The Bass is the place!!

[Don Hills]

All fascinating, to be sure, but how does it bear on real music? ...

Music comes first in my system, and I am not really interested in sound effects. ...

Bill, Fitz:
I find Corvus Corax provide a realism test in several areas simultaneously. First, their music is generally recorded in a large acoustic space and isn't over processed or compressed. Their percussion instruments are large. They require bass reproduction that starts deep and covers several hundred Hz of bandwidth with minimal phase difference. It's a test of sub-mains integration. As DaveC points out, large woofers are the easiest way to cover the range, a philosophy I agree with. For midrange, the solo and massed voices have to sound natural. For upper midrange and low treble, listen to the bagpipes. And the whole thing should be reproduced with a wide - if not realistic - sound stage.
For the Nightwish track, there's no especially low bass. Any modern full sze speaker system should reproduce it OK, sub not needed. The point with this track is that all the bass notes should be clear and distinct, with no variations or boomy notes. It's as much a test of speaker-room interaction as of the speakers themselves.
The "Eclipse" and the shuttle track, I will admit are pure theatre.
I grant that there are few acoustic instruments with significant output below 40 Hz, let alone 20 Hz. My main listening is heavy rock / prog / metal. Most of the classic stuff was cut off sharply below 40 Hz when it was mastered, and 4-string bass only goes to 40 Hz. More recently, drop tuning and 5 and 6 string basses have become popular so good reproduction down to at least 30 Hz has become useful. Given my tastes, I can appreciate that I have different priorities than someone whose tastes run to classical, jazz and solo vocalists.

 

[Don Hills]

... Even more remarkable was taking a tour of the launch area and seeing the enormity of everything first hand. The scale is beyond anything one can fathom without going there.

I took a tour there back in the early 80s. You're right, you have to see it to appreciate the scale.

 

[Don Hills]

Either lots of surface area or a horn, which has the effect of providing more surface area.

It has to be a big horn. Somewhere I have some links to pictures of BIG horns where the mouth takes up most of one end of the room. Or a "tapped horn", which isn't really a horn.

 

[Bill Hart]

Also treble... I've been testing out various super tweeters to fill in 15kHz+ and the super tweeter has an enormous impact on the perceived tone, clarity and detail of the midrange. High frequency harmonics also make a big difference, and it is helpful to have a lot of treble extension to capture them.

I agree with this, even though it seems counter-intuitive in the same way Mike L's observation is about deep bass enhancing perceived midrange. I found it easier to integrate super tweets back in the day (Deccas; Sequerra- both ribbons) with Quads, than integrating woofers with Quads. Much has obviously changed since those days. (Sort of a 'mini-HQD' system).

 

[NorthStar]

I saw it on Netflix. I loved it as a former drummer. I thought Magini was great. But the latin drummer and the latin conga player were my favorites.

That would be #4 & 5 (Horacio and Giovanni):

1. Mike Mangini * Dream Theater, & more
2. Dennis Chambers * Santana, Blue Matter Band
3. Kenwood Dennard * Various
4. Horacio Hernandez * Santana
5. Giovanni Hidalgo * Various
6. Paul Rekow * Santana, Malo
7. Nasyr Abdul-Al-Khabyyr ? Drummed with some of the greatest Jazz master musicians (Nasyr is from Hull, Quebec, Canada - near my hometown)

* Music group(s).

? Nasyr went on to become the drummer for Dizzy Gillespie where he played alongside his father, jazz saxophonist Al-Hajj Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr. Both father and son appeared in the 1989 feature documentary film entitled “A Night in Havana – Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba”. Nasyr also appeared in the video Dizzy Gillespie: “A Night in Chicago”. Later, Nasyr toured with Oliver Jones and recorded on Jones’s album “Just Friends”. He has performed at the Montréal Jazz Fest several times with fellow musicians, Oliver Jones & the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, Time Capsule and recently with Grammy nominee Kenny Garrett. Nasyr is currently a Professor in the music faculties of both Vanier College & Concordia University in Montréal where he teaches drums and ensembles to students.

