Do you think you need a subwoofer?

Dear Jim: Other factor that could help to that Legacy speakers is to separate the subs from the main box.
Anyway it looks like a very good speaker.

regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Raul, from my earlier post, you know I agree with the benefits of subwoofer(s) to both extend low frequency response and reduce distortion on speakers and amps for the upper bass and midrange.

But I have a question for which I wonder if your experience may suggest an answer. At what frequency will these benefits diminish to the point where they may be of little value?

For example, I don't doubt adding subwoofer(s) while rolling off the bass on the main system will benefit a two-way speaker where the woofer is operating up to somewhere between 1,200 to 2,400 Hz before crossing over. Similarly it still benefits any three-way speaker where the woofer operates up to somewhere between 320 and 600 or so Hz. But what about a system where the woofer crossover is near the top of the accepted bass range, 160 Hz? If this is also a candidate for reduced distortion benefits to the upper bass and midrange, it would seem the subwoofer crossover would be quite low, say around 40 Hz. Is this correct?

Please share any experience that can answer these questions.

Dear Pryso: The range ( high/low )i the IMD depends mainly on the quality of the woofer driver and how low goes on the bass ( deep bass ).

Normally if the speaker croosover is set at 160hz to the mid-bass driver seems to me that that bass woofer could goes at least to the mid twenties.
The frequencies below 45-50Hz needs a biger woofer excursions that 50hz-up, these biger excursions are the main " culprit " ( not the only ) that the IMD goes high, so if you liberate this woofer from 50Hz down you will have improvement/benefits for lowering the IMD in the main speakers and a better main amplifier performance ( btw, we have to think that because a speaker does not have response, say, at 25Hz this does not means that the amplifier is not working in that frequency and below it. ) and obviously a better quality low bass performance through the dedicated subwoofers.
In this ( yours ) example the high-pass could be at 50-55HZ and the low-pass ( sub's ) at 80Hz, this depend if the filters are first, second or third order. So almost always we can have benefits through the sub's integration with passive main speakers.

As always the differences and improvements/benefits are system dependent and there are no precise " rules " on the subject other than " test and error ".

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear pryso: IMHO I think that there are some non know-how on the critical importance for the low bass reproduction.

Through the years I heard several full range speakers ( that goes down to 20Hz. ) including mines. In the last year I heard Wilson ( MAXX/Alexandria ), Acapella Triorlon, MBL 101, Dynaudio Temptation, Soundlab and Avalon " something " ( I can remember the model. ) etc, etc.
All very good speakers and if you never had/have the experience/opportunity to hear/heard a good powered subs you can/could think that any of those speakers is the only " thing " you need on the bass subject, all of them are good performers in the low bass but none has the quality level performance of a good powered sub.

You can say: so what? these speakers are great ones and we don't need anything else.

For me ( I can be wrong ) what define/makes the difference between ( talking about speker performance ) good speaker performance and very good/excellent one is its quality performance at both frequency extremes and for these frequency ranges the low bass maybe is the more critical because is the one that contribute the more to " pollute " the whole speaker performance. This is not something that someone tell me, this is my experiences about.

So IMHO till we have the right quality bass response by our each one speaker system we can't speak that we have a very good/excellent quality performance audio system.
Of course that every frequency range is important to the quality performance but I think that the low bass range is the one that can do more for the " bad ".

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Pryso: The big Evolution Acoustic speakers are a good example of a full range design that does not needs external powered sub's because things are that the Evolution speaker design already have it and integrated to the speaker.

This Evolution speaker design is a good example where the designers take in count the critical importance of the low bass subject and the need that that bass range will be handled by a dedicated woofer/amplifier ( like the sub's. )

I can't say for sure the croosover frequency Evolution's woofers that handle the " sub " bass but maybe lower than 80Hz or maybe the owner can choose it.

Perhaps M. Levigne could share this info with us and can give us his thoughts/experiences on the sub's/low bass whole subject, could you Mike?, thank you in advance.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.