Don't accept what people will say as fact

[treitz3]

Back to cfgardei1's topic....

A friend of mine has recently acquired a rather small sub that he seems enamored with. It's a KEF KC 62 sub (single, raised and on a stand). I am glad you are having fun with your Maggies!

Tom

 

[Gregadd]

One thing of note...

I see that members who have responded as well as commented on the crossover points? These points are what I would consider very high.

I am and have been set on much lower settings. More in the lines of 28-32Hz and with the volume also set to very low. Steep slope, zero phase, and no EQ or PEQ settings active. I started on measurements, then tuned by ear from there. The mains are not influenced at all from what the subs do. They are (in effect) two separate entities that come together as one.

Tom

You are technically correct. Coming from a lay person anything crossing over higher would be a "supplemental" woofer
In the olden days a true sub would be 20-30hz That would be added to a true full range speaker.
In my case the ML CLS ran out of gas at about 60hz. It began to work really hard at 100hz. The two Janis W3 and the crossover/amp came with a mandatory 100hz crossover point. Believe me they could make the room breathe.

 

[tdotson41]

I have 20.7’s and don’t think I will ever have the need or desire for a sub. If you properly setup the larger Maggie’s you will be rewarded with accurate bass and unbelievable realism. But remember your room is a big part of the equation. I’m listening to Charlie Haden right now with Paul Motian and Gerri Allen and the realism and thump of the Haden bass is quite good.

 

[Chops]

I have 20.7’s and don’t think I will ever have the need or desire for a sub. If you properly setup the larger Maggie’s you will be rewarded with accurate bass and unbelievable realism. But remember your room is a big part of the equation. I’m listening to Charlie Haden right now with Paul Motian and Gerri Allen and the realism and thump of the Haden bass is quite good.

Guarantee a couple of properly set up subwoofers will improve space, air, sound stage and dimension/scale to the overall sound of your 20.7's.

 

[microstrip]

I have 20.7’s and don’t think I will ever have the need or desire for a sub. If you properly setup the larger Maggie’s you will be rewarded with accurate bass and unbelievable realism. But remember your room is a big part of the equation. I’m listening to Charlie Haden right now with Paul Motian and Gerri Allen and the realism and thump of the Haden bass is quite good.

What is the length of your room? In my experience panels need large rooms to have good bass, we need to put them away from the front wall to avoid bass cancellation.

 

[microstrip]

Guarantee a couple of properly set up subwoofers will improve space, air, sound stage and dimension/scale to the overall sound of your 20.7's.

IMO you should have also put in bold the word couple - many people have a poor idea of subs because they only experienced a single subwoofer. Two are really needed for stereo to get the points you refer.

 

[Chops]

IMO you should have also put in bold the word couple - many people have a poor idea of subs because they only experienced a single subwoofer. Two are really needed for stereo to get the points you refer.

Agreed that two or more are definitely a must, but considering I did put the words "couple" and "subwoofers" in my post, I figured that was enough to drive the point home.

As for me, I've been running stereo subwoofers in my systems for the past 25 years or so. There have been times due to room limitations where I had to drop down to one sub, but was still able to place that one sub in a more optimal location rather than just thrown in the front corner of the room.

 

[tdotson41]

What is the length of your room? In my experience panels need large rooms to have good bass, we need to put them away from the front wall to avoid bass cancellation.

My room is 14.6W x 16.8H x 8.5H. My speakers are 6.5 feet from front wall and I have zero problems with bass. I also have a dedicated listening room so it allows to me to totally dial them in without compromise.

 

[Chops]

Well, as long as you're not hearing the absent bass, I guess you aren't missing it.

 

[Nuforce]

I own 20.1 which are almost identical to 20.7 and in my pretty large room I get around 28hz according to REW.

Bass is very powerful and in fact I need to apply EQ to tame it!

I do want to try a sub just to see what I'm missing but I rarely think I need it.

The lesser non push-pull models I can see the need for subs.

 

[JackD201]

I have the opposite results as Don. I could never really get a single sub to work unless I was only using it to cancel rather than add. I've always used 2 subs in the home and at least two for live sound reinforcement.

I think most people have a hard time or get confused because the settings of one sub usually aren't going to be exactly the same as the other in terms of phase and amplitude. So getting one right and duplicating that on the other usually won't work.

The trick I eventually came up with was to do one channel at a time at -3dB the reference SPL. I select long tom strikes and kick drum strikes even some Kodo drum hits edited from a track, mp3 is fine no need to go crazy here, and play it back on loop. You should be able to have a kink free continuum from the higher frequencies of the transient strike to the end of the reverb trail .

We have to remember that the event will travel across the drivers over time. Attack will have the tweeters and mids migrating to the midbasses the eventually the LFE drivers for the LF decay which is obviously longer than a HF decay tail. They aren't all working at once. Proper integration will allow a full sweep from top to bottom without hearing any timing and pitch aberrations. Sounds hard but trust me it is not because we all know what "right" sounds like in this case. No training required One just shouldn't be afraid to go to town exploring the settings available. Go ahead and use exaggerated settings up and down to see what each does and then methodically narrow the windows until you find the desired spot.

This should be the basis of the cutoff/handoff frequency, the Q of that cover point and the phase. Repeat on the other side and combined the ref SPL should be back up to reference. Of course this requires that your main transducers are already locked. From there it will just become a matter of taste. In most cases the subs are actually turned down rather than up because of the new found bass creating resonances on objects and boundary surfaces, unless of course one's room has been built to have very little of this.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I do want to try a sub just to see what I'm missing but I rarely think I need it.

Try it!

 

[Nuforce]

By coincidence I just watched this video on Magnepan's new dipole bass system. Pretty interesting.

