Do you think you need a subwoofer?

Dear friends: This is something that could help you to integrate the subs to your main speakers:

- first you have to find the best place for your main speakers.

- you can do that with the whole system " on ": speakers/electronic crossover/subs. Then choose the crossover point: 80Hz ( it is a good point to start ) and turn " off " the subs volume/gain and listen to your main speakers that now are working from 80Hz and up.

- listen and listen and listen through your main speakers and move them ( if neccesary ) till you find the best mid/high frecuency response performance.

- then do the same with your subs: alone ( main speakers off ) till you find the best room interaction with.

- now, with the whole system " on " : listen and listen and listen till you identified problems with the seamless integration of the main speakers/subs, that is the target.

- here you have to " play " with small changes in: crossover frecuency, phase, volumen/gain, room treatment and very small changes in the site of the subs/main speakers, till you " done ".

This is only a way to do it and give me the best results to integrate subs, not only in my system but on severals others systems. Sure you can do it in a scientific way. There are no absolute rules here, the only one is: " test and error ".

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hey - Goatwuss - The best way with stereo subs is an extra set of outputs on the preamp via RCA - usually I set the volume on the sub to a certain level (using it as gain) then the preamp can be used as a master volume control. And then ditto Raul's set-up instructions.

Dear Goatwuss: From your preamp: left output to your left side sub and right output to your right side sub .

About your REL question: my english is really bad and I can't understand what you mean.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Biomimetic: About your superteeters question: no, it is not tiring. I think that, like the subwoofers, in many audio systems the integration of STs is a must to have too.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

I just acquired Cain & Cain IM-Ben fullrange speakers with a pair of matching C&C Bailey subwoofers. The Ben's are still burning in 10 hours a day, out of phase, facing each other.

But, I have been trying to figure out the best way to integrate them. The Bens are 40Hz-31kHz and run without any x-over except to attenuate/high pass the tweeter output. The 6" Fostex FE-168 Sigma fullrange driver rolls off naturally at the low end.

Terry Cain suggests starting with the subwoofers crossed in at 80Hz. As Raul has pointed out, this means that they will probably still produce some sound up to 100Hz. Which got me thinking, this is into the range of stereo reproduction, so my current Paradigm X-30 sub x-over may not be the best tool.

The X-30(like most sub XO's) takes L/R channel input and sums the channels into a mono signal for the subwoofers. This is ok for music below 60Hz(maybe even 80), but above that I don't know. Perhaps it is best to run true L/R stereo signals to the subs instead of summed mono. Though, i don't know how this affects room interactions. Mono LF signals supposedly help cancel some room nodes.

The X-30 also only accepts line-level inputs, while the X-20 uses amp/speaker level inputs. I remember reading somewhere that speaker level inputs are actually better because the subs see the exact signal the mains are from their amplifier.

Regardless, in my case, line level RCA inputs won't work because I run 40 ft. balanced cables from my preamp (S&B TVC) to my 300B SET monoblock amps which have Jensen XLR->SE input transformers. I'd have to buy 4 new line transformers to do this with the X-30. At that cost, it would be easier to simply buy two X-20 speaker levels x-overs.

Any thoughts on this guys? Is stereo subs best in my situation?

The obvious downside of running true stereo subs is cost. I have not been able to find any affordable crossovers that do true stereo output.