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There's a lot more bass in a 6.5" driver than most of you think

One topic of discussion I often see new audiophiles touch on is whether to get larger speakers for more bass.

I usually suggest they tune the room first, then re-evaluate. This is based on listening and measurement in several apartments I’ve lived in. Bigger speakers can be nothing but trouble if the room is not ready.


In particular, I often claim that the right room treatment can make smaller speakers behave much larger. So, to back up my claims I’d like to submit to you my recent blog post here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html


Look at the bass response from those little drivers! :)


I admit for a lot of listeners these speakers won’t seem as punchy as you might like, but for an apartment dweller who does 50/50 music and theater they are ideal for me. If you’d like punchy, talk to Fritz who aligns his drivers with more oomf in the bass.


erik_squires
erik_squires OP
16,073 posts
 
When you EQ one sub, what you effectively do is ameliorate the modes situation at one spot (eg. your listening position) and make it worse elsewhere. It is easier to place the sub next to your armchair and delay it.

This is only partially true. With room tuning, you can take care of it all at once. Please read up on the proper use of EQ in partnership with bass traps.

And adding 3 more subwoofers to me is complexity. Three more subs than you would need otherwise, in addition to the signal cables. That’s definitely not for me and my home.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that there is only one possible truth to good bass. I am saying, religious fanaticism about swarms prevents us from looking at other very good alternatives. I worry that the fans of Swarms have gone from 1 bad subwoofer, to 4, and jumped all possible steps in the middle, so they discount them as inadequate, which is a shame in my view.
pirad
59 posts
 

@twoleftears 

Your quoted the Positive-Feedback report

"Description of the Magnepan subwoofer accompanying the "condo" 30.7.

"The bass unit was about 3 feet tall and about 1 foot wide. The cabinet or structure consisted of a V shaped open baffle with 8 total drivers—4 vertically mounted dynamic cone woofers on each side of the V. These woofers were approximately 6.5 inches in diameter. Though there has been several dynamic cone dipolar designs attempted before, Wendell commented that this was a unique design that utilizes DSP and would eventually be patented. Yes, I said DSP!  

Though Wendell used the term "dipolar" for the bass units, I was told that the key design elements were the dual array and open baffle mounting along with the use of DSP. With this in mind, he also used the term "dual-dipolar" for the entire system to reinforce that this is a unique overall configuration and yet it still has the ability to be competitive with an all magnetic dipolar design."


The bass solution decribed by Magnepan's top salesman as "unique" is not really so. All dipole speakers need EQ and since the cost of DSP fell down, it replaced discrete electronics. Siegfried Linkwitz (RIP) was a great proponent of dipoles, both in his corporate audiotech guru capacity and later as the "people's constructor". Go to linkwitzlabs.com His last design LX521 is a four-way and DSP controlled dipole. You can still buy the license and plans for $150. Total materials cost, if I remember correctly, ca 2k. His bass is a two-way V-frame, with two 10 inch dynamic cone drivers working in opposition. The phase is inverted on the back one, so the drivers work in push-pull configuration. That's what Wendell probably describes as "dual-dipolar". The LX521 is 10x cheaper and likely also 10x smaller than the 30.7 Magnepans. I would love to hear them in direct comparison.



pirad
59 posts
 
@erik.squires



You wrote quoting me:


" 02-01-2020 8:32pm

>>When you EQ one sub, what you effectively do is ameliorate the modes situation at one spot (eg. your listening position) and make it worse elsewhere. It is easier to place the sub next to your armchair and delay it.<<


This is only partially true. With room tuning, you can take care of it all at once. Please read up on the proper use of EQ in partnership with bass traps.

And adding 3 more subwoofers to me is complexity. Three more subs than you would need otherwise, in addition to the signal cables. That’s definitely not for me and my home.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that there is only one possible truth to good bass. I am saying, religious fanaticism about swarms prevents us from looking at other very good alternatives. I worry that the fans of Swarms have gone from 1 bad subwoofer, to 4, and jumped all possible steps in the middle, so they discount them as inadequate, which is a shame in my view. "

Never said that distributed bass is the one possible truth. I use it in home theater applications. I listen to music on dipole speakers with dipole bass. The whole issue of "room EQ" is for a longer discussion. One thing is to EQ the shortcomings of a speaker ("flattening the anechoic response"). Totally another is trying to EQ the room reponse. Let me quote Floyd Toole, in this AES paper:‎

www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20200201/17839.pdf

"For decades it has been widely accepted that a steady- state amplitude response measured with an omnidirectional microphone at the listening location in a room is an important indicator of how an audio system will sound. Such measurements have come to be known as generic “room curves,” or more specific “house curves.” That belief has a long history in professional audio, and now it has penetrated consumer audio with stand-alone products and receivers in- corporating automated measurement and equalization capabilities. The implication is that by making in-situ measurements and manipulating the input signal so that the room curve matches a predetermined target shape, imperfections in (unspecified) loudspeakers and (unspecified) rooms are measured and repaired. It is an enticing marketing story. "

"2.4 “Room Equalization” Is a Misnomer

It is a bold assertion that a single steady-state measurement in a room—a room curve—can reliably anticipate human response to a complex sound field. Time-windowing the measurement is useful to separate events in the time domain, but these too ignore the directions from which sounds arrive. Human listeners respond to these cues, in some detail, and they exhibit skills in separating room sound from the timbral identity of loudspeakers, and in adapting to different circumstances. This is, after all, what happens at live, un- amplified, musical events. This means that not everything measured is perceptually important, nor can our reaction to such sound fields be constant, we adapt . The simple measurements therefore cannot be definitive. "


erik_squires OP
16,073 posts
 
It's 2020, who on earth uses steady state measurements??
erik_squires OP
16,073 posts
 
First, I used to work in cinema sound, so thanks for sending me something so interesting, but the paper does nothing to contradict the earlier posts I made.

Toole is questioning and providing data for measuring and calibrating theaters, while comparing home and cinema speakers.

The issue of taming bass modes via bass traps and EQ is not exactly what he’s pointing at here, so much as the trouble with using steady state measurements which had dominated cinema measurements, which I’m very much surprised is still being done.

Let me jump into a section you quoted here:

It is a bold assertion that a single steady-state measure-ment in a room—a room curve—can reliably anticipatehuman response to a complex sound field. Such measure-ments take no account of the direction or timing of reflec-tions within the sound field. Time-windowing the measure-ment is useful to separate events in the time domain, butthese too ignore the directions from which sounds arrive



100% True!! But again, he’s addressing the overall timbre balance, not the taming or elimination of room modes which others have written of, which is very cost effectively handled by bass traps and EQ. However, making that sound good is my hobby and pleasure. :) Do so with two dozen woofers if you’d like to do it that way for yourself.

So what are we left with? Personal taste to attempt to assess how to set things, and that IMHO is really what makes a great room correction system vs. not. The two companies I know do a great job at this, fire and forget, are JL Audio and Dirac. I haven’t heard Anthem’s, but given they and Dirac allow for hands on customization I’m sure they’ll do.

And while this is all rather technical, and therefore fun, for me, I also want to follow Toole’s lead and jump out of the techncial to the subjective. Properly set up, a single sub with EQ and bass traps is nothing short of glorious. So not only have I read up on this, experimented and measured, but I experience stunning life altering bass without more than 1 subwoofer. This is why I’m so confident that the science and practice works.

What does suck is I’m not really sure how many other audiophiles can take this approach without an automated system. In that sense, the simple formulas for using 4 subs seems a lot easier for most.

Best,

E
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