Thanks will bookmark that album immediately
Listen to the high frequency from your speakers as well while the sub is attached. Some say they sound more relaxed.
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Let me suggest a small investment in a Umik-1 microphone and REW so that you have a quantitative view on the situation to supplement your subjective ears.
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The ideal sub XO point does exist - but you need to measure for your particular room + system.
I have pair of subs that blend with 3-way DIY DSP active speakers.
So it’s 8 individual channels that need to be ‘blended’ properly.
There is no number mentioned in this thread that would work for my system.
My Earthworks M30 mic and Audiolense XO (REW sufficient too of course) are more trustworthy than what anyone could tell me
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I will look into this Thanks
I partly agree. I have a big +15dB mode at 34Hz that can only be reduced with a parametric equalizer. I made a setting for that which I can switch on and off with the click of the button. Most regular music is really unaffected by this because it does not play that low. But it’s different for The Prodigy, The Weeknd and music like Trap. There you can hear a difference.
So ive done it. In my opinion, ive blended the f112 to my speakers in a way that does not call out attention to itself.
Understanding the cr1 crossover has really helped for me.
But i think the biggest hurdle that i had was my expectation of crushing bass on every song.
But the truth is that if there is low bass on the song, it will play it…take a song from the interstellar soundtrack called stay. It has ridiculous amounts of low energy pressure. My system is now able to play it with proper aplomb. At the same time, when im playing a song that doesnt have that much intense low energy, my sub isnt misbehaved at all by sticking out like a sore thumb.
Its nice knowing that if there happens to be sub 40 stuff, my sub will do its job. Someone upthread was kind enough to link a bass thread and it had so much stuff on there that really shows what your sub can do.
I find myself now thinking that i should have been a little more open minded when it comes to subs in two channel…but you live and you learn…until you forget of course.
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This is a tricky one because there are so many variables. I have an REL Stampede sub that I’ve been using for over two decades and it is still going strong. One of the problems with buying a sub and trying to tune it into your system, especially a music system, is that you’ve paid your money and you want to hear the sub or you’ll think you’ve wasted your money otherwise. If you can hear your sub then invariably you have the crossover point and gain set too high. I’ve no doubt we’ve all heard the “lowrider” passing by on 4 wheels with booming bass and if that is the effect you want then just turn the thing up to 11 and be done with it. However, if you are like me then you only want to hear the sub when your stereo speakers cannot delve any further in the bass region. Another thing that many people don’t factor in with subs is that musical notes have multiple harmonics further up the frequency range e.g/2nd, 3rd, 4th ,5th order harmonics and so on, that are much lower in level but create additional ambience in a recording. This may account for why adding subs seems to add more upper frequency air and spacial effects in recordings beyond the rumble at the bass end which so many others crave, resulting in a more balanced sound profile.
Now nothing is perfect and because of the way music is recorded, mastered etc, the bass prominence and extension varies enormously and there are still times I tweak my sub depending on playback volume, musical genre or the mood I’m in but I’ve generally settled on a frequency close to what you’ll achieve with the calculations outlined below.
With the excuses out of the way let’s first deal with the main types of passive loudspeaker that need subwoofer enhancement. Generally the bass roll-off for sealed speakers with no bass port is at a higher frequency with a -6dB rolloff, meaning they don’t don’t go so low but that bass rolls off more slowly. Ported loudspeakers usually have a -12dB rolloff but that happens lower down the bass range than would equivalent sealed designs, meaning when the bass rolls off it does so more quickly than sealed designs. Subs will work in similar way using a high pass filter, so you may find using sealed subs with sealed speakers an easier marriage because of the similar rolloff at the crossover point. Most speaker manufacturers will state a -3dB frequency for bass rolloff, for example 60Hz for small stand mounts. There is a John Darko podcast for reference, where he discusses subs with Michael Lavorgna and they use a calculator for rough estimates of subwoofer crossover point recommendations.
For sealed speakers, 0.6 x LF point = 36Hz as a crossover point for our example frequency. Ported speakers, 0.7 x LF point = 42Hz in our example. Notice that these are much lower than the usually recommended 80Hz generic value quoted in many posts. This actually makes sense to me because Richard E Lord, the designer of the early REL subs stated that users usually set their crossover points too high and gain too low, causing a reduction in dynamic range output. Now there are other factors to take into account of course, such as whether you have sealed or ported subs, sub positioning, room acoustics and phase adjustments which all alter the sub output and hence, the final settings and this may be why there are so many different recommendations online. I find these methods work for me so try those example calculations and see!
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I used a loudspeaker-simulation program called Boxsim, it’s free and very nice. I found the T&S parameters on the web and put them in the program. I modelled the sub using a different “amp” and modeled it further to the back to account for the plate-amp latency. This way I could experiment with roll off and polarity to have good phase integration and amplitude. It saves a lot of time and frustration with real live experimenting that hardly ever seems to work out perfectly.