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

@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?

"Does anyone here have experience pairing a Swarm/DEBRA with relatively full range speakers...in this instance the Vandersteen Treo’s?"

Installo43, one of my customers has Vandersteen Quatros.

Before getting the Swarm, he had been using one sub and a Meridian processor with 16 of its available 60 digital filters professionally calibrated to smooth his in-room bass response.

He replaced his sub with the Swarm, ran the Quatros full-range with their filters set to neutral, and hired the same (highly experienced) technician to make measurements and calibrate the filters on his Meridian processor. The technician found that the ONLY adjustment needed was to the level of the subwoofer amp. No further equalization was needed, either from the Meridian processor or from the Vandersteen’s analog filters (well, the Meridian did equalize the two surround speakers a bit, but that doesn’t affect what the Swarm was doing). He wrote that the Swarm "had rendered both the Meridian Room Correction and the Vandersteen’s analog equalizers unnecessary" for his room.

Quoting from his e-mail:

"The technician, J___ S____, who has performed dozens of these calibrations, said he has never seen anything like this. The room is rendered literally flat in frequency response and spatial energy distribution - sonically the room disappears. We played one of Kal Rubinson’s recommended demo discs, the 100th anniversary for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra using the John Adams piece, "Short Ride on a Fast Machine", and you would swear you were in the hall. You can "feel" the ripple in the tympani skins! Very impressive."

I DO NOT claim that these results are "typical", but apparently it is possible to use the Swarm with a set of Vandersteens.

Duke
got a dog in the fight

Duke,

Thanks for the response! Wow. That is certainly a rave testimonial...and in keeping with all the other things that I have heard about the Swarm.

I guess I should have been more specific about my situation. My application will be strictly stereo, not surround. It sounds as if the customer with Vandersteen Quatros ran the Quatros full range and the Swarm was running simply as LFE...which I see as a very different application.

The question I had was about the best way to integrate the Swarm with relatively full range speakers in a stereo only setup.

Installo43, yeah I don't think I could buy a testimonial like that one if I wanted to!
In your situation I think we'd use essentially the same approach... run the Treo's fullrange, and use the Swarm to fill in the bottom octave or so. 

I have owners of speakers like Wilson and Magico who run their main speakers fullrange and then use the Swarm for the very bottom end.
Duke