What's the point of floorstanding when we have subwoofers?

[terryforsythe]

No they don’t.

1528 Bookshelf 8

The 1528 Bookshelf 8 carry a performance worthy of much larger speakers with its 3-way design, featuring a 28mm lithium-magnesium tweeter, 5″ carbon-graphene midrange, and an 8″ aluminum bass driver.

arendalsound.com

 

[Leeken]

It’s really simple for me,stand mounted speakers and German Shepherds will result in broken speakers,and I can live without music but not without my shepherd,so floor standers it is.

 

[jeffaegrim]

I figured out pretty quickly that I need large-ish towers so I’ll quickly outline my reasoning below:

Towers provide more headroom, as many members already noted. If you look at the distortion measurements here, most bookshelf speakers distort heavily at ~100hz and below. Mind you, even 96db at this frequency doesn’t feel „that“ loud + the distortion measurements are taken at 1m, while these speakers are oftentimes asked to reproduce material at a 2-3m distance in a typical living room situation. I recommend playing some tracks from that Japanese Taiko Drums album by Wadaiko Matsuriza loud on small speakers to understand what I mean - there is so much bass/midbass energy there, you might just blow them up. Even with a high pass filter I imagine there will be healthy amounts of IMD. Personally, I’ve bottomed out my high passed bookshelves a few times on demanding tracks, sold them and never looked back.

Another thing for me is the physical feeling of bass „slam“, which resides higher up the frequency, outside the normal operating range of subwoofers. From my understanding, only a large-ish (10“+) overall cone area can provide this effect.

Amir wrote somewhere on the forum about not wanting to know the limits of one’s equipment - and I completely agree. I actually don't want to be anywhere near the limit in my normal usage. And that includes playing loud sometimes, so small speakers are out of question at the moment

 

[ZolaIII]

Yes you do.



No they don’t.

If you build towers they can't use more space than already built towers and when you add sub's to towers guess what.

 

[Purité Audio]

Goes without saying but there are some extremely large and capable ‘standmount’ loudspeakers and some pretty puny floorstanders.
Ask of everything what is it unto itself as Hannibal would say.
Keith

 

[Mort]

Bookshelf and subwoofer are usually cheaper, right?

A combo of Philharmonic Audio BMR monitors (mega bookshelf size) and an svs-1000 costs $2400 and can accurately reproduce full range at least to ~25hz maybe lower.

Spl might be limited for some but to me, that's the setup to beat for full range on a budget. I haven't seen many well-measuring full range floor standers at that price.

Naturally this still suffers from the need to manage bass integration yourself.

 

[DonH56]

Remember, though, that using a Linkwitz-Riley (LR) crossover the speaker already is down -6dB at the crossover frequency, or -3dB if using a textbook Butterworth. Thus, using a LR crossover, the speaker's SPL already is down by 50% at the crossover frequency, or down 29% if using a Butterworth (Butterworth's do not sum flat, and I generally do not use them).

2nd order LR filters will be down around -12dB at one octave, and 4th order LR crossovers will be down about -24dB at one octave. -12dB is one-fourth of the SPL, and -24dB is one-sixteenth of the SPL.

Below are theortical slopes of 2nd order LR and Butterworth crossovers.

View attachment 436961

The below graph depicts theoretical slopes of 2nd order and 4th order LR crossovers:

View attachment 436959

Thanks, I have a reasonable understanding of filter theory, and why L-R is preferred over BW for crossovers. At one point I tried an elliptical crossover filter network in the interest of phase integrity but it was a mess to implement and the sonic benefits were nil (measured step response was a hair better but it was not worth the effort). Ellipticals ruled in the radar systems I worked with... These days if I wanted to play with crossovers I'd go active and use DSP.

Many are not. That is something to which not enough people pay attention when selecting bookshelf speakers. Nonetheless, when being used with a subwoofer and an appropriate crossover, the compression and distortion measurements of the speaker at the crossover frequency will be better due to the reduction in SPL of the speaker at that frequency, and significantly improved below that frequency.

