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Help me understand "the swarm" in the broader audiophile world

I'm still fairly new out here and am curious about this Swarm thing. I've never owned a subwoofer but I find reading about them--placement, room treatments, nodes, the crawl, etc--fascinating. I'm interested in the concept of the Swarm and the DEBRA systems, and I have a very specific question. The few times I've been in high-end, audiophile stores and asked about the concept of the Swarm, I've tended to get some eye-rolling. They're selling single or paired subwoofers that individually often cost more and sometimes much more than a quartet of inexpensive, modest subs. The same thing can be said for many speaker companies that make both speakers and subs; it's not like I see Vandersteen embracing the use of four Sub 3's. 

My question is this: do in fact high-end stores embrace the concept of multiple, inexpensive subs? If not, cynicism aside, why not? Or why doesn't Vandersteen or JL or REL and so on design their own swarm? For those out here who love multiple subs, is it a niche thing? Is it a certain kind of sound that is appealing to certain ears? The true believers proselytize with such zeal that I find it intriguing and even convincing, and yet it's obviously a minority of listeners who do it, even those who have dedicated listening rooms. (I'm talking about the concept of four+ subs, mixed and matched, etc. I know plenty of folks who embrace two subs. And I may be wrong about all my assumptions here--really.)

Now, one favor, respectfully: I understand the concept and don't need to be convinced of why it's great. That's all over literally every post on this forum that mentions the word "sub." I'm really interested in why, as far as I can tell, stores and speaker companies (and maybe most audiophile review sites?) mostly don't go for it--and why, for that matter, many audiophiles don't either (putting aside the obvious reason of room limits). Other than room limitations, why would anyone buy a single JL or REL or Vandy sub when you could spend less and get ... the swarm? 


northman
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Proving the superiority of a multi subwoofer setup is easy. All you have to do is impulse test the system at three set positions in the room using one then four sub woofers. What you will see with one sub is wide changes in volume between 0 and 100 Hz  up to 10 dB or so between the positions. With all four subwoofers these variations will reduce to less than 3 dB. Even with room control you will have trouble. Trying to correct a 10 dB deficit will cost you 8 times the power and force the woofer into the non linear part of it's excursion creating distortion. Correcting a 3 dB deficit requires just twice the power and a much smaller increase in woofer excursion. Put all this together and the ultimate subwoofer system requires 4 large subwoofers with at least 2000 watts of power each and room control.
ozzy62's avatar
ozzy62
3,344 posts
 
This might have been asked/answered up above, but I didn't feel like reading the entire thread.

So if you have three subs that are all powered, what is the best way to integrate these into the chain?  Especially if I wanted to connect them all at speaker level. Can these be piggybacked somehow so you don't need individual speaker cables from each one running to the main power amp?

Oz



audiorusty
305 posts
 
why doesn't Vandersteen or JL or REL and so on design their own swarm?

You can build a Swarm/dba with those brands or any other brand for that matter. All you have to do is buy three of more and place them asymmetrically around your room. You can even use multiple brands and sizes if you want.

audiokinesis
2,764 posts
 
Hleeid wrote:

"Interestingly, the DBA provided the greatest percentage of improvement in the smaller room."
It probably seems highly counter-intuitive that a SMALLER room would benefit the most from having a LOT of subs, but the explanation is pretty simple:

Smaller rooms start out worse, and therefore have more room for improvement. Bigger room + DBA is still better than smaller room + DBA, but the gap between the two is reduced relative to what it would be with more conventional approaches.

By the way, kudos to Hleeid for his creativity in figuring out a way to shoehorn four subs into that 10x12 room. I would NOT have thought his situation met the "practicality" test, but the dude was determined. Hleeid certainly expanded my perception of what’s possible.

Audiorusty wrote:

" You can build a Swarm/dba with those brands or any other brand for that matter. All you have to do is buy three of more and place them asymmetrically around your room. You can even use multiple brands and sizes if you want."
Yup!!

Ozzy62 asked:

"So if you have three subs that are all powered, what is the best way to integrate these into the chain? Especially if I wanted to connect them all at speaker level. Can these be piggybacked somehow so you don’t need individual speaker cables from each one running to the main power amp?"  

If the three subs all have speaker-level inputs, they can all be driven in parallel by the main power amp. The exact cabling configuration would depend on the layout in your room, but if you wanted just one set of cables connecting your amp to the first sub, then a second set connecting your first sub to the second sub, then a third set connecting the second sub to the third sub, that can be done.

The speakers cables running to the subs’ inputs can originate at the speaker terminals instead of at the amp terminals, if that helps. Also, these cables can be very thin, as the signal they carry is in the milliwatts.

Duke
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,111 posts
 
The idea that only swarms can sound good, or are the ideal fix for any possible ailment your system has is just not supported by evidence.
I do not believe anyone here is making that claim. I'm an advocate of using the Swarm because it fixes bass issues by breaking up standing waves in the room, something that can't be done easily with both room treatment and bass management combined.


But I have more than one system in my home. My bedroom system only has one sub, and by careful placement I got it to work great in the 'listening chair' :)   But the sub in that case is not intuitively placed (such as in between the main speakers) and the bass cannot be heard throughout the room even though the rest of the system is.


In a nutshell, we are talking about an advance in how bass reproduction is done in the home and the advance that a distributed bass array represents is major compared to the prior art.


Accepting what science does can be really helpful. It can help keep you from getting sick. The results of science has allowed people to fly around the world. It allows light in the dark at a flick of a switch. It allows amplifiers to sound like music. In the legal world, there is a principle called 'dirty hands' which in a nutshell works like this: 'you cannot reserve a right for yourself that you do not also confer to others.' The idea that one can accept science to allow for light in a room but not accept science to allow for proper bass reproduction is to me simply ridiculous.
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