Help me understand "the swarm" in the broader audiophile world

People debate without end about electronic piece of gear, 1 or 4 or zero, without almost never informing themselves first about the embeddings...

No piece of gear can rival embeddings controls done rightfully....Even and especially in bass section.... For sure if you buy a 100,000 dollars system with 4 subs this will beat my 450 dollars system without one and even with one done right.... I will not argue against that even before listening to it....

There is exception to any law....

My law is dont upgrade anything, embed everything before doing that....

:)


This is a very important observation indeed:

Help others figure out what is best for them not for us.

Then dont give any money to upgrade before trying to embed your audio system...

 Necessary upgrading to reach audiophile experience is an half truth only , then, worst than a lie....

I apologize because the topic is the "swarm" not my rant about embedding but......

My best to all....

Veerossi wrote:  " My setup is different from the standard DEBRA though: I’m still unclear how to setup the phasing on the sub amps since my DEBRA uses 2 Qty of the SA1000 subs amps instead of one to drive the 4 subs. It’s supposed to have some benefit for phasing. "  

Here is what I suggest:  

Drive the two subs on the left-hand-ish side of the room with one amp, and the two on the right-hand-ish side of the room with the other.  Set the phase controls on the two amps roughly 90 degrees apart from one another.   You may have to go back and fine-tune the low-pass frequency and level controls a bit.  

The idea is to synthesize the phase difference at your left and right ears that you might have in a much larger room.  This reduces the "small room signature" of the playback room, thus unmasking the acoustic signature of the recording venue, whether it be real or engineered or both.  So you hear less of your playback room and more of the recording.  

Mitch2 wrote:  " Your comment made me think of two reasons I have not tried a DBA yet, and something Duke (or somebody) could work on to help those of us who already own and use two great sounding subs..."  

Imo you can add subs to the one or two you already have.  They needn't be as large and capable.  I do suggest that any subs positioned away from the main speakers, and closer to you than the main speakers, have their top-ends rolled off fairly steeply (24 dB per octave is what I use) no higher than 80 Hz.  This is so that they don't pass upper bass/lower midrange energy loud enough to give away their locations.  

Lalitk wrote: " IMHO, it has to [do] with practicality which millercarbon and DBA advocates continue to overlook each time a sub discussion pops up."  

I can't speak for my fellow DBA advocates, but it normally doesn't occur to me include practicality disclaimers.  

For anyone in a situation where a distributed multi-sub system is impractical, obviously something else would be a better choice.  Maybe something like this: 

" one sub is better than no sub and two subs is better than one sub. "  

(Actually imo one sub may not always be better than no sub - many dipole owners have tried one sub and gone back to no sub.) 

Duke

I can't speak for my fellow DBA advocates, but it normally doesn't occur to me include practicality disclaimers.  

If you are nothing but a fellow DBA advocate, why is it that you are the only one whose name pops up everytime DBA is mentioned on this forum? Why do you have the right to claim ownership of the DBA concept by using a proprietary name like swarm? 

For anyone in a situation where a distributed multi-sub system is impractical, obviously something else would be a better choice. Maybe something like this:

" one sub is better than no sub and two subs is better than one sub. "

(Actually imo one sub may not always be better than no sub - many dipole owners have tried one sub and gone back to no sub.)

I think that one sub "may" be better than no sub in some case, but more often then not, mechanical and electrical embeddings combined with mainly a rightfully done acoustical embeddings make the urge to use a sub obsolete, especially in a small room...Except for heavy metal and cinema for sure.... :)

For bigger room probably a "swarm" is certainly interesting....If you listen mainly jazz and classic less interesting tough....

The speakers I regularly rotate are:
KEF LS50s, B&W 801 Matrix S2s, Ologe 5s, Magnepan LRS and Harbeth SHL5+40th Anniversaries.

@hleeid,

That’s a nice collection of speakers you are rotating.

What determines which ones get played?

I have ls50s. Interested in your impressions versus others.

Thanks.