Agreed, but "better" may not be "good enough", and does not solve the localization problem (which may or may not matter to the listener). Again, I have always preferred to use larger speakers for the mains per my personal experience and measurements for the speakers I have tried over the decades.

 

[rdenney]

Subwoofers are not about "thunderous bass". Properly integrated with the mains, subwoferS (insisting on the plural, as in "more than one", and on roperly integrated" ), provide a level of fidelity that is very difficult if not impossible to achieve without.
and ...
Jazz has bass, lot of it. I mean a drums set will not be heard as such if bass is not properly reproduced ... Or an upright bass without ... bass?? A tuba.. without .. bass? A Piano ... without bass?? Hammond B-3 Organ? without bass... ?? I am not sure .. they lack that .. maybe not 20 Hz , then again some piano do... but the nethger regions dow50 to 150 must be well covered.. else ...
As for Classical with no bass.. Not organ piece.. Take a piano concerto, say Rachmaninoff's any of his pieces. if you don't go below 60 Hz with cleanliness and authority? You're missing a lot.. Or the Edgard Cello Concert in E Minor with no bass .. if you don't go below 100 Hz with any authority you would not be listening to a cello...
Real music requires clean, bass .. yeah even rap ..

More about the OP ... later, need to work

Peace.

Good floor-standing speakers of sufficient size will reproduce a tuba accurately, though not with realistic dynamics compared to tuba playing in the room. Very little about the tuba sound gets below about 50 Hz with any power.

The bass drum is fairly broadbanded, but not so much the kick bass in a set (as compared to an orchestral bass drum).

A sub is necessary for movie sound effects, it seems to me, but not so much for music.

The advantage to subs from my view is they can be placed to solve problems of room modes and nulls. But placement flexibility isn’t always available, and too high a crossover will still allow localization.

For music, my Revel F12 towers, with two 8” woofers each, handle bass just fine, even the deep synthesizer bass I here on some Rick Wakeman albums and even some Philip Glass recordings. But they won’t handle bombs in a war movie.

Rick “has a sub on his home theater system” Denney

 

[terryforsythe]

At one point I tried an elliptical crossover filter network

Long ago, early 90s, I ran some simulations in LEAP using eliptical filters. The ripples in the passband were less than optimal. I ended up using 4th order LR crossovers, which worked out well.

Agreed, but "better" may not be "good enough", and does not solve the localization problem (which may or may not matter to the listener). Again, I have always preferred to use larger speakers for the mains per my personal experience and measurements for the speakers I have tried over the decades.

Larger speakers certainly make system integration easier. But, happy wife, happy life.

Nonethless, I am extremely satisfied with how my system turned out after modifying my 3-way bookshelf speakers and switching from passive crossovers to active crossovers. My harmonic distortion is low, compression is not an issue at the reasonable SPL levels, and I don't hear any localization from the subwoofer. But, few people want to tinker with their system to the extent I have in order to fully optimize it.

 

[LSPhil]

The concept is sound, but in my view, there is no effective filtering mode for satellite speakers, particularly when they are quite large—for instance, those with 6-inch drivers. I am a staunch opponent of filtering satellites. In enclosed spaces, our goal is to enhance the bass response, and this can only be achieved by increasing the surface area of the bass membrane. Filtering merely substitutes a small membrane with a slightly larger one, which doesn’t address the core issue. The satellite with a bass reflex port must be modified into a sealed enclosure by closing off the bass reflex port. This adjustment ensures that the speaker operates as a closed system, which can improve performance and alignment with the subwoofer. If the crossover frequency is set too low, we encounter issues with the group delay between the subwoofer and the satellites. These problems are not easily resolved, as they can lead to timing discrepancies and affect the overall sound coherence.

