Awesome explanation on this very interesting question. Still people needs to be educated by the difference beteeen subwoofer territory low bass below 40hz vs traditional bass typically reach up to 50hz. Where the later's capable of bringing scale in the room. I hope this topic gets discuss by sir Paul. Thanks in advance.
That sub behind the sofa just keeps on growing! In previous posts it started off at 18" then it's 20" and now it's 25" Thanks Paul for all your posts ;-)
@@scottyo64 Don’t get me started; you need to have a soundproof room during cricket season just so you can enjoy your music when you don’t want to turn it up loud.. those things annoy the piss out of me. We have way too many of them around here!!
@@endrizoMy ignorant neighbor once told me how she hated the way a cricket hiding in the corner of her room could throw its voice across the room so you couldn’t find it. I told her “ my god You have those dreaded ventrilocrikets” she just looked at me like I was serious 😂
Paul do you remember the Janis subs from the 70s and up? It's slot loaded. Ahead of my time, but when i switched from horn speakers to stand mounts, my trusty Klipsch RSW-15 was just too much and i couldn't get it to level match or sound right anymore so i sold it and went with the cheap vintage Janis with its interphase amp out of curiosity. Pleasantly surprised it sounded so musical to match with my standmounts at such a budget price and with fully variable phase, i could place it anywhere and adjust the phase(i know you can find that in sub amps, but built in plate amps on subs are typically just 0 degrees or 180 degrees selectable. A shame. The variable phase blew me away to place the LF at my listening position). I suppose matching woofer construction is important too. I have paper cone drivers throughout, but if you have kevlar drivers or something, then you should probably match the sub driver. If you have horn loaded speakers, a giant horn loaded sub or tapered sub matches best.
Is it not that the lower frequency waves energy arrives at both ears at roughly the same time due to the length of the pressure wave compared to higher frequencies that would not arrive at both ears at exactly the same time? I notice that as I have got older and my high frequency hearing is not identical from my left to right ear that instruments like a flute will travel across the stereo image slightly with the corresponding pitch of the notes played. It's annoying.
I had my sub to the left of my sofa integral to the equipment cabinet only bc i was too lazyass to install a connecting cable to place the sub behind the screen. Eventually I bought 3 expensive cables , one for the preamp to the 2 vertically bi-amped power amps, one for the centre speaker and I thought while I'm at it I may as well move the sub behind the screen. Man I'm so glad I did, the room is now filled with bass as you say from all directions
Bass waves are large which means there are peaks and dips in the room. Sometimes getting even bass distribution is difficult, so multiple subwoofers can be used to fill in all the dips. However it was only when I swapped my 12-in conventional subwoofers for a stereo pair of high-performance 8-in Rel subwoofers did I find not just easier to integrate but also a lot smoother too. Maybe I was experiencing a little extra room gain or maybe my living room is only 13 x 11.5 ft. Well anyway after experimenting with all four corners of my little room, I finally went back to where Rel acoustics actually recommend having them placed in the beginning. If interested here's a short 3-minute video of where they now sound best... ua-cam.com/video/xvdqI5qZa6g/v-deo.html
i am convinced people need to look into car audiophile discussions and techniques to learn more about such things, creating a soundstage is very difficult in a vehicle yet the best sounding set ups i have ever experienced were in cars not listening rooms, and i have listened to some very sophisticated audio systems.
Cars are usually the worst case scenario to create a decent soundstage and frequency spectrum. You have at least two and up to five listening positions at once in a very limited space - so it can only be a weak compromise.
I did car audio installs for a number of years and I work in the pro AV industry for over 20 years. Home audio is and has been a hobby for a very long time. With that being said, all of these environments are different and the goals or what we are looking for in each is completely different. 1 thing is for certain, sound stage is never a word used in car audio because the environment does not allow for it. 2 channel home audio can be the most satisfying when executed correctly, problem is that a vast majority of people do not know what stereo really is capable of doing. As Trump says "you don't know what you don't know till you know". The best way to say it is, 3D glasses can make the image jump out of the screen and move around well beyond the flat 2D panel. Stereo imaging has the same effect for audio, making the speakers disappear
horseshit, i have 40 years of competition car audio under my belt, sound stage is the first consideration in SQ competition and non competitive high end builds. over coming the obstacles in creating a proper stage in a car has taught me much about creating a proper stage at home .@@gerardosolana663
sub mania... i have a friend that is also a tweeter maniac.. he installed several tactically placed tweeters here and there in the room. the result is crazy. so maybe a Hi mania is starting ??
