Dedicated sub?

Looking for a small dedicated subwoofer to pair with my JBL LSR305 5" Active Studio Monitors. Any recommendations?

Have a look at the sub that's made to pair with them the LSR310S. It's fairly compact and should blend well, since it is made to pair up with the 3 series of speakers. If that's too expensive JBL has a consumer sub the ES150P that's half the price direct form them (cheapest I see it) that I've heard and it is pretty decent. Nothing special, but it gets the job done.

Would that just plug into my motherboard the same way my 305's does? I believe there is a grey low pass output on the Gene VI. Need both the left and right inputs?

Thanks!

What you'd do is plug the sub in to your motherboard, and the the outputs from the sub to your speakers. Most soundcards don't really understand the concept of 2.1 and just output 2.0, so something external needs to handle the crossover. You have to set them to 5.1 before the start handling subs. I'm not sure about that particular motherboard, but given that my ASUS seems to work that way, I'd guess it is the same.

The LSR310S knows how to do that. You plug your soundcard in to it, set the crossover to 80Hz, and then plug the speakers in to the outputs it provides. It will cleanly cross the bass over. That's the easiest way to handle things.

The ES150P doesn't do that, it has no outputs. If you could get the soundcard to do LFE output for it and handle the crossover, that'll work. You can also buy an external crossover. I don't know of any good really cheap options. Cheapest you can do is around $100 and that isn't all that great, but would work. You could also just split the signal between speakers and sub and play with the levels and high pass setting on the sub to try and get good sound, but that isn't going to yield the best result.

I know the LSR310S seems a bit expensive, costing as much as the satellites, but subs are a bit pricey and there's something to be said for one that it designed to blend with the speakers you have, and has all the hookups to handle the crossover. It would be my recommendation.

You can get much better subs, of course, but at a much increased price .

I should go full retard and pick up 3 more 305's for a full 5.1 setup.

Thanks for all of the info!

That's not full retard son, that's just having a fun surround setup for gaming. Full retard is doing what I do: Having a great sound system and still updating it . I'm seriously looking at getting some of these.

Good lord! Would like to hear those in person...

Sycraft said:

That's not full retard son, that's just having a fun surround setup for gaming. Full retard is doing what I do: Having a great sound system and still updating it . I'm seriously looking at getting some of these.

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150w to a tweeter and 600w to a 7" driver lol.

Depending on your budget and size limits, the Outlaw M8 and SVS sb-1000 come to mind.

Or a larger, ported SVS for ...



SVS tends to be prized for their ruler flat frequency response. So they'll do just as well in the studio as they will in a home theater.

Nicholars said:

150w to a tweeter and 600w to a 7" driver lol.

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That's peak power, they don't deliver that much sustained. The amps have a lot of headroom for big transients. They do have quite powerful amps though, 270 watts on the woofer 50 watts on the tweeter for pink noise. Well built drivers with lots of excursion, and an overspec amp system. They are high end monitors.

So are you just using a 3.5mm headphone jack to 1/4" trs type cable to connect your monitors to your motherboard vs using an external DAC?

I have the JBL LSR305's with the LSR310S sub. I don't know if the LSR310S I have is an anomaly however I could not get the proper gain with consumer level gear despite the -10 dBV switch that's supposed to enable it to work with consumer gear. There just wasn't enough gain where as the LSR305's were just fine. I ended up having to buy a Behringer Q502USB pro audio mixer ($60, there's a non USB DAC version for $45) to get the proper gain. That being said this sub will knock your socks off if you're used to PC speaker subs. There's nothing like some near field bass. According to a JBL rep in a video on the 310S it has .75" of Xmax which is 19mm, you can't DIY a sub with Xmax and a 200 watt amp like that for $300 so it's kind of a steal for what it is. According to Sweetwater the $300 sale on the 310S ends today, well it says 3/30 while saying today is the last day so who knows. The only other cheapish sub I think would be fine is the Monoprice 605999 10" Powered Studio Monitor as it's about $220 (though after shipping it's probably close to the LSR310S at $300 shipped) and it has the ability to crossover your monitors.

IMO avoid consumer audio subs since almost none of those will crossover your LSR305's too, you'll either have to buy an external crossover (Fmods would work and are cheap) or stick to studio monitor subs.

How do I stop the popping on computer startup and when it wakes up from sleep? My old speakers done it too but these are louder. Any way?

I have a SVS cylinder in the next room. Going to roll it in here for the hell of it...

eth3ton said:

How do I stop the popping on computer startup and when it wakes up from sleep? My old speakers done it too but these are louder. Any way?

