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

I'm still fairly new out here and am curious about this Swarm thing. I've never owned a subwoofer but I find reading about them--placement, room treatments, nodes, the crawl, etc--fascinating. I'm interested in the concept of the Swarm and the DEBRA systems, and I have a very specific question. The few times I've been in high-end, audiophile stores and asked about the concept of the Swarm, I've tended to get some eye-rolling. They're selling single or paired subwoofers that individually often cost more and sometimes much more than a quartet of inexpensive, modest subs. The same thing can be said for many speaker companies that make both speakers and subs; it's not like I see Vandersteen embracing the use of four Sub 3's. 

My question is this: do in fact high-end stores embrace the concept of multiple, inexpensive subs? If not, cynicism aside, why not? Or why doesn't Vandersteen or JL or REL and so on design their own swarm? For those out here who love multiple subs, is it a niche thing? Is it a certain kind of sound that is appealing to certain ears? The true believers proselytize with such zeal that I find it intriguing and even convincing, and yet it's obviously a minority of listeners who do it, even those who have dedicated listening rooms. (I'm talking about the concept of four+ subs, mixed and matched, etc. I know plenty of folks who embrace two subs. And I may be wrong about all my assumptions here--really.)

Now, one favor, respectfully: I understand the concept and don't need to be convinced of why it's great. That's all over literally every post on this forum that mentions the word "sub." I'm really interested in why, as far as I can tell, stores and speaker companies (and maybe most audiophile review sites?) mostly don't go for it--and why, for that matter, many audiophiles don't either (putting aside the obvious reason of room limits). Other than room limitations, why would anyone buy a single JL or REL or Vandy sub when you could spend less and get ... the swarm? 


northman
audiokinesis
2,743 posts
 
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
kenjit
1,771 posts
 
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? 
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,102 posts
 
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....
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,311 posts
 
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.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Proving the superiority of a multi subwoofer setup is easy. All you have to do is impulse test the system at three set positions in the room using one then four sub woofers. What you will see with one sub is wide changes in volume between 0 and 100 Hz  up to 10 dB or so between the positions. With all four subwoofers these variations will reduce to less than 3 dB. Even with room control you will have trouble. Trying to correct a 10 dB deficit will cost you 8 times the power and force the woofer into the non linear part of it's excursion creating distortion. Correcting a 3 dB deficit requires just twice the power and a much smaller increase in woofer excursion. Put all this together and the ultimate subwoofer system requires 4 large subwoofers with at least 2000 watts of power each and room control.
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