IMO - Subwoofers don’t make large speakers obsolete. For example, larger speakers can have advantages in higher output within lower distortion, due to larger or more drivers, and typically have 3-way/4-way designs that have mid-bass/bass drivers working more in their optimal range, which benefits output and distortion. 3 or 4-way designs will also shrink the midrange smaller than it otherwise would be, and that results in better dispersion. All of that said, all speakers are improved with active crossovers and competent subwoofers. This is because the optimal location for stereo imaging is never the optimal location for bass response. I use subs with Salon 2s with fantastic results.
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Subwoofers make all big speakers obsolete?
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
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Well in a regular HD measurement it won't be playing the frequencies at the same time, so you wouldn't see a difference.
I'd say you can find good subwoofer drivers that could do a pretty good job up to 2-300hz. I'm subjective on the matter though.
With the drivers we use the THD is practically non-existant between 80-300hz. I understand you are wondering whether this would be compounding in a wide range during music if I understand you correctly, but I don't see any particular reason why that would be a big issue. In general though both THD and IMD will be reduced by dividing up the frequency range between different drivers, that's part of the reason we have the sub in the first place So 3-way + Sub (essentially 4-way) would typically be a good way to minimize distortion, but comes with other compromises and design challenges as opposed to simpler designs.
Bill Brown
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There was a good thread that touched on this:
"Subs & Satellites - can it be done right?"
@sigbergaudio and I had a nice exchange, my comments starting on this post:
Subs & Satellites - can it be done right?
For best results the satellites need to play flat one octave below the crossover so 40Hz to 50 Hz.... many small satellite can't do this which makes integration with subs difficult. The crossover used for Genelec SAM monitors and subwoofers is an Eighth-order Linkwitz–Riley crossover (LR8...
www.audiosciencereview.com
I then provided some additional stuff and links that I think are at least interesting:
Subs & Satellites - can it be done right?
For best results the satellites need to play flat one octave below the crossover so 40Hz to 50 Hz.... many small satellite can't do this which makes integration with subs difficult. The crossover used for Genelec SAM monitors and subwoofers is an Eighth-order Linkwitz–Riley crossover (LR8...
www.audiosciencereview.com
This quote from one of the papers makes sense to me:
b) Above the “first mode” region lays the “modal region”. Here is where multiple subs are more than desirable, they are basically essential. Above the modal region lies the “statistical region” where all rooms, regardless of size or shape, act exactly the same. It is in this region that we can begin to talk about things like wall reflections and transients. These features simply do not exist in the modal region and below. The wavelengths are such that the sound has typically bounced around the room dozens of times before a single period has elapsed and the ear can even begin to recognize anything remotely connected to a pitch. For this reason all that we can ever talk about in the LF region of a room is its steady state response. Nothing else even makes sense.
There was some nice theoretical back and forth, then I showed my measurements and described what I hear.
I hate to come across as dogmatic, though maybe I did. I think it just warrants additional thinking rather than stating localization as fact- but I could be wrong.....
Bill
BoredErica
Addicted to Fun and Learning
So Sarumbear brought up that 'half wavelength of 100Hz is 1.7m'. Does this mean I risk localization of subwoofers if the sub is placed more than 1.7M away? How does this work?
No practical difference, the frequency range is too narrow. The point is not to reproduce midrange from the same driver that does the low bass, that makes a huge difference in midrange clarity. Even if the bass-system is overdriven, and distorts, it does not have much impact on the sound because midrange is not affected.
Distortion really is not a problem in the bass range, with decent installations. A medium-to-larger system easily keeps distortion below 1% for 2h and 3h, and higher order well below that, at <0.2-0.1%, for spl at a reasonable 100-110dB, down to 20Hz, and still reasonably clean for spl up to max capacity, which should be somewhere above 115dB. But that is obviously a matter of dimension for required capacity; double the number of units and get +6dB spl for same distortion level. Smaller systems have much higher distortion figures, but still not a problem, not for music, as long as spl is kept low.
High crossover can be a problem if the drivers used have high inductance and very heavy moving mass. Keeping excursion under control, and choosing drivers with low mass and good motor is the solution.