This is the reason I no longer have a subwoofer for my stereo setups. I can’t seem to get the room placement right where its seamless with the front soundstage.
.....plus, a low bass frequency of 40 Hz has a long wavelength (over 8m) which is usually greater than the side a typical listening room. This is the main reason we can't delineate where these low frequencies are coming from or how far away they are. It's also the reason only 1 sub-woofer is needed. If however you are at a huge outdoor concert, 100m from the main stage and there was a sub woofer on the right of the stage, you will be able to pick up the rough direction or location of that bass source. In a room however, you are physically engulfed or encapsulated with a sound that has an 8m wavelength.
It's not the placement of the sub(s) or speakers that causes the problem. It's the position of your listening chair. Change your listening position, change your life.
I have a hard time experiencing omnidirectionality of a subwoofer. I have had Rel, Klipsch and Svs. The crossover is set to 40 hz. And still I always hear where the sub is. The bass is coming louder from the direction where the sub is. I have tried different positions in the room and it's hard to eliminate the sense of location. For instance I can always hear whether is the sub placed in front or besides me. To get a sense of blending its best to get sub near the main speakers. Placing the sub behind me like Paul said to be doing at PS audio doesn't make a coherent soundstage in my experience.
Is that because you have room issues? If the bass is bouncing off walls and floors and interfering with itself you might get some strange effects maybe?
Omnidirectionality is partially true for me: I can't localize one or two subs, although I can feel (and measure) a pressure asymmetry when only one sub is used (not located in center of any dimension).
Hi Paul! Is there anything inherently wrong with setting my subwoofer high cut as high as 140 Hz? This is giving me the smoothest frequency response measurements but I never hear about anyone doing it this way.
A Subwoofer can be crossovered at any given parameters of what yours (Subwoofer) allows you to. Given that a Subwoofers duty is to primarily underpin the main speakers in your system. 140 hz does sound a bit high. What type of loudspeakers are you using for example full-range (large) or stand mounts, also your amplifier- is it an Av processor, intergrated or pre - power combination.
140 or even higher can be the best option, having high pass on mains and stereo subwoofers helps with this. even better in all scenarios is full dsp with time delay for mains to match everything up perfectly and adding equalization. i cross my subwoofers at 180hz
Nothing at all wrong, it's a great idea if the results are better. No rules ... use whatever tools necessary to achieve the blend desired. (Physically) - Location - Proximity - Boundary loading (Signal Shaping) - Time delay - Phase adjust - Polarity flip - Low pass freq/slope - EQ Your situation illustrates the key and vital importance of optimizing the sub/mains crossover ... exploring for a superior experience.
Placing a sub in a listening position is easier said than done. First you need to be a weight lifter if the sub is big. Then you need long audio cables and power cords. I will stick to my system of placing the sub next to the right speaker, play a song with deep bass passages then use the low pass filter and volume control. Voila Monsieur Rat.
Hallo! There is no issues when a DSP used as a preamp (DSP in subwoofers is in a totally wrong place in the system!) Then it is NO problems to put a ms delay between the mains and subwoofer so the sound arive exactly at the same time. That is just a small tweak that a DSP offer to you audio enthusiast. (You can for example easy measure the distance difference and when you know the speed of sound at your temperature and air pressure you then can calculate the time .) Welcome to the the twentieth century. And no more excuses like "our hearing is sensitive at bla bla bla.." when there is solutions to solve issues and make it better.. ❤😂😅
Missed opportunity, there should have been a slight cut midway, and the blue number should have increased by one. Or better yet, someone should have yanked on it with fishing wire from the back.
Sound travels c 343 meters per second. If the sub woofer is 2 meters closer to you than the other speakers, then the sound from the sub-woofer reaches you 2/343 seconds sooner = 0.006 seconds sooner….. you’re not going to hear any difference in timing because 6 thousandth of a second is a teeny weeny time difference.