 

[cfgardei1]

Wow: it's amazing how much has been added to this thread that I started since I last looked at it! Talking about stereo vs mono subs and what-not. I have reached a point in my life where it's just not productive to argue (any) point. There is NOTHING on any subject or topic that won't have diametrically-opposed views, along with every "flavor" in-between. My maggies are - well, just look at the photo - and the ONE sub is in the far-back corner of the room (trihedral-loaded). Thus: one "baby" (12") sub (loaded in a corner) is capable of producing more volume of sub-bass than (any) maggies or electro-stats can balance with, so I see no need for 2 subs -- stereo or mono. To repeat: I NEVER am wanting for more sub-bass.

Just for the hell of it (and because it was easy to do), I borrowed a friend's calibrated mics and parametric EQ. My system is amazingly flat: +/- 2dB (at least in the main listening chair) from 50Hz down to 14Hz. But the bass and mid-bass response from the maggies is actually quite erratic (+/- 10dB in some places of the spectrum), undoubtedly a result of multiple room reflections and standing-waves, exacerbated by the dipole operation of all planar speakers.

Guess what? IT DOESN'T MATTER! My system sounds GREAT, first and foremost to me, but I also get nothing but positive responses from everyone that hears it. And, longtime readers, I have NOT "upgraded" to $million speaker cables or any such nonsense. If I wOn the lottery, I would not change anything in my system: that's the true measure on how I feel about it.

((I have, however, upgraded my basement system (the "loud system") from Klipsch LaScalas to the new Jubilees -- WOW! are they impressive!! They are diametrically-opposed in concept and exectution to planar speakers and yet (guess what?) they also sound GREAT))

 

[cfgardei1]

Try it!

Agreed: try it - you'll never go back! Just keep the BASS out of the SUB woofers.

 

[exupgh12]

I recently bought a pair of Maggie 3.7i's (and a Parasound A21+ amp and a Bluesound Node, streaming Tidal). These are, by far, the best sounding speakers I've EVER owned (and I've owned a bunch in my 60 years on this earth). But, they are - no surprise - severely lacking in bottom-end "oomph." So, I bought a Maggie bass panel (DWM). This helped with the lower midrange and upper bass (and even extended the lower bass slightly), but still failed to produce the bottom end I wanted. Spoiler alert: most music doesn't have a lot of sub-bass, but for those that do, it's imperative that your system can reproduce it. So, I starting asking around...

"Don't add a sub - it will ruin the 'tight' bass that your Maggies are known for!" was what everyone told me - even Magnepan. But, I thought that didn't make sense - unless the subwoofer was ALSO reproducing bass (instead of just sub-bass*). As long as I kept the bass frequencies out of the sub (let the 3.7i's do the bass), it should sound fine. That was my theory.

*Many people think a subwoofer goes down to 30Hz. No: that's where sub-bass begins!

Enter SVS (highly recommended!) I bought their "entry level" sub (model SB-1000 Pro) to "test my theory" with the plans to upgrade it if I was right. Well: I am so happy with it, I never upgraded it - there's no need to! I roll it off at 33Hz @ 24dB/octave and use the parametric EQ to boost 20Hz by 6dB. As such the -3dB downpoint is around 16Hz. (The proverbial "bottom octave: 16-32Hz).

This adds a deep, gut-rumbling bottom end to music - and in NO WAY diminishes the "open", "airy", "tight". "fast" (choose one) bass of the Maggies. On most (some) music, the sub does nothing. But play, for example, Yello's "Stay" with and without the sub and you'll never do it without again!

I was, in fact, planning on upgrading to the 20.7's, but the 3.7's are almost identical to the 20.7's in all but the bass panel area - something the sub MORE THAN makes up for. Save the $5000 and get a sub (I DID audition the 20.7's before stating this)

To all Maggie owners: try this - you'll never go back. Just be sure to roll off the sub quickly and sharply (min: 24dB) and low. 33Hz is just right for my system in my room - you'll need to experiment. The nice thing about the SVS (though not unique) is the app that lets you tailor rolloff frequency, slope and parametric EQ to fill in exactly what is needed and NO MORE.

why guess where the sub needs to be added or cut?
measure your room response and you will have a clear answer as to where is the deep (or peaks) in your room, It's easy to integrate sub perfectly in your system.

 

[Audiohertz2]

You are technically correct. Coming from a lay person anything crossing over higher would be a "supplemental" woofer
In the olden days a true sub would be 20-30hz That would be added to a true full range speaker.
In my case the ML CLS ran out of gas at about 60hz. It began to work really hard at 100hz. The two Janis W3 and the crossover/amp came with a mandatory 100hz crossover point. Believe me they could make the room breathe.

Must be a different old days to mine

There is no true sub anything operating at 20-30hz ccrossover point , any sub crossed over lower than 50hz is really not adding much info unless playing 20-40 hz test tones , no musical material starts down there so to have such a low hand off from the mains to your subs is useless for accuracy ..!

You really want your sub in the 50-80 hz range ( acoustically not electrically ) for it to have any form of accuracy in the bass ..


100 hz to a dipole panel sounds about right...


Regards

 

[andromedaaudio]

100 hz to a dipole panel sounds about right...

Lol sure .....

i guess thats the reason discussion forums exist

 

[Audiohertz2]

Lol sure .....

i guess thats the reason discussion forums exist

Try it , report ....,

You design speakers, give it some thought, integrating to an open back dipole , acoustic Phase anyone ..


Regards

 

[andromedaaudio]

Try it , report ....,

You design speakers, give it some thought, integrating to an open back dipole , acoustic Phase anyone ..


Regards

I dont investigate dead ends , i heard enough bad examples
To each his own