Subwoofers and Phase Question For You Sub Experts

Tried the "swarm" approach and moved four subs into the room but unfortunately found out that they all have about the same tops and dips wherever placed (+/- 20 db from 25 to 100 Hz). So not much of an improvement. Room eq necessary.

" Tried the "swarm" approach and moved four subs into the room but unfortunately found out that they all have about the same tops and dips wherever placed (+/- 20 db from 25 to 100 Hz). "

Did each sub have the same in-room frequency response curve regardless of where you placed it, or did each one have a different frequency response curve but with the same amount of variation? (+/- 20 dB... that’s a lot of variation.... I don't recall ever measuring worse than +/- 10.)

Did you measure with all four playing at the same time?

Can you tell us about your room and approximately where the subs were placed within it?

Thanks!

Duke

noble100:

 The truth is that the 4-sub Distributed Bass Array (DBA) Concept actually works like a proverbial charm! There are no ifs ands or buts, no maybes, no under the right conditions, no excuses, no fear and loathing, no terms, no conditions, no stipulations, no hidden clauses, no fine print, no oils and no qualifiers whatsoever.  
      It's the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, good as gold, tits, right as rain and too legit to quit. I believe it's the gold standard of sub systems that all others should be judged against.  
    Based on the 4-sub DBA's near state of the art bass quality, I actually continue to be amazed that it isn't more widely known, accepted and utilized, especially by fellow Audiogon members who are typically keenly aware and accepting of high quality audio related concepts, technology and methods they can utilize to increase the performance of their systems.  

Ain't it the truth.

I struggled for so many years looking at so many different things all of them ultimately running into the same fundamentally immutable physics problem. Well the thing is it really is a fundamentally immutable physics problem. So whattre you gonna do? Give up! And I did. Gave up all hope.

For years.

And yes of course I know all about all the wonderful different subs, including the magical REL, and EQ, and bass traps, and all that jazz.

What part of fundamentally immutable physics do these people not get?

I had come to view the situation as so hopeless that when first reading about this, right about a year ago now, I assumed it had to be just one more dead end. But you never know. So I read. And read. And read some more. Dang. This just might work. So I read a ton more. Read Toole, et al, read every post by Audiokinesis, read all the reviews, read the threads. 

All the physics, all the psycho-acoustics, the measurements, every single bit, it all made sense. Solid, compelling, logical sense.

So I decided to go for it. DIY. Might as well. And Duke is all thanking me for the leap of faith.

The what??!? So of course I had to tell Duke faith had nothing to do with it. No sane sensible man of science could look at this and come to any other conclusion than its gonna work. Just as surely as no other solution can possibly work, this solution cannot possibly fail to work. The laws of physics would have to be re-written. Something that is not happening any time soon.

That said, still it is hard to fathom just how well it does work. Last night listening to the 20th Anniversary 45 of Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat it was absolutely freaking amazing the way the drums are no longer this thud thud thud that moves a bit left or right but actual 3D drums with skin and case and body and its not a dull thud but a clean impact that reverberates across the skin so that you feel and hear every up and down movement of the skin, and its not one sound or even one event its the wave moving out across the skin from where it was hit and then reverberating up and down and this is something you can see with your ears, its right there in the room which is completely mind blowing because as much as you know there are 5 subs plus the two speakers there is no sense of that, none whatsoever, its all just one seamless presentation, the drum and the skin and the room, the all-enveloping room that has erased the room you were in so completely its not the performers being there in your room its you being in theirs. And that's just the one whack. I could go on like this paragraph after paragraph on literally every track of every recording on the shelf.

The DBA approach is so superior to everything else that this one thing has transformed my system from where the bass was easily the worst weakest lamest thing about it to one where its the strongest most astounding aspect- and we're talking not because anything else is lacking but because the bass is just that crazy good. And not just because of any one thing like impact or extension or articulation or any of that but all of it together. We're talking play an absolutely average ordinary record and watch your guest move forward to the edge of the chair lean in fascinated and exclaim, "The bass!" 

And yet, as surprising as all that is its nothing compared to how stunned I am to stop and think this isn't some brand new thing just discovered last week. It wasn't even new when I first heard about it a year ago. Its like 20, 30 years, something like that, depending on how you want to count. From the PhD thesis or the commercial use or whatever. Not here to split hairs. We have people for that. All they do. Forest for the trees. 
 
Forest for the trees!

Everyone should be doing this. Or at the very least, everyone who has not tried it should maybe hold off until they do. Or if not that then at least take into consideration one or two of the dozens of compelling lines of evidence and reasoning behind this before spouting the usual irrelevant nonsense.

But no. Forest for the trees. Boggles the mind.

I think duke hit it on the head. Multi sub systems with some EQ, phase and time alignment are best.