Peterinvan
Senior Member
IMO stand mounts provide great imaging, and with a musical sub, and a La-Z-Boy chair you are in music nirvana.
Tidal > Win 11 > iUSB power > KEF LS50W > SVS1000
Tidal > Win 11 > iUSB power > KEF LS50W > SVS1000
bothu
Member
This is my 5000$ homemade system. No extra sub needed.
Fun and learning in combination.
/ Bo Thunér
Sweden
Fun and learning in combination.
/ Bo Thunér
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Another advantage of subwoofers and dsp is you can correct issues independently from the mains, like a null or peak in the sub 120hz range, I have quad 18 sealed with dsp and absolutely no one has heard my system and prefers it with them bypassed…I have identical targets for both configurations
It’s semantics right?
Like Bo Thunér’s system.
It probably plays deeper and louder and cleaner than 99% of all home stereos in his town.
Judging by his cabinet, that’s 20” wide, which means in his cabinets are eighteen inch woofers, per side.
So no, he doesn’t need a typical 10-12 inch “subwoofer”
When people ask about subwoofers,
what they mean to ask is-
Do I need deeper bass?
Or louder bass? (Or both)
Well to answer that question that all depends on how loud you intend to play?
Is your room like an apartment in Tokyo or a living room on a country farm in Boyup Brook, Western Australia?
But to get more SPL at lower frequency it’s all related. My Google Nest Audio can play 50-100Hz; at maybe 70dB @ 1m.
If I want 20-40Hz at 90dB I need a bigger woofer, or a woofer with more excursion (or both) for more air volume displacement, and/or a bigger cabinet.
Whether you want to have biggest woofers separated, or built into your main speakers all depends on aesthetics and convenience of placement vs smooth bass response around the room.
The most interesting thing is if Bo separates his cabinets; whether moving the bass bin around the room would give a better bass response at his listening position(/s). And the only way to know that it via measurements, trial and error and then reworking his crossover. Whether 3 woofers is better than 2, or 4 woofers is better than 3 that all depends on the particular room, and can’t be judged without measurements. Sure if you didn’t have measurement ability you could plonk down 3-6 (or more) subwoofers throughout for room and it might result in smoother bass response when you walk around. The downside is a variety of other practical issues too.
Now if Bo wants to play his DJ set to an audience of 300+ people outdoors over an area of 1000m^2, he may need extra subwoofers.
Like Bo Thunér’s system.
It probably plays deeper and louder and cleaner than 99% of all home stereos in his town.
Judging by his cabinet, that’s 20” wide, which means in his cabinets are eighteen inch woofers, per side.
So no, he doesn’t need a typical 10-12 inch “subwoofer”
When people ask about subwoofers,
what they mean to ask is-
Do I need deeper bass?
Or louder bass? (Or both)
Well to answer that question that all depends on how loud you intend to play?
Is your room like an apartment in Tokyo or a living room on a country farm in Boyup Brook, Western Australia?
But to get more SPL at lower frequency it’s all related. My Google Nest Audio can play 50-100Hz; at maybe 70dB @ 1m.
If I want 20-40Hz at 90dB I need a bigger woofer, or a woofer with more excursion (or both) for more air volume displacement, and/or a bigger cabinet.
Whether you want to have biggest woofers separated, or built into your main speakers all depends on aesthetics and convenience of placement vs smooth bass response around the room.
The most interesting thing is if Bo separates his cabinets; whether moving the bass bin around the room would give a better bass response at his listening position(/s). And the only way to know that it via measurements, trial and error and then reworking his crossover. Whether 3 woofers is better than 2, or 4 woofers is better than 3 that all depends on the particular room, and can’t be judged without measurements. Sure if you didn’t have measurement ability you could plonk down 3-6 (or more) subwoofers throughout for room and it might result in smoother bass response when you walk around. The downside is a variety of other practical issues too.
Now if Bo wants to play his DJ set to an audience of 300+ people outdoors over an area of 1000m^2, he may need extra subwoofers.
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dasdoing
Major Contributor
how about a modular system?
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Larry B. Larabee
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Bo doesn't need to worry about room modes because every unwanted reflection and resonance is beat in to submission by shear brute force. Room treatments? We don't need no stinkin' room treatments.
