Subs not needed thankyou!

[Redacted]

I am not sure what "easy room" means. The worst rooms for bass modes are those with rectangular dimensions with seating near the center of the room.

Long and filled with wife stuff like big soft sofas & chairs, an unusable number of cushions, with plush floor rugs, persian rugs on walls, small windows only at rear, heavy curtains, carpeted staircase - all these seem to help compared with when the room was sparse (ask me how I know). Doesn't matter much to me though, as I am limited in what "blokey junk" I can put in it, and yet my music is fine on very modest kit. My office however: Blackstar amp (when she's out), 2 NAS, 3 PCS, Topping DX1, ghetto blaster (when she's out), 'phones (to avoid being stabbed in the night) - it's a screened off half of a utility room and it jangles (and booms on low guitar strings, so you just have to turn it up! Luckily, passing neighbours do give me the thumbs-up, but that;s possibly because they don't expect someone nearly 70 to be banging out Pretty Vacant (and still remember the words and stand up at the same time).

 

[Redacted]

You don’t necessarily need DSP, REW’s ‘room simulation’ feature can be useful or simply moving microphone measuring to help determine the ‘least worse’ positioning of speakers and listener.
Keith

A good point, but it's all been carefully placed by empirical test. It took 3 days, as I said, and you haven't met my wife. She has many plans for my time.

 

[Alannn]

The compelling case for multiple subs using dsp for room correction, combined with high pass filter to mains to reduce audible distortion, has been so firmly established for so long, it's a wonder a thread like this even appears.

The only "case" for stereo speakers without subs has to be about saving time and money, not about high fidelity.

 

[90sNintendoKid]

I like the idea of 2.0 full range but in practice it's not very practical. I say 20hz or GTFO, at least to 85dB or so. That's pretty hard to achieve without subs at a reasonable size. As such my two main systems are 2.2...

Lol, I always use subwoofers and I’m now going to say 20hz or gtfo

 

[Open Mind Audio]

My recent speaker journey may be relevant here -- it's a Tale of Two Rooms.

In our previous home in Austin, we had a dedicated home theater and audio room that was large and off to the side of the main flow of the house. My wife let me have at it in terms of speaker placement, because we only went in there for listening and watching movies, and she was fine if it looked liked a gearhead's paradise. In that room, for 8 years I was totally satisfied going without subs and just using my full-range Goldenear Triton Ones (the main part of a 5-4 Atmos set up). Effectively, the Triton Ones have small subs built into each tower, with their own amps. It took me a bit of experimentation and measuring to place the Triton Ones correctly, to tune in the best bass for my main listening position and also to avoid nulls, which resulted from some of the positions I tried. I had a lot of flexibility to experiment because the main listening position was 15 feet from the back wall and ultimately 12 feet from the main speakers, which jutted out about 3 feet into the room, ultimately.

Flash forward to room #2 in our current house in Baltimore, I could never position the Tritons correctly. This is mainly because the room with our TV and multi-channel listening is now part of the main flow of the house, with open doorways on either side of the logical place for the main speakers. Also, it's a much nicer looking room, so even I could not justify pulling the main speakers far out into the room and fiddling with placement to get the bass perfect. So I sold the towers and went the satellite / sub route with Kef Q-Concertos and one (for now) SVS SB-3000. It's great, but I have to say for stereo listening, I preferred the two full-range towers in my old room in Austin.

So in sum, if you have the space and flexibility to play around with your full-range speaker placement and tune in the bass, then the full range / no subs option works very well. I prefer it (though full range + subs seems even better). But if you don't have that space -- and frankly you need a lot of it -- then you're better off going with satellites and 1-2 subs, IMHO.

PS - With the Triton Ones / No subs setup, we did sacrifice a small amount of the special effects rumble in movies. I never ever noticed a deficit in music, however, quite the opposite -- the base was wonderfully integrated once the placement was correct.