Some dips (cancellation) and bumps will change by moving the subs. Room will have axial room modes, although position of subs (important to identify non minimum phase frequencies) is also important. The position of listening position is also key.
I talked about time difference before. But concerning whether the sub-woofer is in front of you or behind you….. we only have 2 ears (or most of us do) so the brain can only hear 2 sources of noise to make deductions from. So by sound alone you can’t tell whether the noise is in front of you or behind you (assuming you don’t move your head). The brain adds the info from its ears to the info from its eyes….. ‘the main speakers are in front of me so surely the sound stage is in front of me’ the brain reasons…. and so the brain places the source of the sub-woofer in front of you
That's not how human ears and brains work. Of course you can hear if a sound comes from behind or in front of you without using your eyes. Ask a biologist or a doctor.
I’m not so sure….. Yes we do decode the source of a sound but I think what happens is you hear a noise and in trying to locate it you rotate your head. That then alters the noise that each ear receives (a combination of one ear becoming closer and the other ear being shielded by the head and pinna (ear flap). The brain is very good at detecting tiny variations and changes in noise and it is that information that allows it to decode the direction of the sound.
@@timothyfrost6543 You don't have to be sure. Others are. Why bother with surround sound systems or Dolby Atmos if we couldn't locate these multiple sound sources - even blindfolded? There's a reason why our ears and inner ear systems are built like they are. E. g.: Vertical and front/back localization rely on spectral-shape cues derived from direction-dependent filtering properties of the external ears (Source: National Library of Medicine/USA). There's much more to read for you.
@@Fastvoice Not below the frequency who's wavelength is greater than the distance between your ears. Then the sound pressure wave is the same at each ear and no directional information exists.
Interesting theories, but the brain is still using info from just 2 receivers to interpret and fill in the gaps. It’s a good job that the brain can be deceived otherwise I don’t think that the creation of the illusion of a soundstage in your listening space would be possible. (I actually think we might be saying the same things but just in different ways)
Sorry to say that but I disagree. I've done multiple tests and I always hear the placement of a subwoofer. For me it's like having one ear clogged. I have to have 2 symetrically placed subwoofers to feel right.
Sorry, but I really don't agree. Everything from the angle of the sub firing to the surface it's absorbed or reflected from (and much more) has lots to do with your response. I don't mean to be insulting, but the production of music has changed dramatically in the past few decades and mixes are mastered on totally different equipment. This means the philosophy of our best modern producers have influenced our listening experience so much that, depending on your taste in music, it also defines whether you are getting an accurate image.
STOP! If you are an audiophile, or enjoy music, then DON'T follow this advice! Unless you like muddy, boomy bass. There are much better methods for creating clean, even, more accurate sounding bass that represents the source better without the guess work.
What happened to the Audiophile philosophy the Subwoofer is supposed to disappear..😳 What..The…🫢 some days it disappears while other days it doesn’t disappear..😳
Awesome explanation on this very interesting question.
Still people needs to be educated by the difference beteeen subwoofer territory low bass below 40hz vs traditional bass typically reach up to 50hz. Where the later's capable of bringing scale in the room. I hope this topic gets discuss by sir Paul. Thanks in advance.
Paul, you’re awesome !! Again you bring simplicity to things that are perceived complex. Wisdom is ever abounding… 😂
Beautifully said
That was enlightening. Thanks Uncle Paul! 😉
That sub behind the sofa just keeps on growing! In previous posts it started off at 18" then it's 20" and now it's 25" Thanks Paul for all your posts ;-)
As we get older, the bigger the sub. It helps relieve constipation when you hit those real notes.
Thunder would be a natural low frequency sound that's harder to locate than a sharper sound.
can you locate a cricket?
@@endrizoeventually
@@scottyo64 Don’t get me started; you need to have a soundproof room during cricket season just so you can enjoy your music when you don’t want to turn it up loud.. those things annoy the piss out of me. We have way too many of them around here!!
@@endrizoMy ignorant neighbor once told me how she hated the way a cricket hiding in the corner of her room could throw its voice across the room so you couldn’t find it. I told her “ my god You have those dreaded ventrilocrikets” she just looked at me like I was serious 😂
The lightening usually gives away the location.
Greatest intro!
