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Will I benefit from a subwoofer with 20Hz speakers?

My source is a minidsp shd studio with Dirac going into Denafrips Gaia DDC to Denafrips T+ DAC to McIntosh 601 Monoblocks to Cabasse Pacific 3 speakers. The speaker's published frequency response is 41-20,000Hz. I presume this is achieved in an anechoic chamber. In my room however, it goes down to 20Hz, at least according to the Dirac measurements. In fact, I needed to flatten the curve and  reduce by 5-20 DBs between 20-100Hz due to the room effect.

So, considering I already go down to 20Hz, is there anything else 1 or 2 subwoofers will do for my system?  Would it create a more consistent low frequency field? I see many people adding up to 6 subs, so I wonder what I'm missing. 

Thank you for your insight! 

dmilev73
jtcf's avatar
jtcf
1,620 posts
 

Sounding like a fan boy myself, @atmasphere ​​​​​@erik_squires  both have decades of experience and knowledge.Myself and many others here have benefited from it and been inspired to do more research then do our own experiments and implementations.As far as this discussion Erik and Ralph just start from different points IMO.

  The Amroc chart Erik mentioned I ran across a few years ago - calculates your room modes in seconds,a good place to start.The site is very informative and easy to understand for us tech challenged folks(me).

 I've got room treatments and three subs,only one sub has DSP included. What a huge positive difference that equalizer makes....if the other two ever fail I know what I'll be replacing them with. My speakers do go down to 20hz but their position isn't ideal for the best bass response even though the mids up are the best they can be in my room. Just my two cents.

gosta's avatar
gosta
839 posts
 

Sorry being so stubborn, but "eliminate" - no, "reduce" - yes. If you start from +/- 15 db shifts or more in the bass region, which most of us do (look at the measurement the op did), then I’d say there is no way a swarm setup will flatten that out so you won’t hear any peaks/dips . If using several subs can reduce that to 50% or +/- 8db that’s great. And above all remove any "nulls" (infinite dips) while they can not be corrected with eq (dsp).

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,849 posts
 

Sorry being so stubborn, but "eliminate" - no, "reduce" - yes. If you start from +/- 15 db shifts or more in the bass region, which most of us do (look at the measurement the op did), then I’d say there is no way a swarm setup will flatten that out so you won’t hear any peaks/dips .

@gosta 

No worries- I can't say I'm not being stubborn either. I can turn the subwoofer amp on an off in my system and the difference is dramatic. I was missing the range somewhere around 40Hz, which the Swarms sort out nicely. 

gosta's avatar
gosta
839 posts
 

@atmasphere

Happy for you. :) Bass is great when under control. Maybe I just find me another DD15+ and hang it on the wall. Nice and easy.

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

Cabasse Pacific 3 speakers are active speakers are they not?

 

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