Upgrading sub to get a live feel.

@mcreyn, yeah Tim was interesting at first, but now it's gotten pretty old. I am a fan of Duke LeJeune's speakers having owned the Jazz Modules before finding ESL nirvana. So when he developed his Swarm I had always intended to give it a go, until I started working with Roger Modjeski and he convinced me to go down a different path. Either way it would have worked out well.

The active crossover is EQed and my Acoustats have been modified. Of the two panels in each speaker, one is actually Roger's ESL panel. They have also been modified to use the Acoustat direct drive amps. So no interfaces.

Thanks for the tip on the car system and software. I'll look into it further.

mcreyn:
"At the end of the day, it is not about hitting huge SPL levels, it is about getting the best sound, which requires using subs that can stay clean and not run into dynamic compression. 4 10" subs can't do this in a reasonably sized room. It is why my progression of home subs has taken me from Velodyne F series, through ULD's, to HGS, and finally Rythmik. At each step, it has seemed to be amazing (and better than anything I ever heard at a dealer), but the next step revealed more."


Hello mcreyn,
     I'm glad to read your comment that "at the end of the day, it is not about hitting huge SPL levels, it is about getting the best sound, which requires using subs that can stay clean and not run into dynamic compression".  This makes complete sense and I agree with this statement.
     I was questioning whether you had the knowledge and experience to realize the truth in your statement because you were mentioning earlier the ability of larger subs being able to reproduce deep bass at 115 db which is not necessary and can literally cause permanent hearing loss after about 30 seconds.  I wish you had made this statement earlier. 
     Your statement, "it is about getting the best sound, which requires using subs that can stay clean and not run into dynamic compression. 4 10" subs can't do this in a reasonably sized room", I believe also indicates that you have a lack of knowledge and experience of how well the 4-sub DBA concept actually works in any room and with any main speakers.  
     It's definitely true that the four subs in the AK Swarm DBA system are each relatively small (1'x1'x28"), weigh only 44 lbs, contain only a single 10" aluminum long-throw driver and are used in a room considered by most to be reasonably sized (my room is 23'x16'x8').  After using this bass system for almost 5 years now, I know with certainty this system is an excellent performer in the limited 20-50 Hz range that I require supplemental deep bass, my main Magnepan 2.7QR planar-magnetic dipole speakers provide excellent bass performance but only down to about 35Hz but it blends seamlessly with the deeper bass produced by the four Swarm subs that extends bass response of my system down to 20 Hz.
     I completely understand the skepticism from you and other individuals accustomed to utilizing fewer but larger traditional self-amplified subs in their systems.  I understand the lack of comprehension and justified skepticism because I initially lacked the comprehension of how this was possible and was very skeptical myself.  It took me a lot of research on the science behind the DBA concept, reading numerous extremely positive reviews on the AK Swarm and custom DBAs from professional reviewers as well as users and a lot of email and phone conversations with AK's James Romeyn to convince me to give it a try in my room and system.  
     I'm  so glad I did because I consider the bass the 4-sub Swarm DBA system provides in my system/room to be state of the art for both music and HT.  It honestly seems to me like I've learned about an audio secret and I now feel a responsibility to spread the word and let my audio brothers and sisters in on this almost magical secret.
     Of course, I realize the Swarm does not provide the optimum bass response performance that the DBA concept is capable of.  I believe the optimum bass response performance that the DBA concept is capable of would most likely be realized by a combination of our viewpoints, four very large subs with even greater bass extension and output capacity positioned in the room as a distributed bass array system. It's also possible that room correction, either of each sub individually or as a 4-sub group, could further optimize the performance of such a system.   
    I'm currently more than satisfied with the Swarm in my system/room, even though it's performance is a bit less than optimum for a DBA system, due to its combination of extremely good bass performance and its inconspicuousness in my living room.
    In my experience, I can definitely state with validity that the extremely high quality of the Swarm's or a good custom DBA system's bass performance exceeds the sum of its parts.  I'm convinced the factor that's responsible for this is the DBA concept's utilization of psychoacoustic principles that I've explained in detail on an earlier post on this thread. 
     How our brains process the existence of the abundance of bass room modes (many bass peaks and dips) produced by the 3-4 subs in a DBA system by summing and averaging the bass by frequency which results in the perception of the bass as being very accurate,detailed, smooth and natural while also being very flexible to reproduce whatever bass the source content calls for; fast, rhythmic and tight on music or sudden, deep,dynamic,powerful and impactful for music and HT.  

Tim
    

upgrade the Speaker brand.
 don't take that the wrong way  

Clio09,  

Enjoy the 911.  The 84-89 911s were special.  Personally, the 964s always have held my heart.  

Noble100,

It is obvious in your mind there is only one solution to a problem, yours.  Thank goodness people like James B. Lansing, Paul Klipsch, Henry Kloss, Paul Walker, Roy Allison, and Jim Winey didn't decide that the best speakers of their day were as good as could be.  