Paul do you remember the Janis subs from the 70s and up? It's slot loaded. Ahead of my time, but when i switched from horn speakers to stand mounts, my trusty Klipsch RSW-15 was just too much and i couldn't get it to level match or sound right anymore so i sold it and went with the cheap vintage Janis with its interphase amp out of curiosity. Pleasantly surprised it sounded so musical to match with my standmounts at such a budget price and with fully variable phase, i could place it anywhere and adjust the phase(i know you can find that in sub amps, but built in plate amps on subs are typically just 0 degrees or 180 degrees selectable. A shame. The variable phase blew me away to place the LF at my listening position).
I suppose matching woofer construction is important too. I have paper cone drivers throughout, but if you have kevlar drivers or something, then you should probably match the sub driver. If you have horn loaded speakers, a giant horn loaded sub or tapered sub matches best.
Is it not that the lower frequency waves energy arrives at both ears at roughly the same time due to the length of the pressure wave compared to higher frequencies that would not arrive at both ears at exactly the same time? I notice that as I have got older and my high frequency hearing is not identical from my left to right ear that instruments like a flute will travel across the stereo image slightly with the corresponding pitch of the notes played. It's annoying.
I had my sub to the left of my sofa integral to the equipment cabinet only bc i was too lazyass to install a connecting cable to place the sub behind the screen. Eventually I bought 3 expensive cables , one for the preamp to the 2 vertically bi-amped power amps, one for the centre speaker and I thought while I'm at it I may as well move the sub behind the screen. Man I'm so glad I did, the room is now filled with bass as you say from all directions
Bass waves are large which means there are peaks and dips in the room. Sometimes getting even bass distribution is difficult, so multiple subwoofers can be used to fill in all the dips. However it was only when I swapped my 12-in conventional subwoofers for a stereo pair of high-performance 8-in Rel subwoofers did I find not just easier to integrate but also a lot smoother too. Maybe I was experiencing a little extra room gain or maybe my living room is only 13 x 11.5 ft. Well anyway after experimenting with all four corners of my little room, I finally went back to where Rel acoustics actually recommend having them placed in the beginning.
If interested here's a short 3-minute video of where they now sound best...
ua-cam.com/video/xvdqI5qZa6g/v-deo.html
i am convinced people need to look into car audiophile discussions and techniques to learn more about such things, creating a soundstage is very difficult in a vehicle yet the best sounding set ups i have ever experienced were in cars not listening rooms, and i have listened to some very sophisticated audio systems.
Cars are usually the worst case scenario to create a decent soundstage and frequency spectrum. You have at least two and up to five listening positions at once in a very limited space - so it can only be a weak compromise.
I did car audio installs for a number of years and I work in the pro AV industry for over 20 years. Home audio is and has been a hobby for a very long time. With that being said, all of these environments are different and the goals or what we are looking for in each is completely different. 1 thing is for certain, sound stage is never a word used in car audio because the environment does not allow for it. 2 channel home audio can be the most satisfying when executed correctly, problem is that a vast majority of people do not know what stereo really is capable of doing. As Trump says "you don't know what you don't know till you know". The best way to say it is, 3D glasses can make the image jump out of the screen and move around well beyond the flat 2D panel. Stereo imaging has the same effect for audio, making the speakers disappear
horseshit, i have 40 years of competition car audio under my belt, sound stage is the first consideration in SQ competition and non competitive high end builds. over coming the obstacles in creating a proper stage in a car has taught me much about creating a proper stage at home .@@gerardosolana663
come listen to my competition winning car set up.
@@Fastvoice
sub mania... i have a friend that is also a tweeter maniac.. he installed several tactically placed tweeters here and there in the room. the result is crazy. so maybe a Hi mania is starting ??
This is the reason I no longer have a subwoofer for my stereo setups. I can’t seem to get the room placement right where its seamless with the front soundstage.
I hear Iceland has some brutal terrain.
.....plus, a low bass frequency of 40 Hz has a long wavelength (over 8m) which is usually greater than the side a typical listening room.
This is the main reason we can't delineate where these low frequencies are coming from or how far away they are.
It's also the reason only 1 sub-woofer is needed.
