Subwoofer speed is in the room, not the box


First, if you like swarm, that’s fine, please start a thread somewhere else about how much you like swarm.

I want to talk about the impression that subs are fast or slow compared to planar or line sources.

The concern, and it’s correct, is that adding a subwoofer to say a Martin Logan or Magneplanar speaker will ruin the sound balance. That concern is absolutely a valid one and can happen with almost any speaker, not just speakers with tight dispersion control.

What usually happens is that the room, sub and main speakers aren’t integrating very well. Unfortunately for most audiophiles, it’s very hard to figure out exactly what is wrong without measurements or EQ capabilities in the subwoofer to help you.

So, there’s the myth of a small sub being "faster." It isn’t. It’s slower has worst distortion and lower output than a larger sub but what it does is it doesn’t go down deep enough to wake the dragons.

The biggest problems I’ve heard/seen have been excessively large peaks in the subwoofer range. Sometimes those peaks put out 20x more power into a room than the rest of the subwoofer. Think about that!! Your 1000 W sub is putting out 20,000 watts worth of power in some very narrow bands. Of course that will sound bad and muddied. The combination of sub and main speaker can also excessively accentuate the area where they meet, not to mention nulls.

A lot is made about nulls in the bass but honestly IMHO, those are the least of our worries. Of course too many of them can make the bass drop out, but in practicality is is the irregular bass response and the massive peaks that most prevent any good sub from functioning well in a room.

Bass traps are of course very useful tools to help tame peaks and nulls. They can enable EQ in ways you can’t do without it. If your main speakers are ported, plug them. Us the AM Acoustics room mode simulator to help you place your speakers and listening location.

Lastly, using a subwoofer to only fill in 20 Hz range is nonsense. Go big or go home. Use a sub at least at 60 Hz or higher. Use a single cap to create a high pass filter. Use EQ on the subwoofer at least. Get bass traps. Measure, for heaven’s sake measure and stop imagining you know a thing about your speaker or subwoofer’s response in the room because you don’t. Once that speaker arrives in the room it’s a completely different animal than it was in the showroom or in the spec sheet.

Lastly, if your room is excessively reflective, you don’t need a sub, you need more absorption. By lowering the mid-hi energy levels in a room the bass will appear like an old Spanish galleon at low tide.

erik_squires

Agree completely with @erik_squires, @audiokinesis and others regarding treating the peaks with EQ, but not trying to boost nulls. Multiple subs helps with that (not wading into the swarm debate).

One tradeoff I have not seen explicitly mentioned (although @phusis hints at it), is that setting a higher crossover point gives you more freedom in placement of the speakers vs. placement of the subs. Leaving the issues of room treatments aside, place your speakers for the best soundstage and imaging, and place your subs to minimize the problems associated with the long wavelengths of low frequencies (which create both nulls and peaks).

Most room mode problems tend to occur with sub-125 Hz frequencies, although depending on room characteristics, they can go higher. But certainly, the lower you go, the more bothersome these tend to be. Flexibility of where you can place one or more subs helps tremendously. However, if you cross over at 35 Hz, for example, then you have pretty much lost that flexibility. You really can’t just move one of your main speakers 3 to 6 feet to deal with a peak at, say, 50 Hz, because moving them will ruin your soundstage. Crossing higher provides more options for sub placement to deal with troublesome modes.

So, up to a point, the higher you can cross over, the better, up until where you can start hearing the directionality of the subs. This is room-dependent and person-dependent, but typically is around 80 Hz. I experimented with 50 Hz to 80 Hz, and for my situation, crossing at 70 Hz sounded best.

The other issue sort of mentioned so far that could be stated more explicitly is phase-matching the mains and the subs at the point of crossover. This requires two things: (1) a continuous phase adjustment on the subs (like on those by Rythmik) or digital PEQ; and (2) a very steep and symmetrical crossover, typically implying an active crossover. That means both low-passing the sub and high-passing the mains are important. Because the wavelengths change quite a bit from 20 Hz (56 feet) to 80 Hz (14 feet), the mains and subs can only be in phase at a small range of frequencies. That is why the steep crossover is needed. Otherwise, even if the mains and subs are in phase at 70 Hz, with 6 dB/octave sloped filters there will be audible overlapping of the subs and mains from the lower audible limits all the way up to ~250 Hz or so. Because all filters have a frequency-dependent phase shift, most of that overlap is out of phase and contributing to "smudging" that translates to "slow bass."

