What 4 subwoofers to buy?

williewonka,

Based on your budget of around 4 x $599 you could do much better with just two subs at @1200 each.

Respectfully, I’m not here to argue a point but to offer up a different way of thinking ’out of the box’ to get good bass. The 4 sub SVS SB1000’s would be a killer set up to augment elate’s Klipsch mains as those ’little’ 12 incher’s are quality mechanical devices for producing bass with a good price to performance ratio too. 

And the SVS SB1000's with the high level speaker input are actually $499 all day long, not $599. https://www.svsound.com/products/sb-1000

elate,

The SVS SB1000's would take some time to find the right placements in your room but with their small size and high level speaker inputs you would have more options and ease of placements. Read what Duke was gracious enough to write here on Agon:

Tyray asked: "Can a customer use their own passive subwoofers of choice?"

You can totally use your subs of choice, active or passive. Here is the amplifier that I use to drive my passive subs, note that it has a single band of EQ and a switchable 25 Hz "bass boost" circuit, which may come in handy with sealed subs:

https://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-sa1000-subwoofer-amplifier-rack-mountable--300-811

Tyray: "Or do I have to use AudioKinesis designed passive speakers for best results?"

I think the subs I designed work well for this application, but they are NOT required for good results. I don’t like to make claims like "best results" because in this hobby there is always something better... I’ll only claim "best I know how to make at my price point given where I think the goal posts are."

Tyray: "As I’m trying to understand if you would need to ’customize’ your swarm peripherals, amps, speaker wire, crossovers and any other hardware to work with the subs a customer may propose."

I don’t really "do" custom Swarm systems wherein I don’t at least supply the passive subs, but it’s not rocket surgery. Briefly...

Spread your subs asymmetrically around the room, perhaps with one (but no more than one) in a corner, and bonus points if you can raise at least one sub up off the floor such that it is closer to the ceiling than to the floor.

(If you prefer, you can also use a symmetrical configuration - see Todd Welti’s "Subwoofers: Optimum Numbers and Locations" on Harman’s website.)

Any subs which are fairly far from the main speakers, you want their top ends to be rolled off fairly steeply no higher than 80 Hz, so they don’t betray their locations by passing audible upper bass/lower midrange.

I usually find that reversing the polarity of the sub farthest from the main speakers tends to improve the in-room smoothness, but in a very large or open-floorplan room the result may be deficient in the bottom octave.

If you don’t have test equipment, when setting the controls on your subwoofer amp(s) by ear, the sequence is: First set the level, then the frequency, then the phase. Cycle back through this sequence several times to fine-tune. Credit to master acoustician Jeff Hedback for teaching me what the proper sequence is.

Duke

As it may help you ’wrap your head around’ something that at first does seem counterintuitive, that 4 smaller subs can sound so good. And of course you could also buy one of Duke’s kits, but I do understand the bug to try to do it yourself.

An F series Velodyne? That was a time when real audiophiles snubbed subwoofers and a substantial improvement over my ULD.

@williewonka wrote:

" IMO - the more "sources" the less detailed the bass gets and it I do not believe it equates to FASTER BASS.either

"I always found the fewer drives the better - when it comes to HiFi.

"I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one - sorry"

Willie, I have NO PROBLEM with agreeing to disagree. Let’s do that.

But I hope you don’t mind if I try to explain myself a bit. Heaudio123 pretty much already said it, but here’s my version:

In the bass region, frequency response peaks take longer to decay than the rest of the spectrum, and therefore are literally and perceptually "slow". Also, the longer it takes for a sound to fade away, the louder we perceive it to be. So not only are the peaks louder, but they hang around for longer. Double whammy. By smoothing out the frequency response in the bass region a distributed multisub system results in much smaller peaks, so we no longer have frequencies which decay significantly slower than the rest of the spectrum. So we no longer have boom, overhang, muddiness from notes taking too long to decay. Hence my statement that "smooth" bass = "fast" bass.

Smooth bass also results in more DETAILED bass because frequencies which linger for longer (those nasty peaks) are what blur subsequent bass notes. The key to clarity in the bass region is how the notes decay - what we don’t want is notes which decay too slowly thereby masking subsequent notes. Bass trapping also addresses the decay of the notes, via a different mechanism. It is not at all obvious that multiple subs and bass traps have this common ground, so let me explain that as well.

According to multiple experts on acoustics and psychoacoustics (such as Floyd Toole and Sean Oliver and Earl Geddes), at low frequencies, speakers + room = a "minimum phase" system. What this means is, the frequency response tracks the time-domain response, and vice-versa. So where there is a frequency response peak, there is slow decay. And where there is slow decay, there is a frequency response peak. The good news is: When we fix one, we have simultaneously fixed the other.

Bass traps absorb energy and therefore reduce the decay time, and the more often a sound wave strikes the bass trap the more it is absorbed by it. This is how bass traps absorb more of bass energy that is decay more slowly (and thus striking it more often), thus smoothing out the in-room frequency response. I’ve already described that a distributed multisub system smooths out the in-room response, but in doing so, it simultaneously improves the time domain response, resulting in more uniform decay times across the bass region. Therefore, counter-intuitive at it may seem, bass traps and distributed multisub systems are working on the exact same problem but coming at it from different angles.

In my experience a distributed multi-sub system usually makes a larger improvement than bass trapping, but there may be situations where the opposite is true. And we can use both.

Like I said, I’m perfectly okay with agreeing to disagree. No need for you to explain your position, but I hope you don’t mind if I explained mine.

Duke

1 or 2 high quality subs would be better than 4 cheap subs because you would have to deal with inferior crossovers, high distortion amps, and poor cabinet design. This sums up to very poor & inarticulate bass, the exact opposite of what you want for music. I am not sure why your are stacking speakers on top of each other. I would think that this would cause blending issues. I think a single pair of the best set which I believe would be the Cornwalls and 1 or 2 very high quality subs would be the way to go. To get the benefit of the subs, blending and handoff are the key to improvement because you don't want to hear the subs. They should blend so well that you can't locate them. The speakers & subwoofers should sound as 1 functioning unit. Not an easy thing to pull off. Not quite sure how you would connect 4 subs speaker level. It's very easy with RCA's but 4 with speaker level would be a challenge.  With a little creativity, I figured out how to connect 3 RELs speaker level with my own system but RELs are a little different because your speakers run full range then you use RELS proprietary crossover to get the perfect blend. I would recommend REL, Martin Logan or JL Audio. Martin Logan is a particular stand out for having Anthem Room Correction, speaker level connections and starting at a reasonable of $650.00

You could consider 2 Klipsch KA-1000-THX amps each running dual  KW-120-THX woofers.  They can be daisy-chained, and the amps have continuously variable phase control and crossover frequency and a boundary gain compensation control.  Could probably obtain the whole kit used for $3-5K, and they'd be a good match with your heritage mains.