If however you are at a huge outdoor concert, 100m from the main stage and there was a sub woofer on the right of the stage, you will be able to pick up the rough direction or location of that bass source.
In a room however, you are physically engulfed or encapsulated with a sound that has an 8m wavelength.
It's not the placement of the sub(s) or speakers that causes the problem. It's the position of your listening chair. Change your listening position, change your life.
I have a hard time experiencing omnidirectionality of a subwoofer. I have had Rel, Klipsch and Svs. The crossover is set to 40 hz. And still I always hear where the sub is. The bass is coming louder from the direction where the sub is. I have tried different positions in the room and it's hard to eliminate the sense of location. For instance I can always hear whether is the sub placed in front or besides me. To get a sense of blending its best to get sub near the main speakers. Placing the sub behind me like Paul said to be doing at PS audio doesn't make a coherent soundstage in my experience.
one sub is a compromise, get two and hook them up as stereo.
If omnidirectionality was true this wouldn't be nessisary right?
@@MegaM563 people give simplifications, if anything else happens to give you the perception of location or other effect you need to work around that.
Is that because you have room issues? If the bass is bouncing off walls and floors and interfering with itself you might get some strange effects maybe?
Omnidirectionality is partially true for me: I can't localize one or two subs, although I can feel (and measure) a pressure asymmetry when only one sub is used (not located in center of any dimension).
I am 35 and don’t like to leave my couch or bed. 😢
Hi Paul! Is there anything inherently wrong with setting my subwoofer high cut as high as 140 Hz? This is giving me the smoothest frequency response measurements but I never hear about anyone doing it this way.
A Subwoofer can be crossovered at any given parameters of what yours (Subwoofer) allows you to. Given that a Subwoofers duty is to primarily underpin the main speakers in your system. 140 hz does sound a bit high. What type of loudspeakers are you using for example full-range (large) or stand mounts, also your amplifier- is it an Av processor, intergrated or pre - power combination.
What kind of main speakers do you have?
140 or even higher can be the best option, having high pass on mains and stereo subwoofers helps with this.
even better in all scenarios is full dsp with time delay for mains to match everything up perfectly and adding equalization.
i cross my subwoofers at 180hz
Nothing at all wrong, it's a great idea if the results are better. No rules ... use whatever tools necessary to achieve the blend desired.
(Physically)
- Location
- Proximity
- Boundary loading
(Signal Shaping)
- Time delay
- Phase adjust
- Polarity flip
- Low pass freq/slope
- EQ
Your situation illustrates the key and vital importance of optimizing the sub/mains crossover ... exploring for a superior experience.
@@MegaM563 Celestion Ditton 551
I think Paul is in UK right now 😆
Directionally is one thing.. timing may be another one isn’t???
Placing a sub in a listening position is easier said than done. First you need to be a weight lifter if the sub is big. Then you need long audio cables and power cords. I will stick to my system of placing the sub next to the right speaker, play a song with deep bass passages then use the low pass filter and volume control. Voila Monsieur Rat.
Just use some cheapo interlink and a extension cord. It's just to see where to place the sub, not about quality of the cables at that point.
Hallo! There is no issues when a DSP used as a preamp (DSP in subwoofers is in a totally wrong place in the system!)
Then it is NO problems to put a ms delay between the mains and subwoofer so the sound arive exactly at the same time.
That is just a small tweak that a DSP offer to you audio enthusiast.
(You can for example easy measure the distance difference and when you know the speed of sound at your temperature and air pressure you then can calculate the time .)
Welcome to the the twentieth century. And no more excuses like "our hearing is sensitive at bla bla bla.." when there is solutions to solve issues and make it better.. ❤😂😅
I'm patiently awaiting the 21st Century for the resolution of all audio issues forever through dsp worship.
@@grumpy9478😂
As the old saying says:
If you waiting to take the next step then you will be standing on one leg.
just as "if you are forever stepping, you will never arrive."@@AmazonasBiotop
Missed opportunity, there should have been a slight cut midway, and the blue number should have increased by one. Or better yet, someone should have yanked on it with fishing wire from the back.
2:09 / 2:23 Also the way conspiracy theories are born. lol
But what is about the delay?
Delay means distance - so it's not detectable for the human ear when the sound has a very low frequency. But that's also mentioned in the video.
