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Searching for matching(?) Subwoofer solution

Hi folks,

I have a relatively new setup in my home office (12' x 14' with hardwood floor) and am seeking recommendations for a subwoofer solution.

Speakers: Ologe 5
Preamp:    Bryston P26 
Amp:         Forte 1A
Budget:     Flexible but just want something to provide a good match for the above components.
Music:       Mostly Classical and Jazz.  Some rock, some fusion.
Source:     Well, that's something else I am seeking advice on too and will post under the appropriate discussion topic

Problem is none of the local Hi Fi shops here in the Boston area have any experience with, let alone heard of Ologe speakers.  Couldn't get any recommendations there.

Has anyone owned or at least listened to these speakers? Or any of the other Ologe speakers?
The Ologe site (http://www.ologe-acoustic.com/) features a subwoofer called Ologe 20 at USD $8550.  
Just wanted to look into alternatives before dropping over 8 grand on the Ologe 20.
 I am open to but don't know much about subwoofer swarms.

I am not looking for anything overkill.  Just a subwoofer solution to nicely complement my somewhat modest home office system.

Thanks,
H
hleeid
audiokinesis
2,737 posts
 

Audiorusty wrote: "With as good as a DBA system is, there still will be only one sweet spot in the room."

Imaging will of course be best in the sweet spot.

But it is possible for the imaging to hold up fairly well across a fairly wide listening area, and for the tonal balance to hold up well just about throughout the room. This all depends on the directional characteristics of the main speakers and how they are set up, and the details are somewhat counter-intuitive.

* * * *

Raulirugas wrote: "I’m just talking about the myth that we can’t detect the direction for frequencies 80hz down ( two channel with two subs. ) and this is not true."

Detectable under specific conditions that are not representative of listening to music reproduced in a home listening room, yes.

Worth trading off the advantages of a good distributed multisub system for, well I guess that depends on your priorities. Just about everything in audio involves tradeoffs. Make an informed choice and pick the set of tradeoffs that makes you happy. Fortunately in audio if a particular choice doesn’t make you happy, you can choose again.

Duke

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rauliruegas
13,047 posts
 
Dear @audiokinesis  : Fortunatelly I already made my choices on room/system choosing what for my MUSIC/sound priorities, still today, gave and give me the best trade-offs for a high quality overall level performance. Truly satisfied, not " perfect " but always perfectible.

R.
noble100's avatar
noble100
2,419 posts
 
raulruegas:
"Fortunately I already made my choices on room/system choosing what for my MUSIC/sound priorities, still today, gave and give me the best trade-offs for a high quality overall level performance. Truly satisfied, not " perfect " but always perfectible."


Hello rauliruegas,
     
      You're obviously very fortunate.   You made an informed choice and picked the set of tradeoffs that makes you happy.  
     Congratulations, you only have one thing left to do; enjoy the heck out of your high quality system with your music of choice.

Enjoy,
Tim
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Wow this topic has legs. I like to simplify things. First of all it is not a sweet spot. It is a sweet line 90 degrees from the center of the speaker axis.
On this line the speakers are in perfect phase with each other and will cast an image of the recording to the degree that the system is capable. 
Now because of standing waves and interference patterns the frequency response below about 100 Hz on this line can vary up to 10 db. It depends on room dimensions and the way the subwoofers are used. 
You can hear this easily in your system. Just play a test tone at say 60 Hz and walk back and forth across the room and you will be flabbergasted at how the volume changes within just a few feet. When I was using two woofers I dealt with this by moving my listening position along the "sweet line" until I felt the bass sounded right. Doing this even with room control is a benefit because it will cost you much less amplifier power to correct the response at your listening position. With a point source system and one favored listening position 2 subs can do the job fine and as Raul suggests I think two good woofers is better than 4 bad ones. 
But, when it comes to other situations like having multiple listening positions along that line or having line source or linear array speakers you run into trouble. It is difficult to compensate for two positions and two point source subs will not project as well as line array speakers so the sound gets thinner as you move away from the system. This is where multiple subwoofers come into play. It seems that the SWARM group wants to place their subs anywhere in the room. This will smooth out the frequency response throughout the room but depending on the distance between to subs may cause phase issues. Here is a rule of thumb. For the drivers to act as one they can be no farther apart than 1/2 the wavelength of the crossover point. So say you are crossing over at 100 Hz. That is about 10 feet at sea level. If your subs are less than 5 feet apart they are acting as one and no matter where you are in the room they will always be in phase and as long as additional subs are closer than 5 feet to the last one in line they will always be in phase no matter where you are in the room. If you make the array longer than the lowest frequency you want to reproduce you have created a line source subwoofer. At lower cross over frequencies say 80 Hz the distance would increase to 7 feet between subs. 
Now in my case I need a subwoofer linear array to match the output of my ESL linear arrays and the woofers are arranged across the front wall with the outside subs in the corners. I am doing this to make the array function to below 20 Hz but a point source system does not have to worry about this. So, what I am suggesting to the SWARM people is to place their woofers in configurations so that one is no farther than 7 feet from the next assuming you cross at 80 Hz, 5 feet if you cross at 100 Hz. This will make all of them in phase no matter where you are in the room and should increase the dynamic response of the bass. Try it and let us know what happens. This rule is used by designers that use multi driver arrays. If you study various designs you will always notice that tweeters are always closer together than midranges which are always closer together than woofers. We are just extending the same principle to subwoofers and the much longer wavelengths involve. Pheyew that was tiring.

Mike
audiokinesis
2,737 posts
 

Mijostyn wrote:

"For the drivers to act as one they can be no farther apart than 1/2 the wavelength of the crossover point."

You do an excellent job of explaining your suggestion, but imo the issue it addresses is not one that a distributed multisub system is concerned with.

With a distributed multisub system, "the drivers acting as one" is definitely NOT the goal. We want each sub to interact with the room very differently from the others, and that is accomplished by spreading them far apart. So not only are there subs more than a half wavelength apart, they will also (almost always) have different path lengths to the listener(s).

Because the ear has very poor time domain response, such that it cannot even detect the presence of bass energy from less than one wavelength, a bit of smearing in the initial arrival times of the different subs is inconsequential. What DOES matter a great deal from a perceptual standpoint is how the notes decay. Since speakers + room = a minimum-phase system at low frequencies, when we have fixed the frequency response we have simultaneously fixed the time-domain response. Imo this is something that a good distributed multisub system does well.

(The ear hears low-frequency ringing quite well, but such ringing is always accompanied by a frequency response peak, and vice-versa. Anywhere in the bass region where there is a peak, whether it originates from a speaker anomaly or a room anomaly, the energy in that region takes longer to decay. It is actually the frequency response peak that we hear, not the ringing - the slow decay - itself. But when we have fixed the one, we have simultaneously fixed the other.)

Duke

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