 

[Bill Hart]

Bill, Fitz:
I find Corvus Corax provide a realism test in several areas simultaneously. First, their music is generally recorded in a large acoustic space and isn't over processed or compressed. Their percussion instruments are large. They require bass reproduction that starts deep and covers several hundred Hz of bandwidth with minimal phase difference. It's a test of sub-mains integration. As DaveC points out, large woofers are the easiest way to cover the range, a philosophy I agree with. For midrange, the solo and massed voices have to sound natural. For upper midrange and low treble, listen to the bagpipes. And the whole thing should be reproduced with a wide - if not realistic - sound stage.
For the Nightwish track, there's no especially low bass. Any modern full sze speaker system should reproduce it OK, sub not needed. The point with this track is that all the bass notes should be clear and distinct, with no variations or boomy notes. It's as much a test of speaker-room interaction as of the speakers themselves.
The "Eclipse" and the shuttle track, I will admit are pure theatre.
I grant that there are few acoustic instruments with significant output below 40 Hz, let alone 20 Hz. My main listening is heavy rock / prog / metal. Most of the classic stuff was cut off sharply below 40 Hz when it was mastered, and 4-string bass only goes to 40 Hz. More recently, drop tuning and 5 and 6 string basses have become popular so good reproduction down to at least 30 Hz has become useful. Given my tastes, I can appreciate that I have different priorities than someone whose tastes run to classical, jazz and solo vocalists.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I was focusing more on pipe organ and space launches. I'm really cheating right now with a mix of different subs and main woofers, but the overall effect is good. You don't even realize the subs are doing anything until there is a large crescendo or some truly deep bass (in other words, I'm running them modestly, not for effect). I did try to play that old Laserdisc back in the day of the IMAX shuttle launch using an 18" woofer and 15" woofer combined with a whole array of Snell speakers meant for theatre. It just couldn't get close. So, I stuck to dinosaurs.
Speaking of heavy rock/prog/proto metal, am on an early Lucifer's Friend/early Scorpions kick right now. Philips, Brain and Vertigo. Almost as good as big carnivores.

 

[NorthStar]

Davey, I hope we don't go too far with "The Bass is the Place" ? :b

1. http://www.rotarywoofer.com/ ? We know that this baby can get down real low.

2. http://www.royaldevice.com/useless.htm ? We've seen pictures and info on this one before and right here @ WBF.
Skip that first part, start with The Royal Device Audio Room

______

Simply put, the bass is the fundamental foundation to the full audio spectrum. Get it all, get it right, and the mids and highs will clarified.
...Like the drummer is the rhythm gel to the entire band, the tightness and inspiration. ...In Jazz, in Blues, in Rock, in International World music; Latin, Brazil, Cuba, ...Africa, ...

The ambiance in large venues; some contain low frequencies. ...Where you can hear the subway train under the hall's floor - New York.
• http://la.curbed.com/2013/5/17/1024...ed-that-downtown-subway-will-ruin-disney-hall

 

[fas42]

And finally, the system to beat all systems:
Try to imagine an 8.3 gigawatt amplifier / loudspeaker system with 0% distortion and response down to DC.
Now stand over 3 miles away...

...

To listen to this at realistic levels, you will need a system capable of about 120 dB SPL at 25 Hz and maintaining at least 115 db down to 5 Hz or below

This reminds me of an interesting audio, and visual experience. Quite some years ago a full blown IMAX was built locally, 20 minutes drive down the road - a tourist spot on the Blue Mountains. Went there of course when it first opened and was blown away by it - they had the NASA feature with launch of the shuttle and hanging out besides the space station. Sound was superb, and the images were pin sharp, it was magical ...

Next time I went, to another show, it didn't quite have the impact, and the next time again I started to lose interest quite decidedly, I was literally starting to feel bored ... what was going on? In simple terms, the calibration and optimisation of the visuals and audio was starting to go off the boil, I was too aware of the massive subwoofers hanging all around shuddering and bellowing, the sweet crispness of the treble had gone flat and stale; and the visual image was building a blurring, especially at the edges. Each visit it got worse, the stage machinery was developing defects which were too obvious - I learnt later that it cost a fortune to have the setup maintained, and the returns weren't good enough to support that ... so ... ...

