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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Update with better graph and other phases posted by VynylTap on January 13, 2009 at 16:42:03:
Well, The 270 phase 15 curve is slightly worse overall than your earlier 270 phase 17 curve. The new curve is =/- a little more than 4 dB each way but the previous curve was roughly the same in the peaks but the main dip was a little shallower. There's not much between them but I'd call that very slightly in favour of the earlier curve.
I'm still in favour of the no sub trace, however. Yes, it is down a bit on the others when you go below 100 Hz but it has a 1 dB peak and is only 4 dB down at 31.5 Hz. The sub is filling in the dips, certainly, but it's also raising the peaks and the sub traces are not in as tight an envelope overall as the no sub trace down to 31.5 Hz. If you take in the further dip to -7 dB at 25 Hz, the no sub trace falls within an 8 dB envelope while the 270 phase 15 trace falls within a roughly 8.5 dB envelope and the 270 phase 17 trace from your earlier post falls within close to an 8 dB envelope.
I can understand the attraction of the traces with the sub because, as I said, they do fill in the dips but the peaks get pushed much higher also. The total variation doesn't significantly change, both peaks and dips are simply being raised somewhat.
I don't think you realise how good that plot without a sub actually looks. Dips no lower than -4 dB down to 31.5 Hz is extremely good and that peak of +1 dB is even better. Keeping things within a 5 dB envelope down to 31.5 Hz is extremely good response. Provided you don't have traces that are significantly elevated above 1 kHz to make that natural bass response sound a little too light, that's the sort of result many people would love to see in their rooms even with a sub. Yes, it will sound lighter relative to the sound with the sub but it shouldn't be sounding excessively light. In my view it should probably sound very close to just right.
And my experience of adding a sub to my audio system and then shifting it to my separate HT system taught me one thing. That was that it's hard to beat the overall transient response you get without the sub. Subs are usually placed further away than the mains and their active circuitry plus the additional distance means the sound from the sub arrives a few ms after the direct sound. That delay in my system certainly wasn't enough to make me notice the sub as a separate source but it certainly took the crispness of transients in the bass range. That's not a problem in the HT system which compensates for the delay from the sub by delaying the sound from the other speakers. In fact it was the gain in crispness in bass transients in the audio system when I removed the sub that helped persuade me to leave it in the HT system and to run without the sub in the audio system.
If you're getting that good a result without the sub, then I think that you can probably improve on that by paying attention to speaker and listening position placement. I'd be prepared to bet that you can get close to the kind of response you're seeing with the sub just by working your speaker and listening position setup, and you could improve it some more with some bass trapping, and you won't have to worry about the sub's placement and the affect of the slight delay in the arrival time of sound from the sub.
OK, so doing it my way requires work and all you have to do is keep the current sub settings which seem to be making you happy but while you won't get quite the same bass "weight" without the sub, you're losing very little in overall extension without the sub and I think you'll get a crisper result without it.p plus slightly clearer sound.
Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against subs and I wouldn't do without one in my HT system, but with the results you're getting on that trace without the sub in your system, which looks better than the kind of trace I get in my audio system, I know I'd prefer to run without the sub. In fact I am, with results that aren't quite as good as yours, but which still sound preferable to my ears to the results I used to get with the sub in my audio system.
The one thing that might change my mind would be your preferred choice of music. If that's large scale symphonic works or pop with very strong and deep bass parts, I might go for the sub but for smaller scale groups, especially with acoustic instruments or with not much bass content below 35-40 Hz which is what makes up the most of what I listen to, I'd certainly run without the sub.
David Aiken
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Follow Ups
- RE: Update with better graph and other phases - David Aiken 19:37:30 01/13/09 (1)
- Awesome post - thanks - VynylTap 06:43:16 01/15/09 (0)
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