Maggies and subwoofer integration

@erik_squires Couldn't agree more about 'speed' in subwoofers. Speed=bandwidth and subwoofer bandwidth requirements are low. What does matter is room integration, but also the ability of the woofer to stop. Brakes, if you will. Mistuned subwoofers ring -they continue on after the signal stops. We know this as 'boom', lack of control. In filter theory this is 'Q' or the quality of the filter. A Q of .707 is maximally flat, a Q of 1 gives a 3dB peak about an octave above the F3. To the ear,  a system tuned with a Q of about .8-.9 sounds about right. REL T-series woofers are tuned with a lower Q than most, thus they sound tighter and 'quicker' because of the lack of overhanging resonance, and better in music applications.  Home Theater oriented subwoofers tend to have a higher Q which serves movie sound effects better. Really cheap Home Theater subwoofers are all boom because that's easy to do and initially impressive. But none are good for anything if the room acoustics are ignored.

Thanks guys. Definitely a subwoofer adds and enhances the soundstsge. I’ll probably set it to 50-60HZ and low gain as possible.

THe subwoofer only works if it’s integrated well, and setting it as low as possible is just proof it’s not integrated well. Don’t walk on eggshells for fear of ruining your main speaker sound. Do it right. Measure, EQ and get your bass to a reasonable level, often 3db higher than your mains with a descening slope from 16Hz to 80 Hz about 1-2 db per octave.

Go for broke and don't stop until it sounds GLORIOUS.  Don't settle for a small incremental improvement.

I don't have the option to set slopes with my system. No external crossover or DSP. I'll be just adding the subwoofer via the Schiit Saga+ extra output, and try to integrate as best as possible with the maggies. Possibly bass traps if needed or sound dampening in the future. . 

another strong vote for rel sub pairs, using the high level (speaker) connection -- wonderful match easy to integrate

but in a small 11x13 room, a single rel should work fine

parenthetically, i recently tried (due to the all the youtube talking heads' groundswell) a pair of svs micro 3000 subs... with their fancy cellphone control app etc etc... these subs only use preamp level inputs, there is no option for a speaker level connection -- this experiment lasted all but 48 hrs, the cute lil svs's were unceremoniously kicked to the curb, back in went my rels  

My understanding is that the more distributed bass sources you have, the smoother the in-room bass.

To a first approximation, a dipole can be thought of as two monopolar bass sources 180 degrees apart in phase, and separated by a path length. Thus, to a first approximation, two dipoles are comparable to having four monopolar sources, distributed in phase as well as spatially.

Therefore, imo, a single monopolar bass source - a single subwoofer - is unlikely to be as smooth in-room as two dipoles. I think the discontinuity is likely to be audible.

Imo you need more than one subwoofer in order to approximate the in-room bass smoothness of two dipoles. Two subs intelligently distributed are approximately twice as smooth in-room as one, and four subs intelligently distributed are roughly twice as smooth in-room as two. Imo they do not have to all be identical.

Duke

dealer/manufacturer and distributed multi-sub advocate