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Subwoofer recommendations with pair of W228Be's in small room / amateur non-environment

noblenote

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Hi everyone. I am doing a bit of an experiment for science :) I am building a non-environment listening room after reading Mr. Philip Newell's book and corresponding with him. My room is very small (19 ft long by 11 feet wide 7.25 feet tall, but the actual listening area is about 11 feet by 11 feet, as the rest of the room is effectively a hallway with 5 different passages - to a garage, a basement, a office, a bathroom, and stairs up to a large kitchen/living room).

I have a pair of W228Bes mounted in drywall, an absorptive ceiling (14-15 inches was the best that I could do, I actually removed the ceiling drywall to get this depth given the height of the ceiling), 2 feet absorbtion on the rear wall, another 2 feet on the left wall, and I am working on the right wall.

Attached is the FR response so far. A little hot in the 300hz-500hz range. I am going to turn this into a little 2.1 home theater, but I don't really consume much modern movies or media (i.e. not focused on dynamic explosions in movies). However, I do want to extend low for music (including the occassional organ music) - I want a flexible system that can handle anything.

I've been considering Arendal subwoofers because of their design - if "sideways" you can effectively put it adjacent and flat to the wall because the electronics then are on the side with the woofer facing straight into the room and such that the depth is a mere 12-13 inches from the wall. I was looking at the 1961 1s or the 1723 1s. Alternatively, I was also considering the E15 Rythmik. I used to have two F12s in this room with a different orientation, and they never broke a sweat..pretty sure my gain was 9 o clock on both subs. They easily had the ability to pressurize the room. I think because how small it is (on a concrete slab with tile) there is decent boundary reinforcement at low frequencies, making it easy for subs.

I keep hearing about the intangible benefits of bigger subs and tactility.. but fitting two E15's in this room would be challenging (and imposing looking). Two of the smaller Arendal subwoofers would maybe be possible.

Any thoughts or subwoofer recomendations either Arendal or Rythmik, or otherwise? Much appreciated.
 

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Better use 2 small subs than one big. ideal would be a pair of 10" subs that are tuned low for such a space. I would build them myself but a pair of SVS SB1000Pro would be great. You better have 2 subs because they fill each other in where room messes with them (for science behind it: google Floyd Toole's Multisub Theory). I use 10" Scanspeak 26W8534G00's in sealed cabinets in a larger space than you and that is already overkill.

But way more important to the sub itself is how you integrate it within your system. With the simple analog filters of most of the amps you can't really integrate it. You need dsp, and a MiniDSP or something similar with detailed filters, phase and delay correction and room correction. That can do way more than swapping subs to your bass sound.
 
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