Part of the question is whether you can actually "hear" 30Hz? Technically you do not "hear" anything below about 120hz. Below that you detect bone vibrations in the skull (feet?). Not vibrations into the ear canal. Plus because of the distance between ears relative to wavelength, below around that same frequency the brain can not detect pressure differences left to right ear. Which is why a sub can be placed where it works best in the room because a good sub is never detectable as to it's location. We DETECT the pressure from low frequencies. If the room is too short to allow the wave to develop. A sub can still modulate room pressure at that rate.
Thats good to know as i have 1 sub set up around 120Hz to deal with a big bass null and i wasn't sure if it was in the range of being able to localise it.
If the wavelengths were a deciding factor - there would be no bass in cars. The trick is that to get tones below the room dimensions, we need a pressure chamber. Our body then does not "hear", it feels. If you have bass potent speakers, close all doors and windows to "hear" the difference. There is some music that I always listen to with the doors closed (pop music with slam and thump) and others with them open (unamplified acoustic instruments).
In a car with a pretty decent or good system that plays both great bass and loud then you get better bass when opening a window.. This is my experience in every single car I have been in. It's lile comparing a closed box vs ported box. When opening a window you get a bass boost in sole frequencies. And our body both feels and hears the sound.. Atleast down to 25-20Hz.
Once again you provide us with a very simple example of how to possibly handle a complex problem. Yup! just moving a sub or speakers around could solve the problem with hearing certain frequencies. Now I wouldn't say that there are no rules when setting up a system and wanting the maximum of listening pleasure from it. But you do have to be willing to bend them on occasion in order to achieve that goal of great sound. There is the challenge of room size and shape to contend with. But as Paul stated, it can be done if you have some knowledge of the how and why of a sound stage, but are willing to experiment a little.
I think alot of people don't understand how sound works and they imagine physical sound waves being similar to water waves. How sound propagates and graphic represention of sound are different. Sound is propagation of positive and negative pressure. Positive pressure pushes eardrum/mic membrane in and negative pressure pulls it out. How far the membrane is pushed and pulled equates to volume and the time it takes to push and pull the membrane is the frequency of the sound. The key is time/period which equates to frequency. A bass note is instatenous to our ears because of the high speed of sound. A mic is able to record low frequency at near field and we can hear bass using earphones because time/period (hz (circle per second)) is what determines the frequency of sound. Wavelength can be calculated using time and speed of sound.
My personal experience with bass in my near field system was not really surprising but unexpected. I use 2 12" subs in simple stereo positions 7 feet from my listening position and it's wonderful. But walking out of the room , which is still aligned with the left channel sub, the bass character is noticeably richer as I get about 13 to 15 feet away. If I had the ability to rearrange my room in such a way to get that 13 feet or so to the subs I know it would be amazing, but would it be less amazing for all the rest of the sound field? Almost certainly not, as the the main speakers are spectacular at only 5 feet to my ears. So as we hear time and time again, everything is compromise, especially in an average residential home. I am positively envious of you folks with dedicated music rooms where you can design and maximize for full wide frequency sound. That being said, I have maximized for the room I have and can hardly believe the sound I do have. That doesn't mean that every time I leave the room while the music is playing, I am not reminded of the additional potential my subs could have.
My main system is in the basement . When I stand near the top of stairwell I can "feel" more bass than when I'm actually standing in front of the sub in the basement. The stairwell acts as a "tuned" transmission line for the ultra-low frequencies.
In the 1970s, the original PS Audio shop put on a speaker performance clinic which used near-field measurement and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis. Admittedly, the cheap speakers I took in were far from worthy of such testing, but there were no rules about that.
Lows, below around 120hz, are too long to enter and modulate the ear canal. Any detection of vibrations that low in frequency is bone conduction in front of the ear canal.
@@glenncurry3041Yes, but it doesn’t really matter for how reflected waves are impacting the perceived sound pressure level at a given frequency through the doubler effect.
@@davidstevens7809 The point is that our rooms impact the frequency response through adding multi-path waves to the sum of what we hear with doubler effects canceling or amplifying individual frequencies and also causing slower decays making sound waves stay longer in the time domain. Moving around speakers (including subwoofers), seating position and adding room treatment can help but Paul continue to deny that a DSP EQ is the holy grail of getting the best out of a given room in a modern digital system. PS audio decided to oversell DSD and in doing so, they end up having a problem with modern DSP solutions, which can’t process a DSD signal. At some point PS audio will have to realize the world is running PCM as it opens the door for everything modern audio and a DSP can do things better than any passive cross-over filter, EQ or others analog signal manipulation can do. Even “tube sound” is better done in a DSP as you can fine tune it freely and won’t have issues with thermal dependencies or age related drift.