A little lesson there for our home setups ...

 

[DaveC]

It has to be a big horn. Somewhere I have some links to pictures of BIG horns where the mouth takes up most of one end of the room. Or a "tapped horn", which isn't really a horn.

Yeah, the built-in bass horns are super impressive, if I ever get to build my own house...

Woofer towers are a bit more practical but for a smaller size speaker a single 15 in a front ported cab works great for me.

 

[DaveyF]

Dave, I'm still missing your point....most subwoofers on the market utilize large woofers ( 12-18" drivers). So, when you talk about bass realism requiring a large woofer, doesn't a large subwoofer supply that?
As to the resolution of the bass, there I agree with you, some mix of accurate midrange and bass is required for a realistic bass instrument to sound correct. One could even argue that some high frequency overtones
can be heard in that reproduction....although IME this depends on the bass instrument in question.

 

[DaveC]

Dave, I'm still missing your point....most subwoofers on the market utilize large woofers ( 12-18" drivers). So, when you talk about bass realism requiring a large woofer, doesn't a large subwoofer supply that?
As to the resolution of the bass, there I agree with you, some mix of accurate midrange and bass is required for a realistic bass instrument to sound correct. One could even argue that some high frequency overtones
can be heard in that reproduction....although IME this depends on the bass instrument in question.

Just to clarify my original post was in the context of the claim small speakers can sound "big" or whatever... they can't, it's not possible, simple physics...

Adding a sub to a small speaker isn't the best solution because the sub is crossed over too low to fully cover the frequency range associated with visceral impact of drums and other bass instruments.

Subs have drivers optimized for their frequency range (<60-80 Hz) while a woofer that provides good impact is designed to play much higher in the frequency range. Often sub drivers have higher Le and Mms than is optimum for higher frequencies, so there is a big difference between subwoofers and woofers. A typical sub driver crossed over higher will sound "slow"... So you need both subwoofer and woofer, or a woofer capable of playing fairly low, to provide good reproduction of many bass instruments. A 6" woofer in a smaller speaker just doesn't cut it...

 

[fas42]

You need large surface area or a horn to produce convincing midbass, excursion can't make up for it. Unless you listen at low volumes all the time, and even then large surface area is helpful. It's physics and you can't side-step the issue no matter what, or how good you think the rest of your system is. Big woofers are king, and nothing is ever going to change that.

My experience has been completely opposite - small boxes tend to be inefficient, and require amplifiers with clean grunt to drive them convincingly; since much audio electronics starts to falter when asked to work harder, disturbingly so - this was especially so in years gone by - many systems with smaller drivers doing the work always sound "small". It's amusing when I go listen to people's systems, they start at pitifully low volumes, I have to keep encouraging them to turn it up - first test is whether the system is capable of sustaining decent SPLs competently, if it can't then I drop my expectations dramatically on what is possible.

It's physics all right, but not in the speaker - the electronics are collapsing when asked to do too much, their engineering is not adequate. I've listened to too many silly sounding monster speakers, and achieved subjectively intensely powerful playback from tiny speakers too many times myself, to think anything otherwise ...

 

[GaryProtein]

See the horn in the construction project.

Note the size of the man near the excavator and the horn and the size and depth of the basement listening room.

For smaller installations, there is the copper colored horns.

I have a few other photos of horns built into the house construction, but can't locate them right now. When I find them, I'll post them.

 

[DaveC]

Nice!

Here's an extreme example of the multiple driver approach, he's got some pretty decent surface area going on :

http://www.bd-design.nl/contents/en-us/d192.html

 

[DaveyF]

Just to clarify my original post was in the context of the claim small speakers can sound "big" or whatever... they can't, it's not possible, simple physics...

Adding a sub to a small speaker isn't the best solution because the sub is crossed over too low to fully cover the frequency range associated with visceral impact of drums and other bass instruments.

