Jack - now that you have clearly gone way Ultra...I am curious given the dimensions of your room, etc (and also your penchant for bass) whether you have ever spoken with VS about the fact that some of their designs have involved separate subs (VS-100 for example)...and whether you have ever discussed with VS whether you would want them to do the same with your Ultra 11s and have 2 other subs placed elsewhere in the room.
Is this something that is no longer necessary as a consideration given the Ultra 11s flexibility, adjustability and/or the design of your room acoustics?
First off, my heartfelt thanks for all of your positive comments, some of you from the likes of Mike and Steve whose personal journeys I have followed and admired since I was a mid-level manager. I promise that I will try my very best to answer equipment specifics as we go down the signal path in reverse.
Lloyd old buddy, yes. Leif and I have discussed how an added sub or two elsewhere in my room might further improve the performance. Leif and I have a weird special kinship. We both started in professional audio. As such, many of our random "hey, what you up to @%^#$@^$???????" phone conversations often include sharing notes on setting up and manning live events. Bass is always the most challenging part so we exchange our thoughts on bass solutions in large venues ranging from acoustic shading to dipole woofer configurations and DSP settings to account for distance vs frequency between arrays of sub units. Well, large and small venue acoustics have different math. In between, there is this mathematical gray area of output vs boundary,where large format speakers like yours, mine, Mike's, Steve's, Arnie's, David's and many others here fall into. We are, and I am trying to be kind here, oddities. I figure that there are so few of us in the world population that the interest of academics is nil.
Leif is suggesting I do try some subs in the rear just to see. I counter that what I have had ever since I've had 9s and way before the 11s and U11s, doesn't warrant the effort. My acoustician Mike Pedero and I communicate in terms of acoustics the way Leif and I do about transduction. These kind of relationships where you understand each other so well are trippy that if we were in a newlywed gameshow and all the questions were on those topics, that 3-piece living room set would be ours LOL Mike P knows me so well that he went OFF my specs because he knew I'd like more than I thought I did. He and Leif share the same knack apparently as my Dad, Brother and wife. Doing so meant that the placement of his tuned resonators and broadband absorbers despite his alterations still fit my primary requirement of even distribution throughout the listening space. Precisely what active cancellation seeks to achieve. I feel that this is totally a room dependent phenomenon. Given the generally rave reviews of the original un-jacked up U11s (Now standard ) roadshow , Leif and Damon indeed benefited from active cancellation. Perhaps one day if a client requests a pair of Shockwave 15s that I need to do extra special pre-delivery inspection of said units , God don't let that client read this!, I will experiment.
Oh, just two massive towers