I have a SVS cylinder in the next room. Going to roll it in here for the hell of it...

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Turn your speakers off manually until the computer is booted

Sycraft said:

That's peak power, they don't deliver that much sustained. The amps have a lot of headroom for big transients. They do have quite powerful amps though, 270 watts on the woofer 50 watts on the tweeter for pink noise. Well built drivers with lots of excursion, and an overspec amp system. They are high end monitors.

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Lots of excursion necessary to offset the too-small box, but the question is how much do they distort? What would the BL vs excursion plot look like? My guess is those things are more about quantity of sound than quality.

Driving a lot of power out of a small size also requires lots of power and large voice coils which is actually kinda good for lower frequencies but hurts higher frequency production.

If these things do sound good, it's only gonna be on-axis. Which is fine in some setups.

dandragonrage said:

Lots of excursion necessary to offset the too-small box, but the question is how much do they distort? What would the BL vs excursion plot look like? My guess is those things are more about quantity of sound than quality.

Driving a lot of power out of a small size also requires lots of power and large voice coils which is actually kinda good for lower frequencies but hurts higher frequency production.

If these things do sound good, it's only gonna be on-axis. Which is fine in some setups.

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You could go look at their page, which has distortion graphs and specs, or you could go and look at any of the reviews, which call them one of the finest studio monitors ever made.

...or, you could just keep hating on them for no apparent reason, and with no information.

Sycraft said:

You could go look at their page, which has distortion graphs and specs, or you could go and look at any of the reviews, which call them one of the finest studio monitors ever made.

...or, you could just keep hating on them for no apparent reason, and with no information.

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You need to readjust your definition of 'hate' because it is waaaay off. Hate is not synonymous with skepticism (which is what my post was), disagree, dislike, etc. So many children today feel they're "being hated on" when someone doesn't agree 100% with what they say. Edit: Yeah, I saw he changed it to whine in his next worthless post, and he's still pulling that out of thin air, and it's especially funny since I was just discussing and he actually IS whining.

Also I checked out the links you provided (I had no obligation to look up any of this and nothing I said was anywhere near absolute to begin with) and they do provide more info than most speaker manufacturers/builders, and that is good. However it is still fairly basic info with lots of stuff missing. One I already pointed out is a BL vs excursion plot which is NOT provided in your links. Very few speaker manufacturers provide that but it is one of many important measurements in speaker design.

As for the reviews you linked, not one of them impressed me on a technical level.

All I did was point out that they are trying to get a lot of sound out of a small package and no matter how smart an engineer is, there are ALWAYS tradeoffs in doing so. If I felt like researching the product that someone else wants to buy, I'd have done so and I'd have mentioned it. But you should go look up Hoffman's Iron Law.

Don't poke the bear. You'll get more than you asked for.


As for OP, just buy a sub with an adjustable crossover. Pretty much any decent sub used within its limits (output capabilities etc) with an adjustable crossover will work fine with ANY speaker including LSR305s. If you want to use natural rolloffs of the speakers then it would be hard to match. And it is easy to buy a cheap sub that can't keep up with those 305s, sure. But you'd have to actually use the speakers to their potential for that to matter.

dandragonrage said:

You need to readjust your definition of 'hate' because it is waaaay off.

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Ok, "whine about" if you like. I'm really not sure what the point of all your posts are. I posted them simply as a light hearted way to assure the original poster that his desire to have a 5.1 setup of near fields isn't even close to crazy, and that some of us go far more nuts on audio gear.

You then seem to have fixated on the peak power spec (which is more or less just an advertising number) of these things as them being bad, without doing even the most cursory research in to them.

Since you do not seem to have bothered: They are somewhat small because they are nearfield studio monitors, much like the JBLs, though they are actually bigger than many HT speakers with similar sized drivers. Their amps are what you tend to find in monitors of that size. 320 watts RMS total, compare that to the ATC SCM20ASL (250 watts) Genelec 8250A (270 watts) or Dynaudio AIR12 (400 watts) you see it is in line with what you expect for monitors of that size. They are praised for their extremely neutral and accurate sound reproduction, and for doing it at a price point less than some of the contemporaries I listed, though they are hardly the only good high priced nearfield on the market.

I have a Hsu VTF-15h. Buy as much bass as you can afford, you'll never regret it

eth3ton said:

I should go full retard and pick up 3 more 305's for a full 5.1 setup.

Thanks for all of the info!

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I think you would have to step up to LSR308's to go full retard...