After losing my loft( 23’ x 52’)😢 I have now a small room and made four 8” subs that are in different spots in the room. It is not as good as the bigger space, but the four subs help.DSP EQ only for the bass also helps.
when you starts to think about bass wavelengths in a listening room , i could only correlate , to a radar microwave in a resonant cavity , of a microwave mixer , is there any correlations ?
My sub (REF T5-X) is in the center of one end of a 12x45 foot double wide with hardwood floors. I use the whole wall, and my bass is down to about 30..There is not just one way.
Hey Paul, greetings from Potsdam, Germany. What do you think about Coaxial loudspeaker like Gaithain speakers? And why are not more speakers build that way?
Je ne sais pas and I don’t really care that much. In all the years I’ve been listening to music, there have been hardly any recordings with deep bass that I enjoyed. Well, maybe Brian Bromberg’s “Wood” and other large acoustic standup AA Bass instruments.
I bought a pair of expensive speakers that had poor bass. So I bought a subwoofer to fix the speakers. That ruined the tightness of the bass and muddied up location (no matter what you hear from an "expert" you CAN hear where the bass is coming from - just shut off your main speakers and listen to the sub. So I bought a second subwoofer. I found it only helped if I put the subs right next to the mains and then only by running each off its respective stereo channel. That didn't totally fix the poor bass so I sold the expensive speakers and went back to my older speakers that had good bass to start with.
In my experience it's better to let the speakers run full range (no crossover point to hand off bass to the sub), and place the subs where it fixes the room modes. Otherwise it does sound as you described.
My car designs produce sub sonic concusion/percussion bass. My home system in mobile home, 16x 30 room resonates 20 hz effortlessly. Recliner and cell phone trembles. I don't dare port or add passive radiators, 114db 20 to 20k is plenty. Had to diy, face it most folks are better off learning from yall experts and studying carefully then spending their hard earned money. 😊
Agree with "every decent system out there ought to have a sub". But, also true is "every decent (digital) system out there ought to have a DSP based equalizer". Yes, you can move your subwoofer around to get better sub bass, but don't fool yourself to think you can make it perfect just by speaker/subwoofer placement and room treatment. You should always try to get it as perfect as possible with those means, but seriously, it's more than likely you still have some serious tonal balance issues and if you are really into perfection, you need a DSP based EQ to get things further enhanced. And no, I would never recommend an analog equalizer. If your system is pure old-style analog, you will have to live with less than stellar tuning. I have a pair of KEF LS60 and they are excellent in getting this topic right. I have mine connected to two subwoofers.
Sending his kids to a British school that they really like and is so much better than what's available here in the States. His work allows him to live where he wants so why not? And the food...ooh, la, la!
It would be uncomfortable to wear 9m long headphones. I call them low frequence re-enforcement drivers a definate must have, the term sub is not correct for Hifi IMO.
You are not wrong Paul, just look at the after market car audio market to see this same truth...but anyone within a mile can feel it even more. LOL Hearing 40 htz though...that is questionable... but you'll feel it for sure! It's cool to see how they set up and test/measure bass for the high end concerts now days to control and disperse the energy (SLP) evenly to the crowd.
No truth to it at all. Sound waves don't stop when they hit a surface, they reflect and continue until their amplitude falls below the level of audibility. Below 20 Hz is possible in ANY sized room no matter how small. Ever used headphones? Ever heard low bass in a car?
@@glenncurry3041 I haven't the foggiest idea how you derived that from my previous response. It's useless talking to someone who lacks even basic reading comprehension.
If the distance from the loudspeaker to the ears would really matter with frequency wavelengths you wouldn't be able to hear any bass with headphones. In reality it's quite the opposite. 😉
It only took me 53 years to accept I needed a subwoofer and it is a great one too (Dynaudio 9S). Better late than never!
Part of the question is whether you can actually "hear" 30Hz? Technically you do not "hear" anything below about 120hz. Below that you detect bone vibrations in the skull (feet?). Not vibrations into the ear canal. Plus because of the distance between ears relative to wavelength, below around that same frequency the brain can not detect pressure differences left to right ear. Which is why a sub can be placed where it works best in the room because a good sub is never detectable as to it's location.
We DETECT the pressure from low frequencies. If the room is too short to allow the wave to develop. A sub can still modulate room pressure at that rate.
Thats good to know as i have 1 sub set up around 120Hz to deal with a big bass null and i wasn't sure if it was in the range of being able to localise it.
If the wavelengths were a deciding factor - there would be no bass in cars. The trick is that to get tones below the room dimensions, we need a pressure chamber. Our body then does not "hear", it feels. If you have bass potent speakers, close all doors and windows to "hear" the difference. There is some music that I always listen to with the doors closed (pop music with slam and thump) and others with them open (unamplified acoustic instruments).
