I think we should explore this list on the Decware Imperial SO horns and the Headwreckers during the fest.

I didn't even see this thread until now, so the Audio Gods put this together.  Last week I had the spontaneous urge to listen to the Imperials and get them up and running for the fest. So that tells you that the Audio Gods actually read your thread before I did.  In fact had I not been so busy getting them hooked up and dialed in I would have had time to read this thread.  Interesting how it works isn't it?

I had some real fun with my listening buddies making them guess what speakers were on during a listening session which I recorded live and posted here:  https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1695946943/0#0

-Steve

The Tiny Radials always impressed. I've had those in many locations the last year or so. Best location of the TRs over that time was in the driver section of the motorhome with the curved glass set as the back wall. Very engaging albeit a bit bass shy. Always said a good sub would make the TRs complete. That video you linked, Steve, confirms it.

Damn it...you got my mind spinning again! The Wicked One use as a sub blends well with certain music and over compensates with other types like synthetic bass heavy tunes. The 350 watt sub plate amps(one for each DHM108B) is crossed at the lowest frequency and set at about 12 o'clock volume wise with zero phase shift in the charoit. We talked about using the WO32 enclosure with the DHM108Bs as a sub for the TRs in my office set up. I am leaning towards doing just that....then Head Wreckers, HDTs, with ? as a sub for the main room.

It's going to get interesting for sure! Hopefully a clear path will emerge during/after Decfest.

John

It's a fest, within a fest.  Put a star or something on your name badge to signify "bass curious."

I have a lot of absorbers in my room (2 - 24"X48"X12" panels, 4 corner absorbers and 2 ceiling absorbers) but don't capture waves that low.   I do think they help with upper bass.

It's been a long time since I looked into building a Helmholtz or a diaphragmatic absorber.  There are DIY plans out there, but they are beasts.  

I listened to my electronic bass tracks last night -- probably too loud.  With the P10s, 95db+ is easy to get to after a couple of cocktails if you are not careful.  I'm going to try to listen to some of the tracks listed here today.  This work thing is getting in the way.

In my second system I have basically the same setup but C10s over 15" Hawthorne Audio Augies and a 10" sonotube sub I built that goes pretty low (but its muddy).  

The room is much bigger with a vaulted ceiling/open loft so there are places for the bass to go, but there is no comparison to the output I get from the AE 15s.  

I'd really like to see how they compare to the Lii Audio W15s. I've heard a single W15 in Randy's setup, but Randy mostly plays chill music in that small shed, not the chest thumping stuff, so I don't have a good feel for how they compare.

You will be surprised on how much time that can actually be dedicated to hobbies once retired and tied with the better half. I have no complaints but just need to stick to a schedule. Kind of anticlimactic…you think?

My main room is treated with bass absorption rear corner panels calculated for the 20 foot depth of the room. The Master Handbooks of Acoustics was used as a reference in taming the 50/60 hertz standing wave created by the 20’ spaced parallel walls. It is interesting to note that different materials and thickness can be used in the corner absorbers as the resonator while spaced rock wool behind the resonator does the actual absorption of the target wavelength. Changing the resonator properties can be utilized in making the size of the panel fit the corner in a favorable way. The side walls of the room are canted so no need to treat it for standing waves. However the 7’ floor to ceiling height needs addressed. I think it is the reason of some intelligible issues with vocals in my room. Hopefully anyway. The ceiling absorption panel at 6.5’ height in the center of the room and carpet below helps some with intelligibility. There is 2” rock wool panels suspended in front of the LCD TV when playing music. This tames highs well. The panels are mounted with pocket door hardware and can easy be slid for TV watching. Sometimes I forget to slide the panels back when turning on Decware and usually end up wonder why things sound a bit like tin only to notice that the TV is in plain view!

OBs are like that with 180 degree phase cancellation from the front to back wave. That bounce off the baffle and back wall give a hefty boost to bass without over pressuring the room and creating standing waves...I think. I would have a mound of work to properly be used in my room.

That is helpful and understood DD. Vibrating objects organize air molecules in pressure waves and when those waves collide at angles the return to caos.

Quote:

True, but all mentioned above load the room to different degrees in milliseconds. Open baffle single driver and an instrument provide similar lighter loads by cancellation. Vented and sealed can easily overload a room in short order with large(long) fundamental waves and harmonics.
Musical instruments are meant to resonate as well as open baffle speakers. This resonance emulates at a point creating early cancelations producing tone. Sealed and ported speakers are braced and resonate at their own box frequency offering much less cancellation on the frequency(s) being produced by the driver.
My thoughts anyway.

Diaphragmatic absorbers done right are definitely a cure for bloated(pressurized) bass. Those are like a paper towel wicking up a puddle of water.
The corner DAs that are in the charoit soaked up the 50/60 hz standing waves well. Before placement of the absorbers the room had overhang of bass in theater mode. After, the volume could be turned up more without any overhang. Also, in stereo mode the room can handle larger drivers as compared to the single 6" full rangers that were previously used.

