think I was trying to make here. I'm not trying to obfuscate anything or be disingenuous. Can you quote the part of my text you thought was disingenuous? May have just been a mistake on my part.
All other things held constant(usually price is something that's not) having real bass capability in your mains is always a positive. Not sure why you think I disagree with that.
My point was simply that attached subs are "less good" than separate subs(with placement flexibility), but given the choice between full range mains and bookshelves, I'll always go for the full range mains(if everything else is the same).
I always think of it this way: the optimal number and location of deep bass reproducers is not the same as the optimal number and location of mid-and-treble reproducers. So, any all-in-one speaker simply cannot be optimal.
You posted a reply to something I wrote, which is perfectly okay, however it was a little odd, and I thought it appropriate to say so and explain why. It isn't worth further elaboration, however I would like very much for you to understand why I thought that what you wrote was a little odd. Admittedly I did a lousy job of explaining it (I really did), so I have to try again, and if I fail this time, I'll be content that I've given it my best try.
The comment of mine to which you replied was a reply to a comment made by Bear123, which he made in reply to one of my comments. I had written about difficulties that are due to the bass limitation of small speakers. He wrote that proper integration of a subwoofer is easy thanks to modern A/V receivers. I replied that he may have been just as happy with a pair of stereo speakers with powered subs built-in. My point, which I thought should have been readily apparent to anyone reading what I wrote, was that the absence of difficulty in integrating the sub is a moot advantage when the alternative setup against which the 2.1 setup is compared is a 2.0 system where the same quality of bass is achieved without any need to do any integration. Then you arrived and said in essence that stereo speakers with full-bass capability aren't any good because they don't allow the low-frequency drivers to be positioned for the best effect at mitigating standing waves and nulls within the room. That struck me as terribly peculiar, and still does, because I cannot understand what it is supposed to say about whether a subwoofer setup where integration is trivial is or isn't an advantage over a setup where no integration is needed.
I do not think you failed to communicate clearly. I do think that you did not bother to make an appropriate effort to understand what another person had said, and their reason for saying it.
Ugh. First, I don't honestly don't give a crap because what you're saying has absolutely no bearing on the veracity of what I had written, as I explained above. Second, why would it be important for me to remember something that is patently absurd? You are in fact saying that the quality of deep bass in a room doesn't have anything to do with the speakers. To test your theory, you can remove your subwoofers from the room and then listen to see if this has any affect on the quality of the bass.
I am very happy for you that you have two rooms with two subs in each room. But even if you had bought a pair of Mythos ST-L SuperTowers and placed them in one of your two rooms so that you could confirm for yourself that they don't compare to the setup you own, the likelihood is vanishingly small that you would be able to make an objective assessment of any difference in the sound quality.
By the way, I had hoped to avoid mention of this, but there is no way that your setup can possibly sound good, because good-sounding bass is only possible if the walls and the ceiling are completely covered with 18" subwoofers. As it would happen, this is what I have in each of two rooms, and I can guarantee you that the dual sub setup of yours has terrible bass, compared to what I have now with my walls and ceiling covered with 18" subwoofers in two of my rooms.
I already stated what it was that you obfuscated, but I'll try again. By writing what you wrote in the context in which you wrote it, you obfuscated the fact that a setup with subwoofers incorporated into each of two stereo speakers has an advantage in mitigation of room modes, compared to a single-subwoofer setup. Given the particulars of the discussion you joined, it would have been fully appropriate for you to have made this point, but instead you made a point that didn't bear on anything that had been said and that had the actual effect of obfuscating the point that would have been appropriate for you to have made.
It might have something to do with your having written, "In most rooms, subs need to be placed in different physical locations than the mains in order to sound good."
Okay, but that's not really the same as what you previously wrote. And even given this statement which is much better, the point that you wanted to make and that you made has no bearing on anything that had been put into question in the discussion that preceded your having joined. But it doesn't matter. I thought it appropriate to point this out, but you did not understand it, so I tried again, and now that I have done my devil best at trying to make this understandable to you, I will say no more about it. Even if you reply to this by asserting the advantages of one type of amplifier vs. another.
Excellent integration is easy so long as your main stereo speakers can play cleaning at adequate volume at the requisite low frequency.
See your own words, above. The word 'optimal' is not necessary: it means much the same thing as "excellent integration" for the purpose of this particular discussion.And no one here has claimed that an all-in-one speaker is "optimal".
You are thrashing around in a bear trap. You will gain respect if you give an inch. Specifically, stereo full-range main speakers will always have second-level bass, because they are restrained by being only two sources and in the wrong locations, no matter how well they are executed or equalized. Multi-subs can solve this and bring top-level bass.If it seemed to you that someone had made this claim, it is only because of what Richard12511 wrote. This is a perfect example of what I despise about web forums. One person says that it is hot outside. Another person joins and says that it can't be hot outside because the Sahara is where it is hot. A third person then joins and says that they have proof that it can't be hot outside because they have been to the Sahara and they know for a fact that the Sahara is where it is hot, not here.