In a car with a pretty decent or good system that plays both great bass and loud then you get better bass when opening a window.. This is my experience in every single car I have been in. It's lile comparing a closed box vs ported box. When opening a window you get a bass boost in sole frequencies.
And our body both feels and hears the sound.. Atleast down to 25-20Hz.
Once again you provide us with a very simple example of how to possibly handle a complex problem. Yup! just moving a sub or speakers around could solve the problem with hearing certain frequencies. Now I wouldn't say that there are no rules when setting up a system and wanting the maximum of listening pleasure from it. But you do have to be willing to bend them on occasion in order to achieve that goal of great sound. There is the challenge of room size and shape to contend with. But as Paul stated, it can be done if you have some knowledge of the how and why of a sound stage, but are willing to experiment a little.
I think alot of people don't understand how sound works and they imagine physical sound waves being similar to water waves. How sound propagates and graphic represention of sound are different. Sound is propagation of positive and negative pressure. Positive pressure pushes eardrum/mic membrane in and negative pressure pulls it out. How far the membrane is pushed and pulled equates to volume and the time it takes to push and pull the membrane is the frequency of the sound. The key is time/period which equates to frequency. A bass note is instatenous to our ears because of the high speed of sound. A mic is able to record low frequency at near field and we can hear bass using earphones because time/period (hz (circle per second)) is what determines the frequency of sound. Wavelength can be calculated using time and speed of sound.
thanks paul
My personal experience with bass in my near field system was not really surprising but unexpected. I use 2 12" subs in simple stereo positions 7 feet from my listening position and it's wonderful. But walking out of the room , which is still aligned with the left channel sub, the bass character is noticeably richer as I get about 13 to 15 feet away. If I had the ability to rearrange my room in such a way to get that 13 feet or so to the subs I know it would be amazing, but would it be less amazing for all the rest of the sound field? Almost certainly not, as the the main speakers are spectacular at only 5 feet to my ears. So as we hear time and time again, everything is compromise, especially in an average residential home. I am positively envious of you folks with dedicated music rooms where you can design and maximize for full wide frequency sound. That being said, I have maximized for the room I have and can hardly believe the sound I do have. That doesn't mean that every time I leave the room while the music is playing, I am not reminded of the additional potential my subs could have.
My main system is in the basement . When I stand near the top of stairwell I can "feel" more bass than when I'm actually standing in front of the sub in the basement. The stairwell acts as a "tuned" transmission line for the ultra-low frequencies.
Paul's power bill must be very high if all that equipment is turned on even on the weekend when no one is working.
In the 1970s, the original PS Audio shop put on a speaker performance clinic
which used near-field measurement and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis.
Admittedly, the cheap speakers I took in were far from worthy of such testing,
but there were no rules about that.
Nice it's nice........only you Paul....Best regards!
You did not mention that we hear pressure, not wave length. As long as you can develop pressure in the ear canal you will hear the lows.
With headphones you can hear a 20hz tone perfect indeed.
Lows, below around 120hz, are too long to enter and modulate the ear canal. Any detection of vibrations that low in frequency is bone conduction in front of the ear canal.
@@glenncurry3041Yes, but it doesn’t really matter for how reflected waves are impacting the perceived sound pressure level at a given frequency through the doubler effect.
We hear both amplitude and freq
@@davidstevens7809 The point is that our rooms impact the frequency response through adding multi-path waves to the sum of what we hear with doubler effects canceling or amplifying individual frequencies and also causing slower decays making sound waves stay longer in the time domain. Moving around speakers (including subwoofers), seating position and adding room treatment can help but Paul continue to deny that a DSP EQ is the holy grail of getting the best out of a given room in a modern digital system. PS audio decided to oversell DSD and in doing so, they end up having a problem with modern DSP solutions, which can’t process a DSD signal. At some point PS audio will have to realize the world is running PCM as it opens the door for everything modern audio and a DSP can do things better than any passive cross-over filter, EQ or others analog signal manipulation can do. Even “tube sound” is better done in a DSP as you can fine tune it freely and won’t have issues with thermal dependencies or age related drift.
Nice is a very convenient spot to live when you want to go to the Monaco Grand prix.
I'd prefer Menton. Also near to Monaco and not quite as expensive as Nice.
Formula 1 rules!
If you don’t have a sub I suggest getting one. That may lead to two. Once you hear a sub you can’t unhear it. Better bass is best.
is there such a thing , as a low frequency bass enhancements , optimum , listenings room size , that can designed by an audio specialists .
If you need space for the full wavelength, headphones would be horrible.
