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Would Larger Subs Be Beneficial If Current Subs Are Already Not Maxed Out?

luft262

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The question is basically in the title. If a person is using a given pair of subs and is not already running them at max, after balancing them with the mains, house curve, etc., could larger subs still be beneficial or would they simply be using even less of their total power? To me it seems they would be irrelevant at higher frequencies, but might reach some very low frequencies during movies, etc. that the smaller ones cannot reach. Is that about it or am I missing something?
 

AdamG

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You got it. Larger more capable Subs will dig deeper and stronger. The difference can be pretty significant. What do you have now?
 

JRS

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I'm half joking, but around here you might word it as if I have 2 subs already and things are OK, should I add more subs?

Kidding aside, it would be helpful if you could add what bass extension you have in the current set up and listening preferences wrt music and whether HT playback is a factor. I suspect a good case could be made for either answer, depending...
 

Keith Conroy

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I'm not sure what you mean by: "Running current sub at max" I also don't know the size or specifications on your current sub woofer? So I'm not sure how low they will go? If you buy right on a larger sub woofer, yes it will go lower. You should also gain a lower distortion bass profile? There is another option though. By a 2nd sub woofer just like the one you have. The why's are beyond the scope of this post. However google 2 subwoofers and how they better load a room.
 
OP
luft262

luft262

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I should probably give more information if I want quality answers! I'm glad to see the battleship guy here as I love his responses. Like most people here I'm slowly upgrading my system. My original system was an Onkyo receiver, Pioneer fs 52 (Andrew Jones) towers, two Polk psw 10 subs, and some generic surrounds in the ceiling. After getting more into audio I found some used Focal 926's on OfferUp not far from where I lived. The nice guy selling them let me try them at his home and even delivered them to my place. Buying used allowed me to acquire speakers I probably wouldn't or couldn't have afforded otherwise. When I first listened to them on my system it just blew my mind. The experience was amazing. I was smiling ear to ear and blasting the the Star Wars theme song, lol! Next up I wanted to upgrade my subs.

I just bought a pair of SVS SB 3000's. I have a 3,700 ft cubed room. It opens out the back to the kitchen, but the kitchen opens out the back to the dining room ect. so it's a pretty open house plan. My living room is tile flooring with a decent amount of glass/windows, but there are also rugs, couches, bookshelves, etc. to help. I went with the SVS's because I wanted the tightness and integration of a sealed sub. I liked the idea of having the controls on my phone, because turning dials on the back of the sub for every change is a pain, and their small size, good looks, and 45 day free return shipping return policy. Unfortunately, unlike the Focal speakers they have not blown me away. They are definitely better than the Polks (they are 10x the price so I would hope so), but the effect hasn't been mind shattering. I feel like they lack punch and slam, which I know is subjective. Maybe I need to get ported subs? Maybe, I should have gone with the HSU ULS MK 15's, which were the other subs I was considering. They have slightly larger drivers and can hit a little deeper. The PEQ on the SVS subs has allowed me to smooth out their curve a little, but I'm not sure how much a difference it makes in my real world listening. I guess I'm just surprised that going from $200 worth of subs to $2,200 worth of subs didn't make more of a difference and I'm trying to see where I went wrong. Maybe I'm not being honest with myself. Maybe I'm more of a bass head or looking for more of a home theater experience than I care to admit. When I really want to listen to music I generally go to my "reading chair" where I have a JDS Labs amp, dac, and Hi Fi Man Sundaras. Sorry if this is a long post, borning, or has been answered elsewhere. If this interests you or you have advice please feel free to chime in. As I currently see it my options are 1. Keep the SB 3000s, 2. Send them back for the HSU's, or 3. send them back and look into ported, bigger subs in the same 2k'ish price range.

Here is an RTA sweep of my listening position:
index.php
 

Sancus

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If you have a time when being briefly disruptive to anyone else in the home is OK, I would run sweeps starting at 85dB, in 10dB increments until you see obvious compression (droop in the response below 30-40hz). You only want to sweep the subwoofer frequencies, so like 10-100hz is fine, do NOT sweep your mains at >100dB. With subs set at +10dB, they'll be asked to play at 115dB if your volume setting on an AVR is -10, so that should give you an idea of how far up you can sweep. Your subs will most likely start to give up well below that level though.

But that will tell you what your subs are capable of doing and whether you should change them or not.
 

Vince2

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It looks like you have a room mode around 70hz, that may mask your sub base. Increase the gain on your SW and try with different cutoff filter settings to see if you can dial in a gradual rise. My sub woover range around 20-60 hz is about 10 dB higher then the mid range and sounds balanced.
 