Subs have drivers optimized for their frequency range (<60-80 Hz) while a woofer that provides good impact is designed to play much higher in the frequency range. Often sub drivers have higher Le and Mms than is optimum for higher frequencies, so there is a big difference between subwoofers and woofers. A typical sub driver crossed over higher will sound "slow"... So you need both subwoofer and woofer, or a woofer capable of playing fairly low, to provide good reproduction of many bass instruments. A 6" woofer in a smaller speaker just doesn't cut it...

Ok, so now I am on the same page as you?

IMHO too many speakers come to market with a low frequency driver that is woefully unsuitable for the job of producing real bass! Your example of a 6" woofer in a small enclosure is quite correct.
Probably one could argue that anything less than a 10" driver won't cut mustard. Although the fact of multiple small woofers is an interesting aside.
I have had good luck with adding a dedicated 8" powered sub to my small sats that utilize a 5" driver as the bass/ mid driver... Although the bass impact in my small room is certainly nothing compared to larger speakers utilizing large woofer drivers in a large room. However, as I have said on other occasions, the room has to play into the equation....so using a larger ( too large) speaker in too small a room is a recipe for serious disappointment.
It really is horses for courses in this respect and of course..... iMHO

 

[andromedaaudio]

Amazing pics , the most dedicated audiophile period , where is that? US ???
Agree with Dave C , as i ve said before large woofers in a full range system take care of out put well over the freq where the mids roll off , where as a dedicated only subwoofer will x over much lower and probably in most cases roll off much steeper.
Bass isnt only the region below lets say 50 -60 hz , but " at least" until the 200 -300 hz region, i think thats the main culprit of poor sub integration as its added instead of designed from the ground up ,and everything is efficiency matched

 

[Ron Resnick]

Achieving extended clean, tight bass is not magic. Proper placement, and depending on room size, move enough air (i.e. big drivers) and a bit of EQ/room correction/DSP. The single best (practical) place to put subs is in the 4 corners but other locations can work equally well. But from many, many rooms that I have been involved in, placing dual subs up front (which looks great) is seldom if ever the right place. A much better (but less attractive to the OCD nature) if using only two subs in one in each diagonal corner of the front and rear of the room. But this also requires DSP to set delay and trim levels.

As you can see from the following (black line and no smoothing), I have no issue with low extended bass. I currently have dual Seaton Subversives in the rear (4000 watts driving four 15 inch drivers) and 4000 watts driving two 18 inch subs up front. This is the curve I use for music. For movies, I have my version of the Harmon Curve. (The RS20i allows me to have a set of Dirac filters assigned to an input).



There is no such thing as too much great woofage!!!!

[As an FYI, the room is about 3400cf - 19 x 22 x 8]

Hello audioguy,

I re-read this thread and I noticed your post about multiple big subwoofers. Do you use the pair of dual-opposed 15" subwoofers in the rear as well as the front-firing 18" subwoofers in front routinely for music?

What was your progression of installation (if you did not install all four subwoofers at once)? For example, did you start with the 18" subwoofers first and then add the 15" subwoofers to further smooth and extend the bass response?

If you did not have a home theatre and you were interested in optimizing solely for music, do you think you would use the same exact subwoofer arrangement? Or would the rear 15" subwoofers be unnecessary? Or might you remove the 18" subwoofers and put the dual-opposed 15" subwoofers up front?

Purely for music would you still want the frequency extension to be down only -5dB at 7Hz?

PS: It is nice how well big-bore drivers solve the low-frequency extension question!

 

[DaveC]

audioguy does have some seriously impressive bass capabilities!

Ron, music is usually less demanding than HT... although some music does have extremely low frequency content a great majority does not. But if you want to play Amon Tobin, Infected Mushroom, other electronica or pipe organ at high SPLs the way the artist intended you'll want a bass system comparable to HT requirements. For most music it won't matter much but for some it will. For me, I can live with extension down to the mid 20 Hz range although if I had the space and the cash I might setup something similar to audioguy. I agree with his statement there's no such thing as too much woofer (regardless of room size) when you have DSP to make it do what you want. Without DSP it's much more difficult and you have to think about matching "room gain" with frequency response... not really that difficult but beyond the scope most folks will want to tackle...