After losing my loft( 23’ x 52’)😢 I have now a small room and made four 8” subs that are in different spots in the room. It is not as good as the bigger space, but the four subs help.DSP EQ only for the bass also helps.
when you starts to think about bass wavelengths in a listening room , i could only correlate , to a radar microwave in a resonant cavity , of a microwave mixer , is there any correlations ?
My sub (REF T5-X) is in the center of one end of a 12x45 foot double wide with hardwood floors. I use the whole wall, and my bass is down to about 30..There is not just one way.
I agree with the subwoofers in the systems. It’s no doubt. It’s fact. Proved.
Hey Paul, greetings from Potsdam, Germany. What do you think about Coaxial loudspeaker like Gaithain speakers? And why are not more speakers build that way?
Je ne sais pas and I don’t really care that much. In all the years I’ve been listening to music, there have been hardly any recordings with deep bass that I enjoyed. Well, maybe Brian Bromberg’s “Wood” and other large acoustic standup AA Bass instruments.
Port on speaker on front or on back,what is best?
Just install a Meyer Systems VLFC and be done with it 😊
Interesting to see all these car audio people think the air they move is actually reproducing a low frequency and not just moving air.
I bought a pair of expensive speakers that had poor bass. So I bought a subwoofer to fix the speakers. That ruined the tightness of the bass and muddied up location (no matter what you hear from an "expert" you CAN hear where the bass is coming from - just shut off your main speakers and listen to the sub. So I bought a second subwoofer. I found it only helped if I put the subs right next to the mains and then only by running each off its respective stereo channel. That didn't totally fix the poor bass so I sold the expensive speakers and went back to my older speakers that had good bass to start with.
In my experience it's better to let the speakers run full range (no crossover point to hand off bass to the sub), and place the subs where it fixes the room modes. Otherwise it does sound as you described.
If the premise was true, headphones would only work from 10 KHz and up.
Yep yep and yep.
My car designs produce sub sonic concusion/percussion bass. My home system in mobile home, 16x 30 room resonates 20 hz effortlessly. Recliner and cell phone trembles.
I don't dare port or add passive radiators, 114db 20 to 20k is plenty. Had to diy, face it most folks are better off learning from yall experts and studying carefully then spending their hard earned money. 😊
Or treat it with powerful absorbers
Agree with "every decent system out there ought to have a sub". But, also true is "every decent (digital) system out there ought to have a DSP based equalizer". Yes, you can move your subwoofer around to get better sub bass, but don't fool yourself to think you can make it perfect just by speaker/subwoofer placement and room treatment. You should always try to get it as perfect as possible with those means, but seriously, it's more than likely you still have some serious tonal balance issues and if you are really into perfection, you need a DSP based EQ to get things further enhanced. And no, I would never recommend an analog equalizer. If your system is pure old-style analog, you will have to live with less than stellar tuning. I have a pair of KEF LS60 and they are excellent in getting this topic right. I have mine connected to two subwoofers.
what is he doing out there in France then??
Sending his kids to a British school that they really like and is so much better than what's available here in the States. His work allows him to live where he wants so why not? And the food...ooh, la, la!
Paul ...
It would be uncomfortable to wear 9m long headphones. I call them low frequence re-enforcement drivers a definate must have, the term sub is not correct for Hifi IMO.
You can hear 20 Hz, even on good headphones
the lowest my ear can hear is 6hz, but i can't hear 7hz, and i can hear all the way up to about 13k hz. weird huh?
You are not wrong Paul, just look at the after market car audio market to see this same truth...but anyone within a mile can feel it even more. LOL
Hearing 40 htz though...that is questionable... but you'll feel it for sure!
It's cool to see how they set up and test/measure bass for the high end concerts now days to control and disperse the energy (SLP) evenly to the crowd.
No truth to it at all. Sound waves don't stop when they hit a surface, they reflect and continue until their amplitude falls below the level of audibility. Below 20 Hz is possible in ANY sized room no matter how small. Ever used headphones? Ever heard low bass in a car?
Reflections cause comb filter cancellations and increases at different frequencies and nodes.
@@glenncurry3041 That is completely irrelevant. We're talking about the ability to reproduce low frequencies in small rooms, not phase cancellation.
@@turboboost99 WOW so your magic room has no phase cancellations? Please provide this singular technology to the rest of the world We wait anxiously!
@@glenncurry3041 I haven't the foggiest idea how you derived that from my previous response. It's useless talking to someone who lacks even basic reading comprehension.
@@turboboost99 Thanks for explain why I won't be responding here any more. No you do not seem capable of understanding this.
If the room size was really a limit, headphones wouldn't work with about 2" of "room"
If the distance from the loudspeaker to the ears would really matter with frequency wavelengths you wouldn't be able to hear any bass with headphones. In reality it's quite the opposite. 😉