Will a subwoofer add depth and clarity to my system, or just bass?

millercarbon,

     I own that Leonard Cohen/Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat cd. The Bird on a Wire track does have some very good 3d imaging with those drums/bongos.  You said " each whack sounds individual, each drum stays put in each location. My Swarm is two amps stereo but I tried it one amp mono with the same degree of imaging".
     I think it's very interesting and telling that you heard the drums at the same positions within the 3d sound stage illusion whether you ran the bass in 'stereo bass' or 'mono bass'.  My Debra dba system is all 'mono bass' using a single mono amp to drive all 4 subs and I perceive the drum whacks the same way on my system as you described on your system.  
     My experience is that combining a very good mono 4-sub bass dba system with a very good pair of stereo speakers for the mids and treble results in a very natural, very realistic, palpable full range sound stage that I perceive as stereo and lif-like from top to bottom.  
     This supports the theory, which I believe we both agree with, that the higher frequency harmonics of those bass drum whacks reproduced by our l+r main speakers provides the necessary spatial clues to determine exactly where the individual bass drums are located within the 3d sound stage image.  Our ears receive the bass sound waves from the subs of the fundamental tone of the drum being struck first followed very quickly by our ears receiving the upper bass/lower midrange sound waves from the mains of the harmonics.  Then our brains process these inputs, associates the fundamental tone/note with its fundamentals and is able to determine precisely where the drums are located within the 3d sound stage it also created with the assistance of the combination of the 2 unique channels of stereophonic sound. 
     Voila, psycho acoustics in action.

Tim

Which yeah Tim sounds about right to me. But however it happens and whatever the explanation the fact is those drums are completely physically anchored in their locations. They never move around the stage even as they change a bit in tone and volume, each whack uniquely its own. There isn’t even a reverberation or anything coming from anywhere but where those drums are.

What with the recent tweaks (ECT, Blue Quantum Fuse, PHT, all kinds of HFTs) and now the dba, this sounds so good I went looking to the recording for some sort of reason. Well I haven’t found the drum story yet but what I found is maybe even better:

“The album was mixed to half-inch analog tape, at the very end of the project to give it warmth. So despite the fact that the first CD’s were issued with a ‘DDD’ marking, it was actually ‘DAD.’ In a blindfold test in Amigo Studio B, Frank Wolf, Jennifer, Henry Lewy, and myself, all chose half-inch analog tape over every digital mix format available that we could test—the Sony 1610, Sony 1630, and a Mitsubishi X-80 2-track digital recorder that used ¼-inch tape.”

Which answers the one question that has been gnawing away for so long, "How the hell did they make such a fabulous recording all digital?" Now we know: they didn’t! The Universe is in balance after all!

https://www.mixonline.com/recording/classic-tracks-first-we-take-manhattan-jennifer-warnes-366484

Hello millercarbon,

     Very interesting.  Vinnie Colaiuta: He played that drum track in one take and I just smiled real big and said, "There’s my drum track."  Cool.
     I've discovered a lot of music transferred from analog reel-to-reel masters to 24 bit/96Khz digital WAV or FLAC files sound very good, no big mystery why since they're really just exact copies of the original masters.  The best recordings I've found thus far, however, are ones recorded live in a well miked and good studio setting direct to digital. This online company is a good example of this:

https://www.soundliaison.com/

Tim

“The album was mixed to half-inch analog tape, at the very end of the project to give it warmth. So despite the fact that the first CD’s were issued with a ‘DDD’ marking, it was actually ‘DAD.’ In a blindfold test in Amigo Studio B, Frank Wolf, Jennifer, Henry Lewy, and myself, all chose half-inch analog tape over every digital mix format available that we could test—the Sony 1610, Sony 1630, and a Mitsubishi X-80 2-track digital recorder that used ¼-inch tape.”

Italics this time for emphasis. The CD was DAD. The LP was DAA.

Also the conventional wisdom would dictate that four speakers spread all over the room wouldn’t "mate" or "synch up" with the mains, or wouldn’t be "phase coherent" or whatever. Instead of what you really get, which is clean, fast, precise, solidly anchored and seamlessly integrated with the mains. And that goes whether run stereo or mono.

Agree with you @noble100 regarding the mix of tones that make up realistic bass response.

Rather reminds me of how adding a supertweeter improves bass definition and impact, by cleaning up the leading edges it gives immediacy and greater realism.

The theory that it’s all about the fundamental frequency is only a tiny part of the puzzle - improving both the full frequency range and the ability of the system to resolve subtle room cues will do much more to improve bass quality than adding any subwoofer (which 9 times out of 10 will mess up the room if it’s been previously optimized for a sub less setup)