 

[RBFC]

The objective with "overkill wooferage" is to have extension, headroom, and smooth bass in multiple listening locations. Just because a system has extension like audioguy's does not mean it sounds boomy or unnatural for music listening. I've always said that the low frequencies allow a more accurate portrayal of the fundamental resonant signature of the recording venue. Extreme wooferage only causes problems with poorly designed or set-up turntable systems with rumble.

Lee

 

[audioguy]

Hello audioguy,

I re-read this thread and I noticed your post about multiple big subwoofers. Do you use the pair of dual-opposed 15" subwoofers in the rear as well as the front-firing 18" subwoofers in front routinely for music?

I am replacing the front DIY 18's with Seaton 18's. Having heard both, the Seaton 18's are MUCH cleaner than the DIY18's, extension is just as good are are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better above about 50HZ. Once they arrive, there is no reason not to use all 4.

What was your progression of installation (if you did not install all four subwoofers at once)? For example, did you start with the 18" subwoofers first and then add the 15" subwoofers to further smooth and extend the bass response?

I had lots of subs prior to the Seatons, and for all of the wrong reasons, usually had them up front. I did have 4 very well known subs all installed at the same timebut that was before I new how to measure and interpret those measurements and they were not placed correctly. Two SubMersives in diagonal corners (front left and rear right) gave the exact same FR I previously posted. I then added 2 more SubMersives, with one SubMersive in each corner, ONLY because I am so OCD, I couldn't stand the asymmetry. (There is probably a 12 step program for that). As I was doing more upgrades (new speakers, preamp, etc) I made the (very poor as it turned out) decision to sell all of my SubMersives and build the 4 DIY18's and use the saving to pay for upgrades. Bad idea. I have owned a LOT of subs, and have yet to hear anything that can provide the impact, extension, clarity, and definition of Seaton Subs (as least at prices less than a new car). They are equally outstanding for either music (most important to me) or movies. So I first decided to sell two of my DIY subs and get two SubMersives thinking I could extract the best out of each and be a happy camper. Hasn't worked. I can't even begin to count the number of combinations and permutations of levels, delays, and positions to try and get what I wanted (which was the sound I had with my original 4 SubMersives). I gave up and ordered two of the Seaton 18's. I did that (vs 2 additional SubMersives) because the 18's are a bit more efficient in the lowest frequencies (which only matter for action movies) but above that are identical to the regular SubMersive.

If you did not have a home theatre and you were interested in optimizing solely for music, do you think you would use the same exact subwoofer arrangement? Or would the rear 15" subwoofers be unnecessary? Or might you remove the 18" subwoofers and put the dual-opposed 15" subwoofers up front?

As previously noted, I would never put two subs up front in a rectangular sealed room. I have not done an infinite number of rooms, but enough to say that in the 6 or 7 I had done, the front of the room was NEVER the best spot. I can't say there is not a room where they might not work perfect up front but that has not been my extension. Sometimes, however, they just need to go up front for spouse acceptance or because you want them there. EQ/digital room correction can solve a lot of problems. So to answer your question, I would put two subs as I had them originally configured - one in each diagonal corner.

Purely for music would you still want the frequency extension to be down only -5dB at 7Hz?

I wouldn't pay extra for it since 99.9% of music gets nowhere near that frequency. 15HZ to 20HZ would be more than adequate. But the Seaton SubMersives sort of throw that in for free. Because of the way my DIY 18's sound in the lowest frequencies, I did employ a high pass filter on them at about 25 HZ and it definitely helped. Even higher would have been better. But they still aren't right. There is still a thickness to the lower frequencies that is just wrong but is only noticeable on music, not movies.

PS: It is nice how well big-bore drivers solve the low-frequency extension question!

When I had my original 2 SubMersives, I had the same response: a 5db down at 5HZ. Hope this was helpful.