Sub-woofer suggestion

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 12:16 am

Hello pulsarians, glad to see the scope community is growing. I want to ask a question about monitoring. I use 2 EVENT monitors (100W). The bass responce is pretty low. Do you in general use sub woofers? Do i have to by some bigger monitors (in size-amp), if i aquire a sub woofer how will i connect it correctly (i just have i stereo output from my pulsar2)? well any advice would be fine

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 12:50 am

the first consideration is: do you have any neighbours?

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 12:52 am

That's the second problem i have.... I 'm going to fix that too, (no I won't shoot them).

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:02 am

I don't want to sound harsh (regarding the folks around you) but the first concern should still be your own listening convenience...

and so the room's the first problem:
size, material, already noticed resonances in the low frequency domain ?

cheers, Tom

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:15 am

in the current situation i 'm lucky and i like the overall sound of my room. The only problem is the low freq that i think my monitors can't produce. (i have mixed an album that sounds ok, but i really want some real bass...). What should i do? I'm planning to change appartment and find something that i could raise the volume enough.. Do you beleive that my room can make the bass "dissapear". I really want to be able to listen to all frequencies -even the extra lows... I know some things about acoustics i want to listen some thoughts about it

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:16 am

On 2006-06-17 02:15, fra77x wrote:
... I'm planning to change appartment and find something that i could raise the volume enough...

that's a very good idea, as you could choose the most appropriate location (for your purpose) and spare a lot in setting it up.
'Regular' rooms usually suffer from interference of (reflected) bass frequencies, so they are emphasized here and extinguished there (as you most likely know).

A room must be pretty large to 'absorb' bass.
In any case you will need volume - a significant part of the 'bass experience' is body- and not ear-based, as shown in the traditional frequency sensitivity curve of the ear.

in a 'regular' appartment this can only be achieved by building a 'room in a room', the inner one acoustically decoupled from the building.
You either arrange with your neighbours or it will get rather expensive.

nevertheless it's probably a good investment to measure whichever room you choose in advance, imho it's difficult to detect by ear only.
We have a world class concert hall around the corner, and (for me) the most impressive acoustic experience isn't the performing artists but the pure sound of the building itself - never 'heard' anything like that.

I admit that I didn't care much in those days as a 'consumer only', but the experience made it clear what acoustic treatments of rooms is about - and why it's (kind of) expensive.

On the other hand with some background in acoustic and a little DIY talent you could spare a small fortune, but unlike the 'direct field listening' from monitors on the meter bridge the bass and the room ARE a unit.

cheers, Tom

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:27 am

Thanks Tom, to make it clear you say that the main thing is the room. But when i go to a friend of mind and play a little with Live with his "destroyed" big speakers (one of them makes somes noise also!) in a "sleep" room there is definately "bass" responce. Also my cheapo headphones really produce [bass] freqs (fakened?) that i don't hear from my monitors. These freqs are crucial for me as makes mixing an "easy" process. I 'm in psy trance. I have worked alot with bass but i know now that something is wrong, you say it's the room? Their is no need for sub-woofer or bigger monitors?

djmicron · Post by **djmicron** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 3:02 am

in my opinion, a sub woofer is a disturbance element during the mixdown process.
As Tom has said, the room acoustic treatment influences the way in which the sound is perceived.
I think a good pair of monitors with 8" woofer is enough and it's very important to familiarize with they and the use of a good spectrum analyzer is important too.

okantah · Post by **okantah** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 3:30 am

The room position is the key,you have to experiment with all the positions in your room,some have good frequency definition.
cheers

katano · Post by **katano** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:24 am

Hi

not only the listenig position and monitor placement is important, also the room acoustic has to be good for a good overall impulse response in the lows and in general...

try this forum, it has loads of informations on acoustics and how to optimize your control/listening room:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2

cheers
Roman

Post by **hubird** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:29 am

I added an A.D.A.M subwoofer to my nearfields of the same brand (Germany, Berlin, http://www.adam-audio.de/ )
I don't wanne argue all that is said above, but I'm very happy with the thing.
Even on low level it's good too hear the difference between the woofer activated or not, it makes me know what I'm doing much better.
Mostly I take a couple of minutes somewhere in the afternoon, to check my current mix.
For the rest of the day I work without it, as -indeed- you don't need the lows when working on a song

cheers

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:40 am

The forum Katano suggests is the best place to get info on this subject.

The bottom line, is that a sub woofer could be a very bad idea for bass monitoring in a small room. Really, you're looking at needing a decent size space with walls which are not parrallel & corners which are not square. There are lots of possible designs available on the John Sayers forum, most of which are DIY & needn't cost an arm & a leg.

The simplest starting point in a good space would be broadband 'absorbsion', as room 'isolation' will cost a lot more money. (the room inside a room scenario, which ain't cheap) If you have the space & some spare cash, build a few (at least 2) free-standing broadband bass traps to stand in the corners of your room. Depending on how you build them, these will do a decent job of absorbing unwanted reflections & resonance accross almost the whole bass frequency range (which is what you want to be able to properly monitor bass)

The perfect scenario for monitoring anything accurately is unfortunately not cheap to build & most certainly not suited to a small room in a flat/apartment, but if you can get a good space you've solved half the battle.

