Eh hem!...Subwoofers... What do ya know?

@millercarbon - do you run your array in mono? Just curious.

The smart-alecky answer would be yeah, because all low bass is mono. Seriously. It is.

Which I know from Duke reporting on what's his name Floyd O-Toole? Or the other one? Whatever, the car audio engineer who analyzed a couple hundred recordings and they were all mono so he called it good and designed for mono bass.

Me, having 2 Dayton amps allowed trying stereo, 2 on each side, and two per amp. Also tried mono. Tried mono connecting all 4 to one amp, mono 2/2. These were all different. But not because of stereo/mono. Because, all low bass is mono. Oh there may be an exception out there somewhere. He only tested a couple hundred, after all. So if anyone reading this finds one send it along, as nobody who's looked into it has found any, they will think its cool. 

What does make a difference though is impedance. Wired 4 ohms the bass is just a bit tubby to my ears. Wired 8 ohms the bass is not so tubby. Wired 16 ohms the bass is tight, taut, articulate, like way better than anything I ever heard anywhere else. Not lean. Plenty full. But fast. Clean. Maybe even a tad more dynamic.

Technically you do trade off some peak power, so if those last few dB of volume really matter and you like really full round bass then wire for 4 ohms. 16 to me is so much more articulate and tuneful, and I like that enough to put up with the occasional clipping when the movie effects go boom.

In terms of stereo/mono though one of the more amazing parts of the whole DBA thing is the way such low bass, which we really cannot localize, nevertheless somehow manages to image so well. I can only guess that what happens is when the low bass is this good then when we get the location from the midrange it blends seamlessly into one whole and so it seems the bass is as much grounded in a real place as everything else in the sound stage.

This is a whole different thing from the way midrange on up works. Anything much above 120, 200, somewhere in there, if its mono its gonna be between the speakers. Where exactly, not my thing. Duke would know. Duke knows everything! (Seriously.)

For those who haven't heard this (DBA) I don't want to give the wrong impression. Its not like the bass is always imaged the way everything else is. Sometimes the bass is completely enveloping in a diffuse, this is just the size of the room kind of way. This I think is one way really good bass improves imaging, by extending it to the point you are enveloped in it. But its also something that is very recording dependent. If its not on the recording you aren't going to hear it no matter how many subs or what kind. Sometimes when listening its like man are my subs even on? When it is there on the recording though, wow!

What are your opinions on subwoofers?

Hard to integrate well. Glorious when done right.

What did you learn and how did you learn it?

That’s a really good question. I started off with an M&K satellite/subwoofer system. Bought into the hype, used a passive 2nd order crossover (yeah, enormous toroids) and a couple of different RTAs to attempt to get the two to play well. Honestly they never did. The best I was able to do was use a little room math to damp the peaks.


The rest of my answer is a little long, but the short version: I integrate subs as if I’m building a speaker.



Here’s the long answer:


The V1B subwoofer eventually fell apart and I parted it out on Ebay, sold the S-1Bs.

Years later I was in San Francisco and got into upgrading speakers, and that led, very rapidly to learning speaker analysis and making my own. Now mind you, I have some professional background in analog and I was lucky enough to audit classes at Georgia Tech when I was too young for the math. Point is, I didn’t just jump into speaker design from zero.


One thing that changed a lot in my favor was the availability of cheap test and simulation tools. DATS, OminiMic and XSim made everything I wanted to do a lot easier, but none of them were useful without having a background already. The other thing that was new was miniDSP having a number of affordable and very high feature active crossovers.


Even with this background I made a couple of choices that really made everything a lot easier:

1. Stick to 2-way designs
2. Measure the bass response in place.
3. Use OmniMic instead of REW, just because for my needs OmniMic held my hand a lot more.

Had I not done that, I would have made plenty of mistakes in analyzing the mid-bass response, or gotten overwhelmed with the quasi-anechoic requirements of a 3-way (this is short-hand, please don’t jump on this sentence).

Anyway, after this I returned to wanting a sub. Based on reviews including those at:

data-bass.com

I went with a Hsu. They were out of the model I wanted, but for a couple of hundred I could get the next larger unit. What arrived was the size of a small refrigerator, and me in a small apartment!! Hahahaha.


Anyway, I tried a number of ways to integrate the sub, bought a pair of GIK Acoustic soffit traps, and the miniDSP HD balanced. What finally worked for me was this:

Treat the sub exactly as if I was adding a 3rd driver to my speakers.

Which meant measuring the acoustic distance, putting in the response of the satellites and subwoofer into XSim, phase/time matching them and then using OmniMic to simulate EQ’s.

Pant flapping glorious.

So is it the consensus that 2 cheap Dayton or BIC subs are better than spending $500 on a SVS or Rythmik?

if I rabbit hole here I wouldn’t go more than 2 subs and my cheapy 200 watt sealed sub seems to be doing ok (can’t find a 2nd one anywhere sadly). And that a 2nd sub should NOT be placed on the other end along the same wall (front) as the other sub?

I started with one sub years ago,added another last year,read posts from miller and nonoise,and was intrigued.After reading everything I could find about "the swarm" I added two more.I already had room treatments which smoothed the bass nicely and got rid of the 'sonic boom'.I don't think about the bass anymore because it sounds perfect to me no matter what the recording.I never wish it was tighter,fuller,more accurate or dynamic.It's always just right.