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Will I benefit from a subwoofer with 20Hz speakers?

My source is a minidsp shd studio with Dirac going into Denafrips Gaia DDC to Denafrips T+ DAC to McIntosh 601 Monoblocks to Cabasse Pacific 3 speakers. The speaker's published frequency response is 41-20,000Hz. I presume this is achieved in an anechoic chamber. In my room however, it goes down to 20Hz, at least according to the Dirac measurements. In fact, I needed to flatten the curve and  reduce by 5-20 DBs between 20-100Hz due to the room effect.

So, considering I already go down to 20Hz, is there anything else 1 or 2 subwoofers will do for my system?  Would it create a more consistent low frequency field? I see many people adding up to 6 subs, so I wonder what I'm missing. 

Thank you for your insight! 

dmilev73
dmilev73 OP
6 posts
 

Here is a photo of my measurements (took me forever to figure out how). 😁

They are taken from the listening position. As you can see, I had to even reduce the low frequencies by quite a bit. 

 

 

 

russ69's avatar
russ69
3,500 posts
 

Here is a photo of my measurements...

Well to answer your question. Yes you could live without a sub on that system. You have most everything covered. That is not to say there is not more to get but you would not be missing much. 

dmilev73 OP
6 posts
 

 

Thank you for this Erik. I have never used this, so I will spend some time going over it. Here is what came up based on my room size of 16X18X8 feet. https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=487&w=549&h=244&r60=0.6
laps
89 posts
 

The short answer, is definitely "yes", add a subwoofer.  Don't over analyze it.

erik_squires
16,042 posts
 

Well that's not bad.  I think you left the bass a little lean. 

Between 20 Hz and 100 Hz add a low shelf of about 4 dB.

from 100 Hz to 16 kHz go for a steeper slope, so 16 Khz is about -5 dB relative to 500 Hz.

Yes, subwoofers can be glorious but your problem right now is room balance.

Also, if you are doing this all without any room treatments it's not going to sound as good as if you worked together with them, especially in the bass.

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