Audio Kinesis Swarm Subwoofer Awarded 2019 Golden Ear Award by Robert E. Greene

Hello Hans,

     Okay, my next experiments were going to be:

Experiment#2: Same as Exp#1 but face the drivers toward the wall instead of the ceiling. Deep bass sound waves are very long (a 20 Hz soundwave is about 56 feet long) and will continue reflecting off of room boundaries (walls, ceilings and floors) until they run out of energy.                 Whether these soundwaves are initially launched upward toward the ceiling, or sideways into a wall, causes their pathways to differ before reaching your ears located at your desk chair.  You'll need to determine if sub positioning and driver facing direction results in the bass sounding different to you and which you prefer.

Experiment#3:  Place a shelf/sub along each right & left side of your rear wall, with the closest edge of each shelf 2' away from the nearest rear corner of the room and with the sub drivers facing the ceiling.

Experimet#4: Same as Exp#3 but face the drivers toward the rear wall instead of the ceiling.

     It's important for you to understand that positioning a sub in a corner will increase that sub's perceived amount of bass produced because the presence of two walls in such close proximity reinforces the reflection of the long bass soundwaves it launches that radiate in a 360 degree pattern. 
     I understood this and specifically avoided corner placement of my four subs, keeping them at least 2' away from any nearby corner, because my goal was the smoothest, most natural and highest quality bass attainable without bass overemphasis.  
     However, your goals may differ from mine and you can experiment with placing at least one sub in a corner with any of your configuration scenarios.  If you do so, I know Duke recommends reversing the polarity on at least one sub that's not positioned in a corner.  
     I hope this info helped a bit.  Lots to learn but your experience gained from experimenting will probably be the best teacher.  

Best wishes,
    Tim

Honestly Hans the advantages of four are so great you can put them just about anywhere and still get great bass. I've moved mine around, played with phase and impedance (wiring for 4, 8 and 16 ohms) and a bunch of stuff and yes it does matter. But compared to how big a change you get moving one sub around the difference when moving one of four is small. It will help to keep this in ind because compared to the major errors just one sub always has when you go to four it puts you right from the beginning into fine-tuning. In other words prepare to be amazed and understand why those of us with four (or more) are such enthusiastic DBA proponents.

@millercarbon 

Yes, I feel I have a basic understanding of the reasons behind the advantages of the Swarm/DBA concept.

Landing right into the "fine tuning" stage makes sense now.

So after everything is set up, I look forward to some listening comparisons:
   
1) Swarm off
  
2) Swarm on but with just one sub (one of the subs under the main speakers) powered on to simulate a traditional single sub setup.

3) Swarm on (all subs on)


@noble100 
 
Really appreciate you taking the time coming up with the experiments! 

I plan to install shelves long enough to span each wall (left, right and rear) but with a 2' clearance from each adjacent wall.
That should accommodate all 4 experiments. 

Would it make sense to experiment positioning the subs on the floor to face the floor (on tall spikes) instead of facing the wall?


Thanks,
Hans 

 

hleeid:"Would it make sense to experiment positioning the subs on the floor to face the floor (on tall spikes) instead of facing the wall?"

Hello Hans,

Yes, because you’re venturing into new 4-sub DBA territory that I’ve never been to or even contemplated. I’m willing to help you as much as I’m able along the way but my current advise is it’s likely best you experiment with the positioning and facing direction of all 4 subs until you perceive the bass as being smooth, fast, powerful, highly dynamic, detailed and natural. IOW, until it sounds the best to you.
As millercarbon mentioned, just having four well dispersed subs launching bass soundwaves into your room is likely to result in very good bass performance in your room. Your main goal will be experimenting in positioning and facing, analyzing the bass results and then repeating until you determine the optimum, or at least a very good, combination of position and facing for each sub in your room.
The good news is the subs are not very heavy. The bad news is there are a high number of combinations of sub position/facing possibilities in total. However, I’m very confident you’ll consider it well worth the effort once you hear and feel the bass results of even a good, but perhaps not the optimum, combination of sub position and facing for all four subs.
My advice is to recruit or hire an assistant as the muscle and restrict your responsibilities to directing, analyzing the bass performance of each 4-sub position/facing combination permutation and recording the results.

Have fun,
  Tim

sawdustguy:
"Hello,
I'm curious about the swarm systems and have a couple questions. First, what is the "crawl" process you mention? Second, what do you use for speaker wire? I would need a lot of it as my room is roughly 17' x 27' x 9'. "

     I ordered the Audio Kinesis Debra system from James Romeyn Music an Audio in Utah:  
www.jamesromeyn.com/

     This is basically the same as the Swarm system except the 4 subs are a bit narrower (1'x1'x28").  
The subs are wired to the supplied 1,000 watt class AB amp in series/parallel, with 2 subs connected to the amp's "A" speaker terminals and 2 subs are connected to the amp's "B" terminals.  As an overview, there will be one single-conductor wire run from the amp to each sub and one separate single-conductor wire run between each pair of subs.  All subs operate in mono mode and are fairly simple to connect.  James custom made all of the fairly low gauge and single conductor speaker cable runs required to connect all 4 of my subs at a very reasonable cost.  You'll just need to answer some questions, mainly about room dimensions and cable routing paths, and James will supply you with all the sub cables and written procedures.  You'll just need to do a little wire cutting/shortening and stripping of some of the cables.  My room is 23' x16' x 8' and I was able to run all my cables through the crawl space below

     You can google the crawl method for details but it's basically a simple and free method to optimally position each of the 4 subs sequentially that works extremely well in virtually any system and room. 
     You would begin by hooking up sub#1, place it at your listening seat and play some music with good and repetitive bass. Beginning at the front right corner of your room, you begin slowly walking or crawling around the perimeter of your room, in a counter-clockwise direction,  until the bass sounds best to you (smooth, fast, detailed, solid and natural).   Once you find this first exact spot, you move sub#1 to this spot. 
     You would then connect sub#2 and place it at your listening seat position, replay the music with both sub#1 and #2 playing and, beginning at sub#1, slowly continue walking or crawling around the perimeter of your room until you discover the next exact spot in your room the bass sounds best to you. Once you find this first exact spot, you move sub#2 to this spot.  Complete the optimum sub positioning procedure by repeating this process for sub#3 and #4.  If you have room correction, you can utilize it at this stage if you'd like but it's not actually necessary.
     The final steps required are to optimally set the Volume, Crossover Frequency and Phase controls on the supplied amp/controller.  These settings are just as important as proper sub positioning in achieving best results.  I suggest recruiting a competent assistant and taking your time to reduce setup/configuration time and increase accuracy.