TurtlePaul

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Your a basshead. Your flat down to 10 hz and your <100 hz level is 13 dB higher than your 1 kHz level. You want to hear bass that isn't in the tracks. If you are listening to songs that contain real instruments, they don't have chest slam in real life. Go watch a movie with explosions.
 

JRS

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It looks like you have a room mode around 70hz, that may mask your sub base. Increase the gain on your SW and try with different cutoff filter settings to see if you can dial in a gradual rise. My sub woover range around 20-60 hz is about 10 dB higher then the mid range and sounds balanced.
Big suckout at 120 which will thin the subjective sense of bass as well, i.e. no gut punch.
 

AudioSQ

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You're pretty good down to 10hz so no real need to go deeper. Rarely will you find content below 10hz. It certainly won't add what I think most would consider slam. It would mostly be inaudible and just shake things more.. which is very important to some people.

My guess is you're just used to the distorted sound of cheap subs that are working hard to exagerate a certain range. Did you ever measure your old subs?

I personally would look at adding more subs as opposed to bigger ones. It would help more with room issues. It's even possible that switching to larger ported subs will give you more in the low region, but less in the midbass region where you typically find the 'slam'.
 
OP
luft262

luft262

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You're pretty good down to 10hz so no real need to go deeper. Rarely will you find content below 10hz. It certainly won't add what I think most would consider slam. It would mostly be inaudible and just shake things more.. which is very important to some people.

My guess is you're just used to the distorted sound of cheap subs that are working hard to exagerate a certain range. Did you ever measure your old subs?

I personally would look at adding more subs as opposed to bigger ones. It would help more with room issues. It's even possible that switching to larger ported subs will give you more in the low region, but less in the midbass region where you typically find the 'slam'.
That's a good point. I want more slam, but not more rattling, since it's a multipurpose living room.
 
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luft262

luft262

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Probably can be fixed by pulling the mains a foot farther from the wall.
I tried that and it did help, but the mode/dip was still there. I couldn't keep the speakers that far forward due to aesthetics and because I currently don't have a center speaker and it makes the sweet spot too narrow.
 

anotherhobby

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What is your receiver/stereo? Are you using room correction? Have you made attempts, other than the sub's EQ, to get a flatter room response?

Also, if you had a spot for it, a third identical sub might do more for overall performance than two bigger ones.
 

Eetu

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My take is that you (OP) would benefit trying out different EQ settings, emphasizing different regions of bass. See which give you that slam effect you're looking for. The answer is not likely 'more 15Hz output!!' but perhaps more midbass 90-140Hz where your in-room response is scooping.

Also EQ the 10-~300Hz band to follow a clear target/house curve.
 

AdamG

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I should probably give more information if I want quality answers! I'm glad to see the battleship guy here as I love his responses. Like most people here I'm slowly upgrading my system. My original system was an Onkyo receiver, Pioneer fs 52 (Andrew Jones) towers, two Polk psw 10 subs, and some generic surrounds in the ceiling. After getting more into audio I found some used Focal 926's on OfferUp not far from where I lived. The nice guy selling them let me try them at his home and even delivered them to my place. Buying used allowed me to acquire speakers I probably wouldn't or couldn't have afforded otherwise. When I first listened to them on my system it just blew my mind. The experience was amazing. I was smiling ear to ear and blasting the the Star Wars theme song, lol! Next up I wanted to upgrade my subs.

I just bought a pair of SVS SB 3000's. I have a 3,700 ft cubed room. It opens out the back to the kitchen, but the kitchen opens out the back to the dining room ect. so it's a pretty open house plan. My living room is tile flooring with a decent amount of glass/windows, but there are also rugs, couches, bookshelves, etc. to help. I went with the SVS's because I wanted the tightness and integration of a sealed sub. I liked the idea of having the controls on my phone, because turning dials on the back of the sub for every change is a pain, and their small size, good looks, and 45 day free return shipping return policy. Unfortunately, unlike the Focal speakers they have not blown me away. They are definitely better than the Polks (they are 10x the price so I would hope so), but the effect hasn't been mind shattering. I feel like they lack punch and slam, which I know is subjective. Maybe I need to get ported subs? Maybe, I should have gone with the HSU ULS MK 15's, which were the other subs I was considering. They have slightly larger drivers and can hit a little deeper. The PEQ on the SVS subs has allowed me to smooth out their curve a little, but I'm not sure how much a difference it makes in my real world listening. I guess I'm just surprised that going from $200 worth of subs to $2,200 worth of subs didn't make more of a difference and I'm trying to see where I went wrong. Maybe I'm not being honest with myself. Maybe I'm more of a bass head or looking for more of a home theater experience than I care to admit. When I really want to listen to music I generally go to my "reading chair" where I have a JDS Labs amp, dac, and Hi Fi Man Sundaras. Sorry if this is a long post, borning, or has been answered elsewhere. If this interests you or you have advice please feel free to chime in. As I currently see it my options are 1. Keep the SB 3000s, 2. Send them back for the HSU's, or 3. send them back and look into ported, bigger subs in the same 2k'ish price range.