Yeah, that's a strategy--any strong reflective surface just gets knocked down. No more reflection!
We could solve floor reflections by just installing Really Big voice coils directly to the floor, right? Might have to cross that over at 10 Hz.
(Speaking of such, back in the deeps of time I took on a contract to test some equipment used for traffic management, and one of the requirements specified a range of environmental tests, including vibration. We hired a test lab in Arizona to perform the environmental testing. Their vibration fixture was...awesome. It was essentially designed like any loudspeaker driver sans cone, and the one we used had a voice coil about a foot in diameter, and field coils (I doubt any permanent magnet would have been big enough) were about 5 feet in diameter. Excursion was limited to maybe 20 mm or so. They fed it with three-phase power, and when it was on, everyone knew it. Their usual target was seating for airplanes, and they could test those to destruction from fatigue in a matter of minutes or hours. I'm glad I did not wear mechanical watches in those days.)
Rick "didn't see the amp that would drive it at a specified frequency--probably needed its own building" Denney
Schollaudio
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Large speakers aren't obsolete the same as horns aren't either. There are only a few small woofers and subwoofers available that come close to the low distortion of a decent 15" prosound device. The AE TD15S I use measures to 24hz in room with under -40DB distortion below 100hz. The gut punching impact is complimented by a compression driver with 2nd order distortion at -50DB and third order at -70db. This can all be put together with good on access, off access and phase response using an 8 part crossover. Furthermore, woofers with higher Vas, lower Fs and lower Le seem to just sound better than boot rubber and dinner plate constructions. YMMV
A nice interactive way to check, if you don’t have measurement equipment
www.audiocheck.net
www.audiocheck.net
The Ultimate Bass Test | Ultra Low Frequency Range Test
A frequency sweep from 10 Hz up to 200 Hz.
Low Frequency Harmonic Distortion Subwoofer Sound Test
Checks whether audible Harmonic Distortion is present in the lowest frequency range of your audio equipment.
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Big speakers can offer amazing room filling impactful sound. Smaller speakers don't have the same vertical dispersion even with subs. It's a totally different scale of immersive sound. I use Revel F328Be for stereo listening but when I want to watch a heart pounding action thriller in 7.2.4, I still enjoy using my 30 year old 7' tall VMPS SuperTower III's. For me, it's the closest speaker experience to a real theatre.
I've been through this a lot with different setups, room corrections, etc. Considering all the data I think a lot of it comes down to growing up listening to large full range tower speakers without subs, marginal placement, and all the colorations that come along for the ride. I've got my multi-channel systems dialed in very well, if I'm sitting down to listen to music, everything gets changed to 2.0 mode.
Basically having seen the data, curves, results, etc., I've come to accept that there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that perfectly flat response at your seating position isn't necessarily what you are going to like with music, because that's probably not how you've heard it, enjoyed it, and learned to love it over all the years. Before we had room correction tools we bought speakers that sounded best to our ears, and that preference sticks.
But movies, those are multi-channel soundtracks directionally mixed and room correction does a lot to make sure you are hearing the soundtrack how they want you to. To me that's a lot different than music that's been burned into you differently from day 1.
I like my (classical) music to sound as close as possible to the live concert hall experience, and deep and powerful bass is part of that. I have always had Quad electrostats (2805s now) and they have limitations with respect to SPL and extension (unsupported they go down to just below 40 Hz and drop off steeply below that), so subwoofers are needed and do indeed make a real difference. The main speakers are high passed around 80 Hz, and that clearly gives them more of the required headroom in my large listening room.
To satisfy my curiosity I once replaced the big Quads by the small Harbeth P3ESRs from my study, and I must say that combination sounded remarkably good, and because of the subwoofer it was a weird experience to hear such deep bass seemingy coming our of such small boxes. The most striking difference with the big Quad speakers was that even with identical low end extension from the subwoofer the little desktop speakers did not quite fill the room. They were fine in near field, but not further back in this large (7000sq feet) listening room.
So my anecdotal experience would be that in a smallish room subwoofers can make big speakers unnecessary within the inevitable limitations of small listening rooms, but in a larger room the main speakers would still have to be pretty large. So yes, you can go down in size /extension with your main speakers, but in a larger room it is wise to not go all the way down.
