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Subwoofers that go below 30 hz for music

I do all the time...it's my favorite form of listening, to set up a rig outdoors on the deck.
Outdoors is so clear, so superior to indoors, no matter how great the room...moving back indoors is almost painful.
The big problem with outdoors though...wind sucks and of course noise. And the setup /tear down time and effort gets old.
It's about using the box and room is nothing else that another box. Balancing the fundamental to work with you and isolating it enough to have reverberation under control. People did it from when we knew. From Greak atrium to cathedrals, Georgian chants, classical peaces specifically adopted to them including grandiose instruments to mimic them all (sort of) to grand operas and so on. No you can't buy one of those (cathedrals)!
 
What exactly do you mean by this phrase?

The room will go into a "pressurization zone" mode, just like an automobile interior, at some point. You will still hear the frequencies, they just won't be "traveling waves" however.

Chris
As far as i know in a car the standing waves are occuring outside the cabin or something like this. I got this explained a long time ago
by an acoustic expert but would not bet that i remember it with 100% certainty cause its more than 20-25 years ago when this talk took place.
However in my real life experience in both worlds and without claiming to be an expert
i always found sub bass inside the car much easier to fine tune and live with that in a home. I once build a 200 liter 15 inch driver sub. Must have been around the Year 2000-ish. Not a random design but by Visaton. So i build it from a schematic. Mentioning this cause one could think that i build some random enclosure.
and found it impossible to have a good bass response basically anywhere that was wished for inside the living room. The room had a weird asymmetrical form
In homes when you have a room mode at a specific frequency which depends on the room proportions you will
have to treat it. Bass management in a studio as far as i have witnessed is by very far the most difficult thing to get right. It is basically the biggest issue.
So without being an expert i am simply surprised no one starts from the room acoustics and what room thes sub will have to work in.
I would not be surprised if a 20hz Sub would not be as easy to implement in the vast majority of rooms which are untreated the vast majority of times.
Also from what i remember bigrooms are easier and better to treat than a small room where its almost impossible to ever have a good and controlled bass response
"You will still hear the frequencies, they just won't be "traveling waves" however.“ Not sure i get the sentence 100% cause i am not native English speaker
but this is the whole point. Its not „you still hear them“ but „how it sounds“. In short , if it sounds bad then it does not matter if you reached 20hz. Reaching any frequency of bass but without articulation to me is wasted energy and time


Hope what i write is easy to decode and pardon my English hahaha now that i look at how i write it it is kind of a mess…..
 
Vera Audio Foundation Dual 18" in room response with 1/3 octave smothing.

Vera Audio Foundation Dual 18 in room response.jpg


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Horn loading below about 25 Hz becomes way too big for most homes and also if you want to have the flexibility of crossing above 100 Hz. That's why we designed something that was smaller and had very high output. But yes, it needs a good amount of power unlike a horn subwoofer. With two of the best 18" woofers on the market, modulation distortion is still very low.
 
Thank you to you for the replies! As for musical content I’m not finding below 30hz, I don’t know what I’m missing because I’ve never heard a system that doesn’t roll off steeply below 30 hz. However, what I am hoping for is low frequencies that might not be easy to hear but that I can feel. For instance on Wagner’s “Zarathustra” (used in 2001 A Space Odyssey) there is a pipe organ note that I understand goes to 20 hz, and sometimes I have felt something when I listen at high volume and I wonder what it would feel like with a sub that is closer to flat to 20 hz. I have read in so many places “stereo systems don’t need to reproduce below 30 hz” but maybe that is because companies that sell budget subwoofers want people to think that.
Richard Strauss, "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony #3 also has low notes (more felt than heard). Organ music is a good reason to get a sub that goes as far down as possible.
 
Richard Strauss, "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony #3 also has low notes (more felt than heard). Organ music is a good reason to get a sub that goes as far down as possible.
If you have a room with a Null around 20 hz you might not hear or feel 20 hz in this room in this lifetime, thats the issue i am referring to.
Would be very interesting if the OP makes and posts a Room Response measurement so we know what to expect
 
If you have a room with a Null around 20 hz you might not hear or feel 20 hz in this room in this lifetime, thats the issue i am referring to.
My concern had to do with assigning the correct name for the composer and giving the full name of the piece.

My first "real" speakers were Acoustic Research model 3. I'm not sure of how far down they went, but they could go might deep. Where I lived, the room they were in was too small to support the really deep pitches in the room. Go to the next room, and you could feel those low notes.
 
Lawsuits ensue...people claim that their children were injured while 100's feet away (i.e., ambulance chaser legal representation). I used to stand on the baseplates while they were sweeping to feel how bad the harmonics and other discontinuities were during sweeps. It varies greatly with soil and ground conditions, unfortunately.

In Galveston & Alvin Texas from 1979-1985, I was the hydraulics engineer for ground and marine (airgun and other) sources. Before that, the hydraulics engineer for machines that drilled 20' diameter holes straight down into rock (in the mining equipment division of Hughes Tool). It was pretty big stuff--not the biggest (like Rexroth)--but big.

Chris
Interesting work for sure. 20' dia holes thru rock...wow...
 
My concern had to do with assigning the correct name for the composer and giving the full name of the piece.