For my Dali Epicon 6’s, what has worked well for me is an active crossover (24 dB/octave) crossing at 70 Hz to a pair of Rythmik F12G-SE’s with the GR-Research drivers. Mains about 7 feet apart works well for my space; the subs are in diagonally opposite corners of the room. Since I exclusively listen to digital, I can use Roon’s PEQ on a per-channel basis to remove the peaks from the room modes (almost entirely in the range the subs operate), and then careful placement allows each sub to fill in the other’s nulls. After the digital is converted to analog, I want to retain my Denafrips’ sound signature, so I don’t use digital PEQ involving more ADC and DAC conversions. Instead, I am using a Sublime K231 active crossover; the Burr-Brown op-amps used in it don’t seem to color the sound much.

@sfgak

Without wading in too much to solutions, the THX standard of 4th order low pass, 4th order high pass at 80 Hz is really convenient.

Keep things in mind though, the goal is 4th order response includes the speaker response, and that we do in fact use assymetrical crossovers in speaker building all the time. 2nd HP and 3rd LP is very common for 2-way speakers. The point is, if all you can do is add a cap to your amp to create a 1st order HP filter, it’s worth it.

At the end of the day though, you can't get to a 4th order electro-acosutic response unless you actually measure your starting and end point. 

@avanti1960 got it right…. and building an inert cabinet for those massive low THD but high IMD woofers is not trivial…. but then cabinet movement = trash = output = “ efficiency “….. funny how systems engineering just creeps in…..

@sfgak 

Dali Epicon 6   Exceptional!! 

They are rated to 32.5hz with VERY high tech woofers. You cut them @70hz?

 

@erik_squires wrote:

The efficiency of a driver in a cabinet is determined by the driver, not the box.

Except with horns. The cabinet/horn does the heavy lifting, not the driver - very neat. When the driver has the sole burden to carry, you hear the effort, but it requires of one to have experienced the difference to assess its impact, and react on it. The next step, if one ever gets this far, is actually implementing horn sub variants in your home, but most would be intimidated by the sheer size demand of such solutions. 

@gdaddy1 --

Different ways to skin you cat. Implementation is key for whatever route is taken here, and being I favor active configuration from a DIY-approach setting filter values of both the mains and subs, high-passing the mains lends itself even more naturally; although housed in different boxes, each sub and corresponding main speaker channel is treated as a single L/R system. The important thing is we're happy with whatever path we're choosing. It seems you are, as am I. 

@sfgak wrote:

Agree completely with @erik_squires@audiokinesis and others regarding treating the peaks with EQ, but not trying to boost nulls. Multiple subs helps with that (not wading into the swarm debate).

My point was that with a limited amount of bass sources both nulls and peaks are unavoidable, and not boosting the nulls here can certainly be an issue - just like failing to address peaks.

Another issue comes from the lauded flexibility of placing, say, two bass sources diagonally to try and address room modes, which I've tried several times with countless filter permutations and room treatments without ever getting to a satisfying result (even with a fairly low XO-point). It may look good "on paper," but I far and away prefer symmetry of subs-to-the-mains placement with all that it entails. Sidewall placement, symmetrically, has proved is viable solution as well. 

So, up to a point, the higher you can cross over, the better, up until where you can start hearing the directionality of the subs.

Unless the subs are placed fairly close to and symmetrically to the mains. 

The other issue sort of mentioned so far that could be stated more explicitly is phase-matching the mains and the subs at the point of crossover. This requires two things: (1) a continuous phase adjustment on the subs (like on those by Rythmik) or digital PEQ; and (2) a very steep and symmetrical crossover, typically implying an active crossover. That means both low-passing the sub and high-passing the mains are important.

This is of course a cardinal point. I would never do with a built-in DSP/filter of a sub, instead using a Xilica DSP for both the mains and subs, actively, with elaborate filter settings and finely scaled adjustments. 

Because the wavelengths change quite a bit from 20 Hz (56 feet) to 80 Hz (14 feet), the mains and subs can only be in phase at a small range of frequencies. That is why the steep crossover is needed. Otherwise, even if the mains and subs are in phase at 70 Hz, with 6 dB/octave sloped filters there will be audible overlapping of the subs and mains from the lower audible limits all the way up to ~250 Hz or so. Because all filters have a frequency-dependent phase shift, most of that overlap is out of phase and contributing to "smudging" that translates to "slow bass."

FIR-filter would be helpful here, but using IIR-filters of the Xilica with 36dB/octave L-R slopes produces very good results. 48dB/octave slopes didn't fare as well sonically in my setup context. 

@tomic601 wrote:

... building an inert cabinet for those massive low THD but high IMD woofers is not trivial…. but then cabinet movement = trash = output = “ efficiency “….. funny how systems engineering just creeps in…..

Forest for trees, as they say; engineering only gets you so far when the physical framework is stunted as an outset.