To satisfy my curiosity I once replaced the big Quads by the small Harbeth P3ESRs from my study, and I must say that combination sounded remarkably good, and because of the subwoofer it was a weird experience to hear such deep bass seemingy coming our of such small boxes. The most striking difference with the big Quad speakers was that even with identical low end extension from the subwoofer the little desktop speakers did not quite fill the room. They were fine in near field, but not further back in this large (7000sq feet) listening room.
So my anecdotal experience would be that in a smallish room subwoofers can make big speakers unnecessary within the inevitable limitations of small listening rooms, but in a larger room the main speakers would still have to be pretty large. So yes, you can go down in size /extension with your main speakers, but in a larger room it is wise to not go all the way down.
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And you don’t have to take our anecdotes at face value.
If you look a empirical data like Erin’s Audio Corner; take a look at a couple of speakers like the Arendal Audio 1961 Bookshelf:
vs Tower:
Same tweeter; same midwoofer. So both would need subwoofers to get below 40-50Hz at thunderous levels.
But look what happens when you have go from one 5.5” midwoofer up to four- higher sensitivity (louder for same voltage drive); “50%” lower distortion in the midrange, and lower compression at the lowest frequencies.
Bigger- simply louder cleaner more effortless. More realistic at live listening levels.
Of course if you listen at background levels or laptop speaker levels than the added speaker size is simply not worth it.
If you look a empirical data like Erin’s Audio Corner; take a look at a couple of speakers like the Arendal Audio 1961 Bookshelf:
vs Tower:
Same tweeter; same midwoofer. So both would need subwoofers to get below 40-50Hz at thunderous levels.
But look what happens when you have go from one 5.5” midwoofer up to four- higher sensitivity (louder for same voltage drive); “50%” lower distortion in the midrange, and lower compression at the lowest frequencies.
Bigger- simply louder cleaner more effortless. More realistic at live listening levels.
Of course if you listen at background levels or laptop speaker levels than the added speaker size is simply not worth it.
Ultrasonic
Addicted to Fun and Learning
In what way would the vertical dispersion of a tower/floorstanding speaker typically be better? Perhaps naively I'd have actually thought the opposite might be more commonly true, like for example the Arendal example just highlighted. Unless I'm misinterpreting the data of course.
I skimmed through the thread and saw a number of comments about mid-bass being insufficient in small speakers even with a sub, and I couldn't agree more. Apologies if this has already been shared, but take a look at the average spectrum of pop music here, especially the 100-300hz range:
Average spectrum of all available data
And then look at the distortion and compression results across a variety of speakers in the same 100-300hz range. You will quickly realize that a relatively large speaker (a single large driver or multiple smaller drivers) is still necessary to enable uncompressed playback of the average musical signal between 100 and 300Hz--or even 500hz for some speakers--with a subwoofer. Even the venerable Kii Three is a no-go for me based on it's instantaneous compression results in this range.
Just how pronounced the improvement is was the biggest surprise for me. A quick example is the synth that kicks in at the 38 second mark of James Dean (2015 Remaster) by JR JR; there's a presence to the synth in large speakers that I've never heard fully reproduced at a satisfying playback level in a small speaker--even with a sub-- outside of the near-field.
So for this listener, subwoofers in no way make large speakers obsolete.
Edited: Typo and reference to Kii Three
Average spectrum of all available data
And then look at the distortion and compression results across a variety of speakers in the same 100-300hz range. You will quickly realize that a relatively large speaker (a single large driver or multiple smaller drivers) is still necessary to enable uncompressed playback of the average musical signal between 100 and 300Hz--or even 500hz for some speakers--with a subwoofer. Even the venerable Kii Three is a no-go for me based on it's instantaneous compression results in this range.
Just how pronounced the improvement is was the biggest surprise for me. A quick example is the synth that kicks in at the 38 second mark of James Dean (2015 Remaster) by JR JR; there's a presence to the synth in large speakers that I've never heard fully reproduced at a satisfying playback level in a small speaker--even with a sub-- outside of the near-field.
So for this listener, subwoofers in no way make large speakers obsolete.
Edited: Typo and reference to Kii Three
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