 

[Digital_Thor]

I found a different thing to consider too. I just listened to KEF R3 Meta and found them very good, but still lacking mid-bass punch in larger rooms especially.
I've built my own now with two Satori WO24P to cover up to 400Hz, and this, to me, give that extra "smack" in the mid-bass area. And as others have mentioned - a subwoofer can very rarely be crossed higher than maybe 120Hz, without localization. So you need to consider your preference - and not think of subwoofers as substitude for a larger main speaker - but rather a total solution for how you intend to use the system overall. I also watch movies on mine, which would be totally boring - IMO - if I had to live without subwoofers. My mains would have to be HUGE, to deliver any kind of physical bass in my room, since my construction is rather soft, and "sucks" up bass. I think it would be quite different if I lived in some modern concrete building.
Subwoofer give the ability to hide the lower octave behind the couch too, and maybe in a corner + smoothing out the response below around 100Hz. But it can be tricky to blend properly with the mains. I use my Satori in a closed box, which make them HP around 60Hz. And when using 4 subwoofers chattered around the room, with independent tuning and LP filters. I've got a pretty smooth response all over the room, which I prefer, because I can walk around a do most things and still have a good bass - which normally would change hugely, by just stepping a bit to the side.

 

[terryforsythe]

I just listened to KEF R3 Meta and found them very good, but still lacking mid-bass punch in larger rooms especially.

I had that issue with my Elac UBR62 speakers. Plugging the ports, removing the passive crossovers, adding additional internal bracing, glue and damping material, adding active crossovers/DSP, and letting my subwoofer handle frequencies below about 100Hz solved the issue for me.

 

[MattHooper]

If you build towers they can't use more space than already built towers and when you add sub's to towers guess what.

The OP he’s talking about stand mounted speakers plus subwoofers, versus floor speakers.

In most cases, the subs will obviously take up additional floorspace - essentially four speakers you have to place rather than two floorstanding speakers.

I was also objecting to the claim that even all floorstanding speakers “ need” subwoofers.
I didn’t find any of my floorstand speakers
“ needed” subwoofers. All of them sounded great on their own.

That doesn’t mean a subwoofer couldn’t have improved some aspects of the performance. I’m just saying that many of us really don’t need subwoofers to enjoy the set up, and high-quality sound can come from floorstanding speakers without subwoofers.

 

[terryforsythe]

That doesn’t mean a subwoofer couldn’t have improved some aspects of the performance. I’m just saying that many of us really don’t need subwoofers to enjoy the set up, and high-quality sound can come from floorstanding speakers without subwoofers.

I don't use a subwoofer with my KEF LS60s, and they sound fantastic. In the room in which I have them, and at the SPL to which I listen to music, there is no need for a subwoofer. I use CamillaDSP to implement room correction, though.

 

[Mort]

I did use a subwoofer with Philharmonic Audio BMR Towers and found they were very helpful in raising spl and extending the last octave.

 

[MattHooper]

I figured out pretty quickly that I need large-ish towers so I’ll quickly outline my reasoning below:

Towers provide more headroom, as many members already noted. If you look at the distortion measurements here, most bookshelf speakers distort heavily at ~100hz and below. Mind you, even 96db at this frequency doesn’t feel „that“ loud + the distortion measurements are taken at 1m, while these speakers are oftentimes asked to reproduce material at a 2-3m distance in a typical living room situation. I recommend playing some tracks from that Japanese Taiko Drums album by Wadaiko Matsuriza loud on small speakers to understand what I mean - there is so much bass/midbass energy there, you might just blow them up. Even with a high pass filter I imagine there will be healthy amounts of IMD. Personally, I’ve bottomed out my high passed bookshelves a few times on demanding tracks, sold them and never looked back.

Another thing for me is the physical feeling of bass „slam“, which resides higher up the frequency, outside the normal operating range of subwoofers. From my understanding, only a large-ish (10“+) overall cone area can provide this effect.

Amir wrote somewhere on the forum about not wanting to know the limits of one’s equipment - and I completely agree. I actually don't want to be anywhere near the limit in my normal usage. And that includes playing loud sometimes, so small speakers are out of question at the moment

I switch between two sets of floor standing speakers: Joseph audio perspective 2 speakers which are small thin floor standing speakers, 2.5 way with two 5.5” SEAS woofers. The other are my Thiel 2.7s which are a larger cabinet size, and also a three-way design with an 8 inch woofer (and 8 inch passive radiator).