Separate subs that can be placed in optimal locations will always achieve better sound quality, higher SPL capability, lower distortion, and lower extension. No matter how good, how large, and how low a speaker attempts to play, they are better with subs.
Fact is, if one is after the best sound quality possible, speakers crossed to good quality well placed subs is the most optimal solution. I wouldn't therefore waste money on "subwoofer" capability that is limited to the same placement as the speakers.
I suppose another way to look at it is, given the choice of tower speakers with solid 40 Hz extension that can be effectively crossed at 80 Hz to good subs, or tower speakers spec'd to 20 Hz extension but no subs, I'd gladly pass on the 20 Hz speakers.
See your own words, above. The word 'optimal' is not necessary: it means much the same thing as "excellent integration" for the purpose of this particular discussion.
You are thrashing around in a bear trap. You will gain respect if you give an inch. Specifically, stereo full-range main speakers will always have second-level bass, because they are restrained by being only two sources and in the wrong locations, no matter how well they are executed or equalized. Multi-subs can solve this and bring top-level bass.
cheers
I concede. If someone held a gun to my head and told me I couldn't use subwoofers but had to make due with only tower speakers that play low, then yes, I would take all the extension I could get.
My room isn't huge, its about 2525 ft^3. I somehow managed to use about 15 of those for a pair of good subs.
At my seat in front of the screen I just measured 36dBA
Certainly not, I think I would notice if white noise appeared as background noise in my listening room.How is the spectrum of that noise distributed, it's surely not even level at all frequencies?
Agree. Most speakers have far too little capacity in the critical area between 100-400 hz. Here is from my experiments with Kii Three with low and high crossover to the subs;I agree with that except not entirely with the last sentence. My reason, as I have previously discussed, is that there are lots of speakers being sold nowadays, for considerably more than mere pocket change, that do not have the bass capability needed for proper integratiion with a subwoofer at some frequency below 100 Hz, unless they are played at volume that is probably lower than the typical volume at which most people probably play their systems.
Agree, one sub placed away from the speakers will become audible when crossed over above 40-50 hz.There has been a lot of discussion on this, which discussion has mostly concerned itself with audibility of distortion, but it has also been pointed out that depending on the steepness of the filter slopes, a 100 Hz crossover point will still allow the sub, typically, to emit sound at an audible level in the upper bass and even lower midrange, again depending on the particulars, but generally this concern is valid and is easily evidenced in many setups that employ subwoofers. Which is to say, it is manifest that there is no bass coming from those small bookshelf speakers using drivers that are claimed to be 6.5" but that are actually less than 5", and it is further not difficult to identify the location of the subwoofer just by moving your head a little.
One subwoofer = difficult to integrate if it isn't placed near the fronts.And in the off-axis response you get destructive interference for the frequency range one or two octaves above the crossover point, which means that you hear a dip in that area of frequency. You may beg to differ based on your personal experiences, in which case you and I have had different experiences from which we obtain our individual perspectives on this question. From my experience, and to sum it up, the only stereo speakers that easily integrate properly with a subwoofer at frequency as low as it needs to be are speakers that have sufficient bass capability that many people wouldn't bother with the subwoofer.
Agree. Most speakers have far too little capacity in the critical area between 100-400 hz. ...
Agree, one sub placed away from the speakers will become audible when crossed over above 40-50 hz.
You need more subs and you always need the fronts to play at the same time so that the directional ques will come from the higher frequencies played by the fronts. Otherwise you will hear where the subs are because there's no brick-wall crossover filter.
One subwoofer = difficult to integrate if it isn't placed near the fronts.
In my experience there's almost no speaker on the market with sufficiently high bass capability to rid itself of the need for a subwoofer. Thumb-rule is that any and every speaker without dedicated sub-drivers can and will benefit from avoiding the taxing load of sub-duty. Lower IMD, better capacity and the benefit of avoiding a great deal of thermal heating in the voice coils due to massive power needed for low frequencies at higher spl will always be good stuffs. But subs are not for entry-level audiophiles without microphones and know-how or patience.
Didn't follow the whole conversation on subs, but I can add my 2 cents.
Subs placed away from speakers can fix some things but also gives other problems. Even when crossed at 80Hz.
Subs should ideally not be further away than quarter wavelength of the crossover freq. Otherwise you will get off-axis dips (and cancellation at half wavelength distance of the crossover freq along the line of the sub<->speaker).
Subs do not cross entirely well with ported speakers because the sub will have different phase behavior than the speaker around port area.
Subs should ideally also be placed at the same distance from the listening position as the speakers.
And lastly, if it's for music then you usually don't need a lot of SPL capability at 20-30Hz. (for movies you do want that) You can still make it flat to 20Hz but music won't ususually actually contain such low frequencies at high levels so you won't need SPL capability down that low.
Best way to have great lows is by first of all having a large room and secondly having good deep low AFr bass traps, and then by proper placement of your speakers in the room, not too far away from the front wall.