For virtually every issue in life and science, there are multiple solutions, each with its own trade offs.  Those that get so myopically focused as to believe there is only, or decide they already know it all, never learn and never develop further.   There is no best speaker design, dynamic drivers, horns, electrostatic, ribbon, or quasi ribbon, they all have trade offs.  

You can fool yourself that the only important thing with subwoofers is a smooth frequency response, regardless of output capability, transient response, room decay, phasing, and a plethora of other issues that we are still learning and defining in the setup of sound. 

You can also continue to believe that your 2.7s extend with any authority to 35 hz, they start to roll off in the 50hz range and will quickly slap the panels when trying to reproduce any type of deep bass.  If you would high pass the 2.7s they will sound less dark and sound cleaner after being relieved of trying to handle the deep bass.  Did I mention I owned a pair of 2.7s for more than a decade which were run both full range and with an active crossover?

Just for shits and giggles, I ran a quick MLSSA at my listening position in my main systems this morning.  There are two graphs, the one with bass flat to 20hz is my 3.5s with a single Rythmik 15, crossover set at 80hz between the two, and NO EQUALIZATION.  The second with the rolloff is the 3.5s running full range.  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rDxsgpnU5xVsz1UWA

@mcreyn --

...

There is something magical that happens when you have that free dynamic headroom. Most home subs suffer from dynamic compression and distortion when turned up. It starts in the 90db range below 30hz for nearly all subs, until you start getting into the big boys. For example, even the Velodyne DD18+, considered a huge, accurate sub, cannot hit more than 110db at 30hz, 105 at 20hz. Same for a Rythmik F18.

When all you have ever heard are subs that are running into dynamic compression and distortion (which is the case with almost all home subs when pushed to even 100db), they sound great, until you hear a setup that doesn’t. When you hear the setup that doesn’t you experience this effortless, fast, tight, bass that seems to come from blackness. It also has a dramatic effect on the sound of the mains, making them sound much cleaner.

At the end of the day, it is not about hitting huge SPL levels, it is about getting the best sound, which requires using subs that can stay clean and not run into dynamic compression. 4 10" subs can’t do this in a reasonably sized room. It is why my progression of home subs has taken me from Velodyne F series, through ULD’s, to HGS, and finally Rythmik. At each step, it has seemed to be amazing (and better than anything I ever heard at a dealer), but the next step revealed more.

Finally, you can rag on those guys at the AVS forums, but unlike many, they spend a lot of time correlating objective data with subjective sound to get improvements.

Sweet music to my ears - well put indeed. While I would gladly recommend a 4-sub approach I’d differ on the oft-promoted stance here on using ~10" woofers for that purpose mostly (that’d be a typical selection of lower fs hifi drivers with a sensitivity no higher than 90dB’s, if that high), direct radiating units at that, and instead - to significantly gain headroom - throw in a bunch of bigger diameter pro-style units - preferably via tapped or front loaded horns or other partially or wholly hidden driver approach from the likes of some 6th order bandpass iterations.

Subs like that though are big, certainly with drivers of at least 15" diameter, so having a quad arrangement of those is a stretch in many if not most domestic environments. Therefore I’d strongly recommend going with a pair of subs, and I’d urge making it a pair instead of only one (i.e.: smoother coverage, and more headroom), although a single sub can be made to integrate very well from a rather narrow seating position, as has been already suggested.

The operative word posed by the OP seems to be that of a sought after "live feeling," and to get that and meet properly with the likely future acquisition of the JBL 4367 mains you have to get the midbass right as well, and for this I wouldn’t go too low in tune (no lower than some 20Hz, but OTOH no higher than 28-30Hz to still qualify as subs), have lots of effective air radiation area, and generally keep sensitivity fairly high (no lower than some 90-95dB’s). This naturally lends one a fair amount of headroom as well, which is an absolutely necessity here when smooth, clean, effortless bass reproduction is required.

Now this is just my preference, one that I actually live by with my choice of subs, and it largely dictates going with a DIY-approach (though I’m aware there are other, pre-assembled solutions to be had that could fulfill the same overall goal as well). A single 15"-loaded tapped horn I’m using, taking up 20 cubic feet per cabinet, will hit ~120dB’s at about 22Hz with approx. 200 watts, and I got a pair of them.. The specific B&C pro driver takes 1000 watts Nominal Power Handling (2-hour pink noise signal), so even pushed to ~600 watts where it reaches Xmech in this Tapped Horn (prior to thermal ditto), dynamic compression will be held at bay at have a pair of those TH’s reach honest 125dB’s over its entire usable bandwidth (20-100Hz) with zero issues, also being that the heavily ventilated driver motor is placed in free air in not inside a more or less closed box, so to be able to shed heat more freely. This bodes well for ample headroom of at least 20dB’s if 105dB’s is the typical upper ceiling for SPL.

And yes, my tapped horns derive from the Avsforum, more specifically a developer who goes by the user-name of "lilmike," and those guys over there are oftentimes rather hardcore with their approach, knowledge and actual sub-implementations.