My first "real" speakers were Acoustic Research model 3. I'm not sure of how far down they went, but they could go might deep. Where I lived, the room they were in was too small to support the really deep pitches in the room. Go to the next room, and you could feel those low notes.
No worries. I get you.
I am german so i know Strauss. I was just referring to the technical aspect only. Sorry if it came across differently. Did not intent to correct you or anything.
Just wrote what i thought at the given moment
 
It's about using the box and room is nothing else that another box. Balancing the fundamental to work with you and isolating it enough to have reverberation under control. People did it from when we knew. From Greak atrium to cathedrals, Georgian chants, classical peaces specifically adopted to them including grandiose instruments to mimic them all (sort of) to grand operas and so on. No you can't buy one of those (cathedrals)!

For the music I like, those types of reverberant spaces, no matter how controlled, detract.
I think the perfect venue for me would be a stage/ with small amphitheater in a dense evergreen spruce or such type forest.
Live xmas trees are the best combination of absorption and diffusion I've heard....only problem is damn subs knock all the ornaments off!! :D
 
It's about using the box and room is nothing else that another box. Balancing the fundamental to work with you and isolating it enough to have reverberation under control. People did it from when we knew. From Greak atrium to cathedrals, Georgian chants, classical peaces specifically adopted to them including grandiose instruments to mimic them all (sort of) to grand operas and so on. No you can't buy one of those (cathedrals)!
It is as you say. However i don`t think you will ever be able to balance a 3x3x2.5 meter room and have a nice smooth bass response you can enjoy down to 20hz tbh.
In other words, yes it might be another box but there are pandoras box style boxes that open a sea of issues with bass response
Cathedral, yes more realistic to get a reeeaaaaallyyy deep sound :-)
 
Live xmas trees are the best combination of absorption and diffusion I've heard....only problem is damn subs knock all the ornaments off!! :D
The closest thing I have ever heard to an anechoic chamber is skiing in a grove of evergreen trees after a foot of fresh powder snow which was still on the tree branches. Eerily quiet.
 
The closest thing I have ever heard to an anechoic chamber is skiing in a grove of evergreen trees after a foot of fresh powder snow which was still on the tree branches. Eerily quiet.
Ah yes, nice! We hiked to the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado one winter. The road was closed, it was SO hushed at dusk. We saw a beautiful red fox to boot! The quietest ever was Badwater, Death Valley, we could literally hear the blood in our ears.

Back to the subwoofers, at the lowest frequencies the magnet and cone weight etc do not appear to have tremendous effect. The size of the box appears to be a limiting factor, from some research I did when working in that area that someday I will finish. Someday...
Anyway most people do not want huge subs, hence why they don't all go super low. Plus unless you can generate a high SPL at those very low frequencies (which needs a huge cone which needs a huge box) then you cannot even hear/feel it = useless.
 
Hi

If I hadn't experienced it myself, and came to this thread, I would think that getting down to 20 Hz in a small room, is impossible. I do not have time right now to post my measurements... That would be for another day ...thus, a point without substantiation, we are on ASR after all. I can tell you, that I have smooth bass (Harman bump) and enjoy >100dB down to 19Hz from where it drops precipitously. I believe I am down -20dB, by 15 Hz
My subwoofers are 2 very cheap ($250) 15 inches subwoofer from Dayton Audio (SUB1500) .. Not the last word in subwoofers ... by any stretch. Others using better subs are reaching even lower, a credible person here, @DonH56, reaches 8 Hz... in his basement using 4 subwoofers ...

Reaching below 20 Hz, is doable, even in small rooms, mine is 5 x 3.5 x 2.8 meters or so. I would suggest to the OP to try multiple Subwoofers as in more than 2. And to use MSO (Multi Subwoofer Optimizer) along with REW (of course, MSO requires REW). You would need an additional DSP appliance, such as the miniDSP 2x4 HD, and research/study. It will not be automatic but is eminently doable.
As for bass content reading some posts on this thread, one would think that low bass is not that common in real music ... There is a thread here that would dispel this opinion.
Please go to this ASR thread;
BASS! (click here)

Peruse it and draw your own conclusion

My Opinion: A High Fidelity Audio System must be able to reach 30Hz ( I wrote 20 Hz but I am being nice today :)) with authority, that is, capable of "getting there" at, SPL of at least 100 dB at the Main Listening Position. Many have achieved such , several on this very ASR forum.
As for Group delay, its audibility at those frequencies (under 100 Hz), is debatable to say the least, again not enough time to pull the research...

Peace.
 
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Getting down to 20hz in small rooms with sealed, DSP enabled subs is perfectly viable, we do it all the time. :) 100dB@20hz at the listening position with 2-5% THD depending on room gain with a single sub.
 
Getting down to 20hz in small rooms with sealed, DSP enabled subs is perfectly viable, we do it all the time. :) 100dB@20hz at the listening position with 2-5% THD depending on room gain with a single sub.
Subs look interesting on your website. How much group delay @ 20 Hz?
 
If you have a room with a Null around 20 hz you might not hear or feel 20 hz in this room in this lifetime, thats the issue i am referring to.
Would be very interesting if the OP makes and posts a Room Response measurement so we know what to expect
The location of a null at a measurement position just means that is not a good place to listen from. All modes have nodes (nulls) and anti-nodes (peaks) in both the fundamental and harmonics and the magnitude to which they are excited is influenced by the position of the excitation (speaker) in the room, and the extent to which they are heard depends on where the listening chair is placed.
The sound can be improved by positioning of speaker and listener in the room before using DSP compensation.
 
All this talk, and still hardly any mention of COTS subwoofers that go below 30Hz other than the KH750?

If someone can provide an option that measures better than the KH750, I'm all ears.
 
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