For the moment I rely on Ultrasone HFI-2000 headphones for bass monitoring, as the frequencies that can't be heard can be felt with them & their signal is scarily clean & flat.

jea · Post by **jea** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 10:14 am

Regarding mixing with a sub;

Often people setup the system way too powerfull, and then the system will lie to them, telling them that there is sufficient Bass/low mids when it's in fact not.

Knowing the monitors/sub/room is a key factor, when monitors/sub/room is "flawless" and working as a unit, often people tend to want a more powerfull bass although it's correct set up, then they raise the sub level .....

.... For having that club and powerfeel, I find it usually most important to have a system that mimics this behaviour in another set of speakers, not the main mix set, and perhaps with another more "casual" social setting, which also will play a certain role as these factors often is neglected....

Just some thoughts that I think people tends to forget....

_________________
eh, you're right,

I am a luna(t)ech!

[ This Message was edited by: jea on 2006-06-17 11:16 ]

azrix · Post by **azrix** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:16 pm

Actually, bass absorbtion and general isolation are pretty easy to do if you can double up on drywall. There's at least on kind of Liquid Nails that will work, or you could use Audio Alloy's Green Glue, which may be better. If done right, it turns your walls into panel absorbers. They tend to only absorb bass, giving you something much closer to a large room sound. Pretty nifty trick. This book will give you the info on how it's done: http://www.gedlee.com/Home_theatre.htm . Speaking of GedLee, I learned more about acoustics from this one pdf than from anything else I ever read: http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Summa.pdf .

If I may repeat what I understand to be what the guy at GedLee recommends about subwoofers, if you buy a subwoofer, buy as many as you can. Four is the recommended minimum I believe. Buy cheap ones if you have to. You want quantity over quality here. Put one in a corner, two radomly about the room (i.e. wherever they fit), and the last put it somewhere off the ground. This will have an amazing effect of smoothing out the bass everywhere in the room. This works regardless of what the acoustics are in the room. The problem with just one sub is the really erratic frequency response. Multiple subs placed right will give you a much smoother response.

Headphones do give good bass response.

[ This Message was edited by: azrix on 2006-06-17 14:20 ]

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:24 pm

On 2006-06-17 14:16, azrix wrote:
Actually, bass absorbtion and general isolation are pretty easy to do if you can double up on drywall. There's at least on kind of Liquid Nails that will work, or you could use Audio Alloy's Green Glue, which may be better. If done right, it turns your walls into panel absorbers. They tend to only absorb bass, giving you something much closer to a large room sound. Pretty nifty trick.

You've got a good point there. Only problem is if you have brick or breezeblock based walls, this won't work without creating a new inner shell (re:- quite expensive)

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 3:07 pm

and watch your ears if using headphones. You don't want to ende up mentally deformed or anything

firubbi · Post by **firubbi** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:06 am

thanks katano

Eric Dahlberg · Post by **Eric Dahlberg** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:03 pm

The problem with just one sub is the really erratic frequency response. Multiple subs placed right will give you a much smoother response.

Really interesting post! Multiple small drivers can definitely do as good a job of reproducing subs as a single large driver can, I've just never thought of spacing them around a room like that.

fra777x, what model Events are you using? Knowing that may help us determine whether this is a speaker or a room problem. Room dimensions would also help.

[ This Message was edited by: Eric Dahlberg on 2006-06-27 19:04 ]

Post by **garyb** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:26 pm

the only problem with multiple subs is that long waveforms are especially susceptible to phase cancellation.....

azrix · Post by **azrix** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 2:05 pm

Since this thread has been bumped, I wanted to clarify what I was saying about drywall. It's a sandwich construction. It's called constrained layer dampening. You have a drywall/liquid nails/drywall sandwich. It's pretty much the same technique used by Quiet Solution ( http://www.quietsolution.com ) in their QuietRock products. The liquid nails needs to be a non-hardening kind. "Liquid Nails Projects & Construction Adhesive" is the preffered kind, I believe. There's some info on the Audio Alloy website detailing the construction method to use.

On 2006-06-27 19:03, Eric Dahlberg wrote:
The problem with just one sub is the really erratic frequency response. Multiple subs placed right will give you a much smoother response.
Really interesting post! Multiple small drivers can definitely do as good a job of reproducing subs as a single large driver can, I've just never thought of spacing them around a room like that.

Yeah. Check here: http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Sub%20study%20.pdf for something else. He get's +/-5dB in a pretty standard living room with that method. (The other method it's compared against is one that's been touted by the R&D guys at Harmon [JBL, Infinity, etc.]). If look here: http://gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php ... stcount=13 you'll hopefully see just how good it is, and from Mr. Real Traps himself.

Another thing you get with multiple subs is lower distortion. You can usually also get more headroom and/or more volume out of them too, compared to a single sub.