Here is an RTA sweep of my listening position:
index.php

OK here comes the bad news. The room is enormous as most open floor plan multipurpose rooms are. IMHO, and from personal experience you need bigger and more powerful subs to get the slam your looking for. The subs you have now are great subs. Nothing wrong with them and should be easy to sell on or return. Multiple larger subs 15” or 18”s take a look at JTR Subs, Sound Power Audio, Rythmic, and SVS’s larger 15” subs.

The job of obtaining great bass is difficult in such an open space. It gets even harder when overdriving smallish for the room subs. Go over the AVS Forums and do some more reading and research. I’m going to speculate that your room is going to need dual 18” to get bass you will be happy with and end your quest here. Go big or go home is relevant in your case. Doing the incremental small upgrade can end up costing you more money in the long run if you keep feeling you need to upgrade.

Look for someone in your Area who has bigger subs that you can hook up with for a demo. Nothing more convincing than hearing bigger subs in another venue. If I recall correctly there is an active home theater group in your area and they post about meetups in the AVS forum.

Sorry I don’t have a more simple answer. Been there done that. Very large room and small subs just ain’t going to get the job done. I went through four sets of subs. If I had just gone big right away I would have saved %50 of what it cost me in the end. Get the biggest most powerful sub you can afford. Then save for a year and buy another.

Good luck my Friend. I want to stress the Demo thing….Their is a large community of bass heads in Phoenix. Find them and go listen and learn.

Here is a link to a demo thread at AVS: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/the-ill-demo-my-subwoofer-for-other-enthusiasts-thread.1354149/


If you every find yourself in the Tampa/Sarasota area shoot me a pm and I will be more than happy to demo my subs for you. I have dual JTR Captivator-2400 ULF’s. In a room that is slightly larger than your room.
 
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TurtlePaul

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I disagree with the previous poster. You lack slam (bass is tubby/muddy) is because of the difference between the 20-80 hz response and the 100-200 hz response. Especially that null at 125 hz and peak at 65 hz, but even otherwise. Other than pulling you main speakers out from the wall, the other thing you can do is turn the volume on the subs down by 7 dB. The problem you have is the 'attack' on most instruments isn't <100hz, so adding more sub-bass isn't going to add any of that it will just drown it out more.

Can you run a sweep with the subs turned down by 7 dB and report back how that sounds?

Most 'bass boost' settings will boost everything below 200-250 hz. Boosting only below the subwoofer crossover frequency is why the bass sounds uneven. A lot of bass comes from the mains and not the subs and those are being drown out because the sub is being run so hot.

Edit: annotated chart
Bass Response.png
 
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Bill Brown

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I disagree with the previous poster. You lack slam (bass is tubby/muddy) is because of the difference between the 20-80 hz response and the 100-200 hz response. Especially that null at 125 hz and peak at 65 hz, but even otherwise. Other than pulling you main speakers out from the wall, the other thing you can do is turn the volume on the subs down by 7 dB. The problem you have is the 'attack' on most instruments isn't <100hz, so adding more sub-bass isn't going to add any of that it will just drown it out more.

Can you run a sweep with the subs turned down by 7 dB and report back how that sounds?

Most 'bass boost' settings will boost everything below 200-250 hz. Boosting only below the subwoofer crossover frequency is why the bass sounds uneven. A lot of bass comes from the mains and not the subs and those are being drown out because the sub is being run so hot.
I think @TurtlePaul is on the right track. While the "battleship guy" :) is correct in absolute terms, I don't think changing subs will help you at this point in the journey. Adding a third would definitely help, not primarily because of output capability, but with smoothness. I think generating a house curve as a target (maybe the "bassiest" of the Harmon curves to start with) and then trying to fix and get the desired curve in the ~70-200hz range would get you to where you want to be (and a PEQ at ~ 65hz). You've got "rumble," etc. covered. It is above those frequencies that I would focus on.

Bill
 
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