The Head Wreckers could seriously overload Steve’s listening room. Palomino said that he was in there and people were saying the Head Wreckers had too much bass. He pulled out his phone db meter and it was 95db! that’s a @#^# ton of pressure! Sunday morning My brother, Pal and myself were listening to the Head Wreckers at a much much lower volume and the bass was appropriate to the rest of the music.

Steve’s listening room has two openings to the rest of the shop. So when people are talking and laughing outside of the listening room, the sound carries in. In response people turn up the volume. With how clean the system pumps out music, it’s easy to lose track of how loud you are listening. The music gets louder and in response people talk louder. So if you hear people saying that the Head Wreckers had too much bass I would keep in mind that the SPL levels were 10-30+ db louder than most of us listen to on a regular basis.

The point of the tennis ball analogy is that once the ball enters the room—once the wave leaves the speaker—it doesn’t matter how it got there. It’s in the domain of the room. The room and what is in it manages the energy.

In THE MASTER HANDBOOK OF ACOUSTICS F. Alton Everest FOURTH EDITION There is study cited. they measured 50 British living rooms. The average reverb decay RT60 at 100 Hz is .69 seconds. I really wish they had done down to 20 Hz. In another section shows an example of reverb times, at 50-60 Hz it’s over 2 seconds of reverb! 6” of fiberglass doesn’t do much at all to help with anything under 125 Hz. Going to 60 Hz is exponentially more difficult to absorb.

Ghost, see my fest post about the headwreckers.  As mentioned in this thread, that room was loaded.

I recently watched two reviews by the Audiophiliac on smaller subwoofers, and two caught my attention: the REL T/5x and the KEF KC62. My room is small, so a smaller sub suffices. To that end, I hesitate as I have had a sub in the past, not the ones mentioned, that disappointed me. I did a trial on the SVS Micro 3000 and returned it at the end of the trial period. I read reviews of subs here on the Decware Forum, and people generally had a good report for the REL T/5x. I did not find any reviews for the KEF. The two have a big price difference, and the RELs have an excellent reputation. I have also noticed that a few people seemed to have an initial positive take on their subwoofer, then later pulled the sub for various reasons.

My questions are: Is there anyone using the KEF KC62 that would share their experience? Second, are any long-time users of the REL T/5x that have kept using them? Similarly, are there any users that stopped using them after a while, they stopped using them for some reason?

A friend will loan me her sub for a while, a standard smallish Elac, to experiment again in my room. That will refresh my memory and contribute to the investigation.

Thanks, Tony

Quote:


My retelling was a result of whisper down the lane, I didn't ask any clarifying questions. The reason I mentioned it is, It's so easy to overload most rooms. It's even easier when you don't realize how much pressure energy you are shoving in there.

When played at an appropriate level for the room they didn't have too much bass.

DD, I hear you. Sound is something we all connect to yet it's so difficult to explain and convey to others what our perception is.

I don't have much experience with subs. From a musical enjoyment POV, I wonder if having an automatic reverse volume control on subwoofers would solve some of the subwoofer issues.

Preamp at low volume the sub would play louder, as the preamp volume goes up the would slowly turn down its volume. This could be tuned to the room. Low volume listening one could enjoy a rich full sound. As the volume is increased and room modes start to show up the sub would output significantly less SPL in reference to the main speakers vs low level listening.

The reason I mention this is I've had the best results when I setup the sub to be ideal at my most common listening level, then backing it off a smidge. Adding a subwoofer shrinks the SPL vs enjoyment zone.

Subwoofers also can create phase issues. Common practice is to place a subwoofer so there is as smooth of a response as possible. This means that there is fight going on between the main speakers, subwoofer and room. The theory is that the subwoofer cancels out the bass wave of the main speakers to give a better frequency response. That means it's out of phase.

If you have a 10db suckout and want to fill it in with a sub you need to have the sub frequency out of phase with the main speakers.

Let's say there is a setup where phase isn't an issue. How does the subs sound signature and the speakers sound signature blend? My brother is almost done getting his GR-Research NX Extremes and Triple Threat subs completed. Danny Richie designed them to work together. In theory they should sound good together.

My guess is that the sound signature of the Triple Threat subs and PAP Quintets was just enough different that it bothered me. If I had changed tubes, would I have been 100% happy? I don't know.

Matching sub to speakers and room is much more complex than finding a pair of speakers that make one happy.

Subwoofers are generally heavy, difficult to place and time consuming to fine tune to the system.

Tony, That's great that you have someone you can borrow a sub from to try! Have you looked into the Omega sub? Seeing that it's the same manufacturer as your speakers, it might be the best synergy.

Gilf, We are on the same page.

I suggest going for stereo subs—you can start with a single. There many out there who will say how it doesn't make a difference. Thing is we listen with our bodies. Bass travels through the floor and then up through our feet and we sense it. We are sensitive enough to perceive direction of this vibration. Vibrations travel faster through the ground than the air. This is natural. If you are in the forrest and a tree falls, you will feel the impact before you hear it. #$^@ does it shake the ground!