Those are all very good points, some of which I hadn't thought about.
The lament that I had expressed was with little bookshelf speakers that lack adequate bass capability to properly cross over to a subwoofer. From there a quantum leap of sorts took place, such that there was a discussion, very one-sided and with tenacity on that one side, concerned with the question of whether stereo speakers with built-in subs are worthless junk. I thought it appropriate to mention that there are some advantages to having subwoofers incorporated into the main stereo speakers. It didn't know that it would be blasphemy to talk about those advantages.
But now that we have been brought here, there are some questions that deserve to be explored, concerning proper integration of subwoofers with the main speakers. Unfortunately there is no generally accepted agreement for what constitutes "proper integration".
One of the things you mentioned is the difficulty crossing a subwoofer with ported speakers owing to the phase behavior of ported speakers. With ported speakers there is an abrupt rotation in phase at the Helmholtz frequency, i.e., the peak in the port output. Below this frequency, phase changes rapidly with decreasing frequency, such that the lack of phase coherency between the port and the woofer is one way to explain the sharper rolloff of a ported speaker vs. a sealed enclosure. Given this rapid rotation in phase, the only way that a subwoofer could be coherent with the main stereo speaker in the overlapping frequency range would be for the subwoofer to exhibit the same rapid rotation in phase. In general when a subwoofer is crossed to ported speakers, the sub and the ported speakers can be coherent for a small frequency range but will necessarily be phase-incoherent at frequencies not very distant from the frequency where they are phase-coherent. This is a pretty strong argument to the effect that when a subwoofer is used, it is best for the main stereo speakers to be sealed.
Buy why does phase coherency even matter? It matters for the same reason that it matters with the other crossover points, i.e., the same reason that Linkwitz-Riley crossover slopes are widely preferred. It matters in order that the amount of destructive interference and phase cancellation between the two drivers will be constant throughout the crossover region, so that the response will be flat through the crossover region. Should the same expectation apply to the interface between a subwoofer (or a pair of them) and the main stereo speakers? Why should this crossover be an exception?
You mentioned the quarter-wavelength rule. If there are two or more sources of acoustic output overlapping in frequency and they are at different distances from the listener, the different distances should not differ from one another by an amount greater than 1/4 of the wavelength, where the wavelength is the wavelength for the highest frequency at which the sources are contributing significantly to the output. It becomes somewhat fuzzy, but it is probably appropriate to identify the frequency two octaves above the crossover point, as the important frequency. If we suppose that the crossover point is 100 Hz, then two octaves above this frequency is 400 Hz, where the corresponding wavelength is 2.8', and according to the quarter-wavelength rule the distances (from the listener to the main speakers, and from the listener to the subwoofers) should not differ by more than nine inches. If are less of a stickler for rules and apply the rule to frequency just one octave above the crossover point we get 17", and if we apply it to the 100 Hz crossover point we still get 2.8' for the quarter-wavelength. Clearly the crossover point will need to be a good deal lower if phase coherency is expected to be achieved with two subwoofers at locations far removed from the locations of the main stereo speakers. A choice has to be made. You can position the dual subwoofers so as to mitigate the standing waves and nulls for specific wavelengths at specific locations, or you position them so that phase coherency between the subs and the main speakers will be achieved, to a strong extent that still will depend on the phase behavior of the main stereo speakers. The only way to have it both ways (other than extensive application of room treatment) is for the crossover point to be down close to 20 Hz, in which case it becomes a true subwoofer in the sense of infrasonic output augmenting a pair of stereo speakers that each incorporate a conventional subwoofer.
I don't know what the answer is. I suppose that if my listening room did not have irregular dimensions, i.e., if it were a cube, I would be more concerned about the room modes, because in this case there would be one particular frequency that would be conspicuously too loud at specific locations and practically inaudible at other locations. A room of this sort would demand extensive room treatment. But the very same thing happens with the harmonics of that particular frequency, right on up through the midrange and treble, and is accepted as a fact of life and regarded as something that you aren't likely to notice unless you go looking for it, using a microphone and a measuring system. There is evidently some reason why we do not take the same attitude of indifference with respect to the longest wavelengths where a quarter of a wavelength can be equal to the room dimension.
Yes, and you can add to that the difficulty for many of getting a sub in phase even above the port freq in the first place.
As for the 4 times the crossover freq and then again taking 1/4 wavelength distance I'm not really following you.. We don't need 1/4 wavelength of 4 times the crossover freq as the signal will be way down already there (48dB for LR4 crossover) and in reality most subs will have problems in that region already anyhow (usually this would be 320Hz, 4 * 80Hz). ....
Didn't follow the whole conversation on subs, but I can add my 2 cents.
Subs placed away from speakers can fix some things but also gives other problems. Even when crossed at 80Hz.
Subs should ideally not be further away than quarter wavelength of the crossover freq. Otherwise you will get off-axis dips (and cancellation at half wavelength distance of the crossover freq along the line of the sub<->speaker).
....