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MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event))

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Posted on March 22, 2015 at 00:14:04
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 The woofers that were added to my MMGs are finally making a "constant contribution". I have just spent over 8+ hours listening to music with the woofers on this evening.

The event is significant to me in that I have never ever been able to spend much time enjoying music with ANY planar speaker that has woofers or, much less, subwoofers. I mean, less than 1/2 hour, tops. OTOH, I can spend 14+ continuous hours listening with these MMGs alone and probably as much with 3.7s in the same manner. (My longest stretch with 3.7s was 3+ hours only because they were not at my home.)

I am a bit giddy. It was dumb luck in great part and perseverance to some extent. I really thought that this would never happen. Even by using woofers in L/R stereo config, I simply hoped to get "close enough" to enjoy music for an hour or so, for that music which simply demands the lowest octave.

What's not good? Plenty, once I get to nitpicking. All I have to do is forget that they cost almost nothing, yet no subwoofer tested in this room ever got close.

How good is it so far? Full-sounding without loosing detail or textures, non-fatiguing and tunefully delightful. I can live with it on full time though it will likely be much less. I live in an apartment and my MMGs have plenty of native strong bass (which hardly crosses through the concrete walls despite how punchy it is). When neighbors go out, I'll switch on the woofer more often.

I'll list the build elements in a few days. Not that this will always make it easy. Unfortunately, seemless bass with planars takes effort and a little luck in that room modes can be tamed in practical ways. I'll be delighted if this works for more people.

 

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RE: MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event)), posted on March 22, 2015 at 06:53:32
louie3
 Share, Ben, share...sooner rather than later. Please.

 

RE: MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event)), posted on March 22, 2015 at 10:55:29
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 Louie, sharing the information sure is a priority now. I always planned to do so if the effort panned out but I was not prepared to get such decent results this quickly. I will have to prepare some kind of summary and pointers for those who may want to venture into this.

Once I do this, the world of our more experienced bass specialists in our group, will need to moderate. There is far too much variability and factors with bass + planars. Even though I applied some common sense and several lessons learned here...I was speedily lucky. I'll try to be speedy with the sharing also.

 

RE: MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event)), posted on March 22, 2015 at 12:47:39
BigguyinATL
Manufacturer

Posts: 3475
Joined: April 10, 2002
 For me it took a while - and the idea came to me reading Floyd Toole's book on loudspeakers and Stereo. Use two subs on Left and Right walls approximately at the "Null" points (where the plane of the MMG's extend to the side walls). Toole suggested that two subs are better than one and Three better that two - just from a room mode "Even out" effect.

I've tried this arrangement in Four different electrical configurations: (1) Left and Right signals each going wide band to the MMG's and using a somewhat low Low pass to the subs at 50Hz (MMG's have a bump at 55-60Hz)
(2) Same as above But with a 80Hz Crossover
Note in both these examples I have the ability to adjust the phase of the sub continuously the optimize the measured transition. This is easy to do when you have only the left or right channel activated at one time.
In my situation I believe (2) provide the best overall experience.

I switched the Sub signal to Mono (both subs get the same signal - though phase is individually adjusted between subs. I should tell you that both of my subs are not identical - though both are push pull sealed cabinet designs The Q's of the speakers are slightly different - but the ultimate extension is close. Some would discount the use of different subs in the aspect of anything related to imaging, but from an acoustics standpoint one could argue several benefits.

I could not reliably notices a difference between the Stereo and the Mono Setup. For other reasons, it is simpler to use the dual stereo setup, however for anything going through my AVR the same (Mono) signal is sent to both as well. I do have the option to send signals directly from my preamp or my Oppo BDP103 in stereo wide band to the amps driving MMG's & subs.



"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius

 

RE: MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event)), posted on March 22, 2015 at 13:29:18
louie3
 Hail, Ben...just sling it out here, your readers, I have no doubt, will help with the finer points. :)

 

RE: MMGs + woofers happy together on 03/21/15 (marking event)), posted on March 23, 2015 at 10:51:20
JBen
Audiophile

Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
  Since: July 26, 2010
 LOL! Louie, I understand. Believe me, I'll be rushing out as much relevant detail as I can as soon as I can. I am hoping that I can post a useful list late tonight. It will be "raw", by my standards... and I will probably get shot at for it. I would have preferred to take off many mods and room items that may have facilitated some of my results here but are impractical elsewhere. This, to try a replication in a more "typical" environment...but this does take time.

In the meantime, BigguyinATL has gone through some of the pains already and there are some gold nuggets in the post he entered. Check it out and also look for related threads.

EDIT at 2:20am 3/24/15: Darn, this is taking longer than I thought...I'll get there but not tonight, as I wanted.

 

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