Subwoofers & DSP or nearly bye bye room

[Reid Malenfant]

DSP is great for the bass, I'm very much a believer in it!

Me to now My room is 4.5 x 4.5M but with a 9ft ceiling (whats that, just under 3M? lol).. I bypassed the pair of 8033 the other day & immediately switched them back on.

It wasn't bad in here before as i only appeared to have a problem at one frequency (around 40Hz), but until you try these things you have absolutely no idea of how the room effects every bass frequency!

DSP for me, i'm never going back!

[Macca]

Hi Mark good to see you about again

I guess as the filters only cut rather than boost that they are reducing output at the specific frequencies at which the dimensions of your room are causing reinforcement in the signal. As I recall your room is on the small side?

So essentially you are flattening the bass response out right down to the low hertz. One thing I would say is that whilst this may suit the sort of electronic music you listen to would it necessarily work with more mainstream rock or pop with a lot of bass around 80-120 hz but little lower down - would it result in a bass light effect is what I wonder?

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Martin, no, i have tried all sorts chap & the results are good on anything up to 110Hz which is the limit of the bass speakers in my system.

As i said somewhere i'll try it on deep, rhythmic & punchy bass (which should cover the lot) & on everthing i have heard there is a definate increase in bass clarity (no kidding ) as well as no room modes...

It's like the room is no longer here. Bass at any frequency that comes under the control of the 8033 is also much faster, decays very fast indeed, which makes every note at any frequency stand out...

Simply put it's a revelation

[Clive]

The DSP will cut the peaks in the bass, that bit is easy. It may try to fill in some troughs but that is much less likely to work, that's the area where I do my manual tweaking but filling in troughs fully is nigh on impossible. Sorting the room and sub placement is more effective. The chances are that the resulting sound will seem bass light as resonances are removed but just turn the bass up a little to get the true bass!

[Reid Malenfant]

The DSP will cut the peaks in the bass, that bit is easy. It may try to fill in some troughs but that is much less likely to work, that's the area where I do my manual tweaking but filling in troughs fully is nigh on impossible. Sorting the room and sub placement is more effective. The chances are that the resulting sound will seem bass light as resonances are removed but just turn the bass up a little to get the true bass!

Yes, i lifted the bass 3Db to sort it... As you say there is no boosting with these They only cut, but also make things decay much faster so it sounds like there is no room at all

[Macca]

I've had a listen to an REL sub that did it's own DSP, which was interesting but in a 9' by 8' very cluttered room it was hard to judge the quality. It made the door rattle though Seems like these units will do the same for any active sub. Very intersting...

[Reid Malenfant]

Yes, they only control below 150Hz so unfortunately they aren't much good for most people. Even at a moderate volume i have doors rattling 40ft away Upstairs, downstairs it dosn't matter...

It's like a rather large lorry outside, there isn't much difference except this goes louder when turned up

[Macca]

Yes, they only control below 150Hz so unfortunately they aren't much good for most people. Even at a moderate volume i have doors rattling 40ft away Upstairs, downstairs it dosn't matter...

It's like a rather large lorry outside, there isn't much difference except this goes louder when turned up

Yep - close neighbours are the enemy of good SQ...

[Reid Malenfant]

Detached here Anything goes Martin... Never a single complaint, or is that because i can't hear then hammering at the door with the music up?



I have been outside myself when i have turned it up to silly levels & it's just about noticeable on the footpath 12ft from my front door...

I guess i'm in a good place

ATB m8

[electric beach]

Thanks for posting your experience with this device Mark, it's very interesting. I use a 2.1 set up for my system, for both films and music - well not really 2.1 I guess as that implies a dedicated, filtered bass channel, so I should really say I use 2 channel with bass augmentation.

The single sub is only set to very minimum output and a low cut-off point for music, just enough to excite the room. At this point the effect on presence and soundstage is huge and the projection into the room is a great contributor to the very live sound that I get. I turn the wick up a bit for movies but in either case, just tipping past this point gives me boomy bass, so there I stop.

I believe the reproduction of the lowest frequencies is essential to achieve "real" sounds. Even sounds that appear to have NO relationship with bass, say a triangle or cymbal. I'm sure it's just that our perception of "real" is based on the relationship to the full (or at least wide) frequency range and that deep bass does for high frequencies and imaging clues what a supertweeter does for tighter bass

I just recently found this unit on the BK site at the end of a surf run about subs, but I hadn't realised that you were in fact talking about the same bit of kit. I've heard Velodyne subs with DSP/ microphone compensation and the resulting effect was very clean, clear and desirable. As I'm commited to "2.1" I think one of these is going to be a finger slip away.



PS. Val has gotten to the stage where she sees me on AOS and immediately asks "so what are we getting now then?"