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

Hello davekayc,

    Congrats and welcome to the DBA Concept club! Even in your huge room, I don't think there's a need to go beyond 4 subs but, otoh, 6 subs is...… extremely cool.  
    Each sub beyond 4 will not only marginally increase the perception of the bass as being smoother, faster, more detailed and natural, it will also increase the overall perceived system bass quantity, impact and bass dynamics.  
    You are now officially a member of the esteemed 4-sub DBA Concept club. Having automatically earned this coveted honor upon utilizing 4 subs in your room and system, you nevertheless bravely ventured forward into unchartered bass territory, beyond state of the art bass, by continuing to deploy additional subs #5 and 6. That my adventurous and intrepid grasshopper, is definitely worthy of at least another superlative, nice job!


Venture forth and prosper,
          Tim

Just a quick note to those using the Dayton sa1000 to drive their subs. It has a very low input impedance, 12k ohms. If you're driving it with a tube preamp with output capacitors, you'll need a cap at around 6-7uF to avoid rolloff above 20Hz.  I had to order some new caps to fix that issue, still, it drives my subs amazingly.

First @audiokinesis congrats on this very well deserved award, you guys have changed the way I enjoy music and I was very lucky to find you. Needless to say Duke your altruistic attitude is a quality very scarce these days on this modern world.
Thank you everyone else posting as I actually have noticed a few tricks I could use to improve my AK swarm
Now, @cal3713
Interesting comment, I am using a tube preamp but going 1st to a Jensen balanced to single ended isolator which impedance is 39 kohm, in this case the tube preamp is presented with the transformer impedance not the SA1000's one, need to find out if my preamp have output capacitors.I have been considering splitting my digital source output as today my preamp is feeding my mono's and the Dayton's and when the Daytons are connected the speakers connected to the mono's changes sound, maybe because of the impedance change. This will allow some digital filtering sending 60 Hz and below to the Daytons and 60 Hz and above to my monos (need to ask Duke about the exact frequency as I also have his speakers)

@luisma31 If you do have a pre with capacitor coupled outputs, at 39k, you’ll need 2uF of capacitance (or more)... https://www.v-cap.com/coupling-capacitor-calculator.php

I find this concept to be fascinating although I have never actually heard it. For many years I have known that multiple subwoofers can greatly smooth the bass response in a room but I haven’t actually experimented with it.

Does anyone here have experience pairing a Swarm/DEBRA with relatively full range speakers...in this instance the Vandersteen Treo’s? The Treo is -3db @ 36Hz.
For those not familiar, Richard Vandersteen has a very specific technique for pairing the Vandersteen subs with his full range speakers. It involves an outboard first-order high pass crossover for the main speakers.(installed between the preamp and amp) The subwoofer also receives this signal from the amp by speaker wire and is built with some sort of low pass first-order crossover and it also somehow equalizes to compensate for the reduced bass level received through the speaker wires. So it results in very gentle 6db rolloffs for the subwoofer and mains either side of 100Hz. I really like this setup and think it works extremely well.

My big question is what would be the best way to setup if I wanted to integrate Swarm/DEBRA with the Vandersteen full range speakers.
-No crossover on the Vandersteens and the 24db crossover on the Swarm/DEBRA at about 36hz?
-A Vandersteen first order high-pass crossover on the mains(100Hz) and a low-pass 24db crossover on the Swarm set at....?
-or some other variation that I haven’t thought of?