audioBliss
Active Member
Some excellent points raised by folks here. To recap/pile on:
1. Match the size of the sub to the room. Too much sub in too small a space will sound terrible.
2. When you think you've found the right sub, buy two of them. It's not about adding bass/power, it's about placing two subs asymmetrically in a room to even out nodes.
3. Room correction software can be overwhelmed. It has much better odds of finding the sweet spot if you first do all of the old school stuff (graph and calculate cut-offs, do a sub crawl, and match levels) before employing it.
4. Subs shouldn't be heard or even felt. A sub is meant to cover, but not accentuate, the low frequencies that all bookshelf and most floor standing speakers cannot reproduce without dropping off SPL.
1. Well yes and no imo. A small space is sometimes all you have but in that case Dirac is your friend. It's better with a real bass trap but with only two great subs and Dirac you can do some magic even in small spaces. But it also depends on what kind of walls you have etc. If it's a small concrete room than yeah don't waste your time but there are usually options.
2. Rules of thumb are really dangerous route to take in acoustics.
4. Not sure what you mean here but I hope you mean that the subs should be so well blended into the front speakers that it sounds like it's just them playing but when the low notes hit then it's just all around you. I don't agree with that you should not feel the low notes. Not sure what you mean there? The stuff under 18Hz or so should only be felt - if you can hear it you have distortion. And if you don't feel it then you don't have the output capacity. Very few systems can reproduce the low notes loud enough for them to be felt. I requires a lot of cone area and room gain.
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