I'm guessing this is one of the reasons I never was thrilled with listening to headphones.

Elder Island - Garden. This song that you can feel the bass coming before it arrives. The LP the rumble comes from the right and the digital the rumble comes from the left which bothers me. As a side note. The Torii MKV is with Don at Cryotone getting treated. The Tubecube 3.5w el84 amp  I don't feel the bass before hearing it. The bass isn't nearly as clean and tight. Also the rumbly bass comes straight on not from the left.

After a week of experimenting with a "loaned" subwoofer in my system, I wanted to report back that it has gone much better than my first experience with an SVS Micro 3000 subwoofer that I returned last year. I am trying to figure out how to account for this current success, perhaps more to do with expectations and patience on my part than the products themselves.  

The best part is that my neighbor recommended that I keep the subwoofer for now so I can continue learn and enjoy from it. I continue to follow the KEF KC62 Subwoofer, and if someone in Decware Land has experience with that product, please jump in.

I bought the sealed box, base level servo sub kit from GR Research and I have to say I’m pretty impressed.  I haven’t had that many subs (4-5) but this one is the most musical yet.  Tight, capture the tone and textures and just really cleaned up my low end (<40hz).

I built most of the cabinet on Sunday and finished it in a couple hours yesterday.  I plugged it in and adjusted the phase (continuous), crossover and gain by ear.  I’ll do measurements and tweaking later.  

It does a great job adding pressure to the room without overloading the room.  And as advertised, the bass stops quickly and has no bloat.  Even at low volumes you feel it in your chest.  

For $850 including the no rez and the MDF I bought it’s a great value.

Yeah there’s still some work to be done, but after only spending 10 minutes on it, I got a very acceptable result.  

The key was the phase control.  Instead of a 0 or 180 setting it has a continuous dial where you can really get the sub in sync with your mains.   Maybe that’s available on a lot of subs but it’s my first experience with it.

No problem with this sub going 20Hz, even lower.  Again, it allows you to feel the bass without overloading the room.

I am still working through some bumps, like one I have at 50 and a dip at 400.  Using REW now and dialing it in.  I have both the controls on the amp and on my crown amp.  I'm thinking of adding a capacitor to the P10 to roll off below 200-300 Hz.

I'm serioulsy thinking about buying another kit for my second system.  I had no idea how much sloppy bass was getting in the way of the music.

I worked on it yesterday.  Probably 50 measurements of the sub, woofers and P10.  P10 kinda is what it is although I can boost the volume the zbit.  I still may consider adding a high pass cap.

Most of the tweaking has been with the AE15 and the sub.  AE15 is currently set at 600Hz which is higher than I've ever had it, but it helps offset some of the dips in the P10.  I'm not sure it will stay that high.

Sub still hits 20hz (and below) easily.  I have a dip at 40hz that I may use the single band EQ on the amp to boost.  You can control where the boost is and how wide a freq range you want to boost.

I have to be honest, with all the adjustments, I'm not sure that its that much better than tuning it by ear.  The graph looks better though.  I am going to fuss with it a bit more today to boost the sub slightly and demphasize the mids.

Keeps me off the streets.

I like a nice black worm for bass myself.

I'm kinda approaching it like cooking.  Following the recipe and then adjust to taste.

The recipe is as flat as I can get it from 15hz to 200hz because people often talk about a flat response.

Yesterday, I didn't take any measurements.  Just listened and adjusted to taste.   Today if I get a chance I'll measure to see what it is that I like.

I did cheat a little and used my phone ap to see the shape of the curve and it does seem to rise in that region.

So far, the results are really good.  I can't remember the track that I listened to yesterday but the musicality of the bass player really came through in a way it never had before.  I'll try to find it and post.

I was surprised by another old audiophile track - Duende by Bozzio Levin Stevens.  My old sub kept the bass pretty clean but this was a whole new world.  Sounded like a different recording.

I stumbled on Paul Simon’s “Stranger to Stranger” this morning. It has some interesting articulated bass rhythms going on that are magical if your speakers can produce it, and entirely disappear if not. This is an easy album to pass off as just another newer album or just another work by Simon, but really has some good stuff within.

https://imgur.com/gallery/iIFWpUe

Seems I have lost the ability to post from Imgur.  Anyway the link above is what I’ve achieved.   P10 wide open.  AE15 low passed at 400hz.  Sub crossed about 70hz.

I don’t really know what I’m doing but so far it sounds pretty good.

You must teach me the way of the photo.  Maybe it’s because I am using the Imgur phone ap.

REW what I use.  Free and pretty powerful.  


https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

On my phone so the link may not work.

I use a usb Umm6 from parts express.

I really tried but 3 days was as long as I could take it.  While making the room measure better there was something I didn't like about it.  I began to hate the speakers.

Deleted the Roon EQ. I fixed the bass hole by putting the speakers back where I had them. The hole had been created by pushing them back 12 inches.

As for the rest, I went back to using the Gizmo2 and a ZROCK.  Speakers sound really good now again. ZROCK set basically flat, just for tone because the DAC is clinical.