Subwoofers for music- paired not single- recommendations and advice?

[VanDerGraaf]

Hello all,

I've been pondering over adding a pair of subs to my system.

Recently I obtained a very hard-to-find pair of speakers by Jean Maurer that I've fallen in love with. They are a 2 way with an 8" mid/bass. I think they're fantastic and may represent a sort of tonal end game for me.

Low end extension is quite important to me for listening- at least into the low 30hz range although lower is welcome The JMs sound strong enough to probably the upper 40s but I would like to give them some assistance after that.

I did experiment recently with using my pro audio dB 210A sub, it's a 2x10" with 600 Watts. Sounded very good, integrated very well, miles better than my old REL Storm III- but like most pro audio, it is an ugly black box and it isn't in any way a living room friendly look, haha!




I'm guessing the smart way to do this is to set crossovers with a miniDSP or similar.

What I am looking for are some recommendations for a 10 or 12 inch sub- a pair, that look nice (wood finish), "speak" fast, aren't ponderous in delivery, and are reasonably compact. Clean tight bass, not exaggerated.

This is all theoretical at the moment, as I can't afford to go large on a pair of subs for now. More of a long-term plan.

[Bethelcat]

I do agree re the importance/necessity of low bass!

Low bass is apparently non directional so your sub needn’t be centrally located; it could be located behind one of your speakers and cross-room firing, for example

Re subs, I do like the Bowers & Wilkins ones: the higher the amp power, and the heavier the unit, the better, in my experience. I have also found the box-shaped ones to sound quicker than the sphere-shaped one (despite the marketing!). Think there is a nice ASW CM series one on eBay

[Mr.Ian]

Wjilst you are waiting on cash would download REW and have a play with it. Firstly you can input your listening room dimensions, speaker positions, subwoofer positions and listening spot and it will generate a theoretical frequency. From my experience its pretty accurate. Changing the parameters should give a you good start on what to expect with your speakers and subs in range of different positions.

as for integrating the subs, that is a huge challenge and one that I am not sure I every totally solved.

Using an external crossover and manually equalising the subs digitally gave me a flat response in room down to 15hz but it never sounded that great. Using a DSP dualcore and equalising as 2.2 gave the best sounding results but it came with back ground hiss - I have read minidsp can be the same.

In the end I gave up and put the subs on my av processor and leave the mains to drop off from 40hz.

I am tempted to try again, next time it will be with small (min 10" driver) subs close to the speakers, wired via the high level inputs. EQ wise I am going to stick with REW and manually tweaking response and decay via an analogue parametric equaliser.

It might not be perfect but it should avoid the ADC + DAC conversion and the hiss, then again if a DSpeaker X4 came up at a bargain price....

[Lekidbongo]

Hi,

BK electronics do a nice range of affordable subwoofers that i can recommend: http://www.bkelec.com/index.htm (If you can get past the 2002 looking webpage).

They will make modification to the filter circuit if you need it (they changed the low pass frequency and attenuation curve for me).

Do you know the low frequency limit/ modes of your room?

LKB

[Thetiminator]

Just an idea....if your current sub is better than the Rel (which in itself is a good sub) why don’t you get it wrapped? Take it to a car ‘wrapper’ and you can any kind of finish/colour you want for maybe £100. Buy another pro audio sub, wrap that one, and stick them in the room corners (I find they sound better in corners rather than between the speakers) and bobs your mothers brother for not much outlay.

Twin subs is definitely the way to go and you should hear a big difference. I have twin DB1’s and the difference was massive...even though they’re turned down very low....

[VanDerGraaf]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all the replies and advice.

I do think that integrating subs is never going to be the easiest hifi task.


The suggestions about measuring room response seem like a good idea, I know that this is a sensible path to well-balanced sound.

I had a mess around the other day with the aforementioned sub, using a very Heath Robinson approach of using a parametric eq with a medium Q set to around -10 db at 20 hz, sloping off from round about 100hz. This was in software (used a plug in in Audirvana) and unfortunately affects the entire output including that which goes to the sub. Choosing an appropriate crossover point on the sub and then "filling in the gap" by boosting sub level gave me a result that was probably much better than it had any right to be! As a quick and nasty method to give me a flavour of what's possible, it worked.

I know that this is not the correct or accurate way to do this. I know that I need a properly set crossover. Separate outs etc. I'll get round to this at some point.

[DiveDeepDog]

I went from pair of Rel Strata 5's, to single Velodyne DD12. The Velodyne comes with mic and effective auto setup/room DSP. I'm sure 2 would be better still, but 1 very good sub (£3k +?) sounds better to me than pair of Rel's.

I use REW too, the subs used to fill in the bottom notes rather than making a 3 way speaker.

[Made in 1968]

Recently I obtained a very hard-to-find pair of speakers by Jean Maurer that I've fallen in love with. They are a 2 way with an 8" mid/bass. I think they're fantastic and may represent a sort of tonal end game for me.

I like the look of those. If only the front of the cabinet where the veneer is, was a bit thinner they would be perfect. Is that an Audax Bass/Mid?

[VanDerGraaf]

Hi Andre, I've been told it is an Audax.

There is a thread for these that I started
here.


Later versions of Jean Maurer speakers did away with the cabinet surround around the upper portion where the tweeter (and optional mid if a 3-way) were housed.

[Made in 1968]

Its just the shape of the basket that looks Audax. Thanks for the link i must have missed that. The bigger shot i can now see the baffle is a hammerite finish. I watched a video on You Tube of him making the present floor standers, He still uses Hammer finish..