Both are specked to around 35 Hz, and both sound like they reach around there in my room.

However, the larger cabinet and woofer of the Thiels really seem to pull ahead of the smaller Joseph speakers in certain ways. There’s a sense of solidity and slam to the bass and an overall sense of scale and authority the Joseph’s don’t quite reach. That’s especially true when cranked loud.

Listen to on their own, the Joseph speakers actually seem to have quite amazing bass for their size. And they do have quite a bit of punch. It’s only when I re-introduced the larger speaker that it sort of roles up its sleeves and says to the Joseph speakers:
“ step aside; this is how it’s done.”

 

[MattHooper]

I don't use a subwoofer with my KEF LS60s, and they sound fantastic. In the room in which I have them, and at the SPL to which I listen to music, there is no need for a subwoofer. I use CamillaDSP to implement room correction, though.

Yes, I’ve heard the LS 60s and they sound wonderfully large for their size.

In fact when I visit my friend who uses LS50s, I don’t even find myself craving a subwoofer.

But then again… in the end I do gravitate to larger speakers.

 

[Sokel]

Hmm, you seem not to be frequents to the stereo bass thread.

I'll then just quote someone who probably knows what he's talking about:

"
Great questions for a New Year. Floorstanders come with benefits, beyond headroom and low frequency extension. However, the main advantage has been somewhat kept a secret; due to a stubborn and detrimental simplification of reproduced sound in engineering literature: Disregard for inter-aural time domain coherency at low frequency. In case LF inter-aural time and magnitude differences have been recorded across channels, and made it safely through a reproduction chain, it is such a pity to kill Auditory Envelopment (AE) at the last stage, by using mono sub(s) with bookshelf/nearfield monitors. That’s game over before even started.

Floorstander-users expect at least some ability of a room and system to convey AE, possibly the most universal and enjoyable dimension the human auditory system is able to declare. The topic has been discussed before on ASR, and we will report from new studies in 2025. To the questions:

Genelec 83 series monitors include extensive per channel frequency domain and time domain adjustment capability. The GLM application can be used to adjust those parameters automatically, manually or in a combination of both. You might also make adjustments upstream instead, or partly upstream and partly in the 83s. Anyway, settings may be stored and set in stone per monitor. Settings will stay the same despite power-down; until GLM is connected again and deliberate changes made.

Building your own subs, for instance into walls, or buying a different brand, is therefore also fine. Because of AE, I would *always* use at least two sub channels. If later movement of subs will be impossible, consider listening to AE test samples before committing to placement. If two subs are not possible, I would not cross-over higher than 40 Hz.

Regarding hearing safety, with an average listening level of 105 dB(A), according to the clinical gold standard, adults should be listening for no more than 2 minutes per day (risk of material hearing loss ~1%). Happy New Year "

(thread post, there's more after that along with the study white paper at the bass thread. )

 

[terryforsythe]

(thread post, there's more after that along with the study white paper at the bass thread. )

From that post:

"If two subs are not possible, I would not cross-over higher than 40 Hz."

If a speaker has low enough group delay at 40Hz to allow for a smooth transition to the subwoofer, it likely extends low enough to negate the need for the subwoofer. But, maybe adding a subwoofer still would be useful to shake the room in a home theater.

 

[Sokel]

From that post:

"If two subs are not possible, I would not cross-over higher than 40 Hz."

If a speaker has low enough group delay at 40Hz to allow for a smooth transition to the subwoofer, it likely extends low enough to negate the need for the subwoofer. But, maybe adding a subwoofer still would be useful to shake the room in a home theater.

He's talking about ONE sub here.
If two are involved, tightly close to mains one can cross them even at the 80's (no more though, subs are not great at distortion and it's good to hear the voices come from one place so the mouths are humane, not caves)