Thinking of adding a subwoofer for more bass.

To clarify my post: Hulskof's post is correct in theory, but not necessarily in practice. If your system is actually producing flat response to 37hz, you won't hear much difference with a sub. You will feel the extended bass, as he indicates.

In practice, you are almost certainly getting bumps and nulls in your bass below about 125hz - prior to adding the sub and eq, I was seeing "hills" of 11 to 12 db (reference to 80 db) and "valleys" up to 7 or 8 hz. A sub with equalization (like the Velodyne) can address this issue and you will most definitely hear a difference. I eventually acheived +/- 3.5db from 25hz to 200hz using the SMS-1, but it took a lot of time.

Note: The subs with auto EQ don't remotely acheive the same result as using the SMS analyzer to tweak and optimize response by hand. It's funny in that similar looking total deviation from flat response may sound quite different one graph to the next, but less total deviation (especially near the x-over point) definitely sounds much better (to me). In other words keep tweaking for flatter response and I'm confident you'll hear a difference.

Good Luck

Marty

The reason why I asked the question is because I was worried that the output frequencey of the amplifier was the problem because the Vandersteens go down to about 37hz.

Is this what you measured in YOUR room, or is this the spec that vandersteen publishes? If 37Hz is the response you get in your room, then I doubt adding a subwoofer will give you much other than bass bloat. What you are probably looking for in that case is bass slam/dynamics which is something else altogether.

Indeed. If bass slam and/or dynamics is what you're looking for, try different speakers and/or different (less compressed) music.

Martykl said, "In other words keep tweaking for flatter response and I'm confident you'll hear a difference."

Better advice has never been given.

Bob

Get a decent sub and see how you like it. It is definately worth testing. A good subs can be had for under $500 as well, such as ones from Hsu or SVS. Experimenting is a good thing.