@@Fastvoice I do notice when a too long delay happen between two subs. The bass gets muddy kinda
@@ForTN0X Sounds like some kind of phase cancellation. So it seems to be more of an interaction between the two subs and/or the room.
A caveman's subwoofer is an elephant? *_lol_*
Does he know about and understand GAAP ? 😀
Generally accepted audio placement? :-)
Sound travels c 343 meters per second. If the sub woofer is 2 meters closer to you than the other speakers, then the sound from the sub-woofer reaches you 2/343 seconds sooner = 0.006 seconds sooner….. you’re not going to hear any difference in timing because 6 thousandth of a second is a teeny weeny time difference.
haa yeh.. but tell that to wilson audio. the time alignment maniacs
The dips and bumps in response are created by the room. Not by where you put the sub. You must measure room then treat and plan from that.
Some dips (cancellation) and bumps will change by moving the subs. Room will have axial room modes, although position of subs (important to identify non minimum phase frequencies) is also important. The position of listening position is also key.
You can't really localize thunder for a reason...
what about a cricket?
I talked about time difference before. But concerning whether the sub-woofer is in front of you or behind you….. we only have 2 ears (or most of us do) so the brain can only hear 2 sources of noise to make deductions from. So by sound alone you can’t tell whether the noise is in front of you or behind you (assuming you don’t move your head). The brain adds the info from its ears to the info from its eyes….. ‘the main speakers are in front of me so surely the sound stage is in front of me’ the brain reasons…. and so the brain places the source of the sub-woofer in front of you
That's not how human ears and brains work. Of course you can hear if a sound comes from behind or in front of you without using your eyes. Ask a biologist or a doctor.
I’m not so sure….. Yes we do decode the source of a sound but I think what happens is you hear a noise and in trying to locate it you rotate your head. That then alters the noise that each ear receives (a combination of one ear becoming closer and the other ear being shielded by the head and pinna (ear flap). The brain is very good at detecting tiny variations and changes in noise and it is that information that allows it to decode the direction of the sound.
@@timothyfrost6543 You don't have to be sure. Others are. Why bother with surround sound systems or Dolby Atmos if we couldn't locate these multiple sound sources - even blindfolded? There's a reason why our ears and inner ear systems are built like they are. E. g.: Vertical and front/back localization rely on spectral-shape cues derived from direction-dependent filtering properties of the external ears (Source: National Library of Medicine/USA). There's much more to read for you.
@@Fastvoice Not below the frequency who's wavelength is greater than the distance between your ears. Then the sound pressure wave is the same at each ear and no directional information exists.
Interesting theories, but the brain is still using info from just 2 receivers to interpret and fill in the gaps. It’s a good job that the brain can be deceived otherwise I don’t think that the creation of the illusion of a soundstage in your listening space would be possible.
(I actually think we might be saying the same things but just in different ways)
We could go on about the technicalities all day, but really, who cares if the deep components to a specific sound slack by a 0.000000001 of a second?
Again ? What´s happening Paul ? You got like 5 issues and reprise them almost in sequence every week ?
Sorry to say that but I disagree. I've done multiple tests and I always hear the placement of a subwoofer. For me it's like having one ear clogged. I have to have 2 symetrically placed subwoofers to feel right.
well..yeah..but you cant locate a cricket.
@@clickbeetle2720 haaa
Sorry, but I really don't agree. Everything from the angle of the sub firing to the surface it's absorbed or reflected from (and much more) has lots to do with your response. I don't mean to be insulting, but the production of music has changed dramatically in the past few decades and mixes are mastered on totally different equipment. This means the philosophy of our best modern producers have influenced our listening experience so much that, depending on your taste in music, it also defines whether you are getting an accurate image.
STOP!
If you are an audiophile, or enjoy music, then DON'T follow this advice!
Unless you like muddy, boomy bass.
There are much better methods for creating clean, even, more accurate sounding bass that represents the source better without the guess work.
Oh goodness, Jon. If you have a better method then please spend the time to share it with us instead of just making claims.
What happened to the Audiophile philosophy the Subwoofer is supposed to disappear..😳
What..The…🫢
some days it disappears while other days it doesn’t disappear..😳