Bluesun311
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2013
- Messages
- 2,523
Instant fail if a system requires a sub to sound acceptable...
Sounding "acceptable" isn't what we're going for here.
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Instant fail if a system requires a sub to sound acceptable...
Instant fail if a system requires a sub to sound acceptable...
My horn loaded 18" bass with 2500W amp power rattles windows. Those things... meh.
Meh. 18" excursion so slow it's still trying to move when next beat comes up.
I don't understand buying large, dedicated computer speakers. It seems easier just to use an actual receiver & stereo speakers? I'm currently running an old MCS 3226 receiver and Paradigm Atoms on my main rig and I LOVE them.
This is my friend's setup - Yamaha receiver + Yamaha something or another full tower w/15" woofers + 12" sub from partsexpress
And this is my old college setup - I'm still using the same speakers on my main rig & the same receiver (Yamaha RX-V2400) on my HTPC.
Oh boy... I sense B00nie will be itching to respond to this one. He seems like the type who would want to defend his behemoth subwoofer's honor. I'll just leave this here for fodder:
http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/WooferSpeed.pdf
Edit: And yes... of course his 18" sub makes no sense for most people.
Meh. 18" excursion so slow it's still trying to move when next beat comes up. 2500 watts get you arrested around here unless you on wheels. I'm trying to listen to music at my desk. Not run a movie theatre.
Anyway the 8" sub is under the desk. It's doing the rattling.
Oh boy... I sense B00nie will be itching to respond to this one. He seems like the type who would want to defend his behemoth subwoofer's honor. I'll just leave this here for fodder:
http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/WooferSpeed.pdf
Edit: And yes... of course his 18" sub makes no sense for most people.
like I said, it's over my head. But it doesn't take a degree in physics to see that an 18" woofers excursion is much longer than an 8". I can't help but wonder what the proper crossover frequency is for the sub in question.
I think part of my confusion comes from seeing guys with huge subs that were either shitty quality or they didn't have enough power for. I expect 2500Watts and proper engineering choices on Magnet size etc, would mean Boonies 18 is every bit as fast as any other sub. But I had to read that article first.
Firstly it's not a subwoofer but a bass. It rolls off around 40hz. But to have 40hz in outdoors is a feat that is usually only found in live concerts so I digress. A sub would require many meters long horn. I don't use it indoors either most of the time, I use it when I want to listen to music outdoors on my terrace.
So you are bragging about a "bass" that can't go lower than 40Hz and telling people that don't know anything about "terraces" and putting on outdoor concerts that they are clueless to audio? Why are you in this thread about computer speakers? Do you have a computer on your terrace?
If you've never heard lower than 40hz outdoors you've never been to see a real concert. Like ones where people don't wear black ties. Or just down town the gangsters driving around have more power than your bass in their SUVs.
Zaphod Beeblebrox Extreme Edition!...wish I had 5 arms and 2 heads...
I think Boonie's skirting around the crux of the matter. Because F=MA, a larger, more massive cone can accelerate just as well as a smaller one, IF it has enough motor. Supposing I wanted "fast" bass, I'd prioritize sensitivity.An 18" woofer requires 1/10th of the excursion to play the same amount of sound compared to a 8".
<snip>
A large surface moves air more efficiently and sound is nothing but moving air. A small driver is at disadvantage.
I'm sorry but you just don't know what you're talking about
Sub bass is only good for movies and special effects, real music contains very little information below 30hz with the exception of organ music which has 16hz base frequency. And this is why most speaker manufacturers are not even attempting to extend their range all the way to 20hz.
I'm sorry but you just don't know what you're talking about
It is not practical to produce sub bass in outdoor concerts. 30-40hz is what you get and that is enough. 20hz is mostly vibration already, on the limit of human hearing. Horn bass like mine will extend below 40hz when many units are combined so they form more effective surface area and due to acoustic coupling they couple more effectively on lowest frequencies. In my personal application I can just boost the lowest octave because I have more than enough headroom for dynamics. It's not practical for me to play even at 50% volume at any time, I mostly use only 10% or less of the SPL available. If you push the sound to around 30% it becomes difficult already to talk without shouting in 5 meters distance.
As I said this part of the discussion was off topic, you were recommended to get near field pro monitors for your desktop and place them to ear level. If you've tried, say, a genelec monitor, you won't miss a subwoofer even though it only extends to 45ish hz. Most people who are fanatic about sub-30hz frequencies do not understand that the main audible part of music and bass happens between 40-150hz and this is the most important frequency range for practical concerns as far as bass dynamics and 'beat' go. It is also common that this kind of people blame frequency extension as the cause for not having a dynamic, tight bass. Very typically they make the mistake of over boosting sub frequencies and creating a boom-box which has no beat and dynamics, just low frequency noise. A good audio setup is balanced, has loads of dynamics and can be played at high levels without the sound becoming irritating. You don't get a dynamic thumping bass with subwoofers. Nope.
Sub bass is only good for movies and special effects, real music contains very little information below 30hz with the exception of organ music which has 16hz base frequency. And this is why most speaker manufacturers are not even attempting to extend their range all the way to 20hz.
It takes a lot of power and a lot of subs to pull off under 30hz well. Anyway this has gotten quite off topic since this is a desktop speaker thread not an outdoor concert live sound thread...
EXCELLENT LINK! Sorry, I meant "thank you!"
I'm sorry but you obviously know very little about actual music if you think below 40hz is not part of the frequency response worth reproducing. It's a bit sad really. Any self respecting band that wasn't too busy drinking brandy on their terrace would laugh at this bullshit. Go see Tool when they start touring again. See if you think their sound system stops at 40hz. As if we don't want movie type bass response from music. Really, do you think Dave Matthews would allow his music to roll off at 40hz? Do you think they only play indoors?
Edit: a little less troll on my part--about the organ going to 16hz--that's crazy I didn't know that but it kinda makes sense that if our forefathers only had one instrument available that could get that low that they put them in the cathedrals. I know I know, it's a foregone conclusion that they would but my point is that sub bass is important, So much so that the "ancients" associated it with God.
Funny I can produce base down to 15hz with very little effort on hsu vtf15 's and no , they don't vibrate the shit out of the room. Pink Floyd , Enya and Howard Jones have no problem producing bass below 30hz... Where do you think the majority of low end analog synthesizer bass comes from?
The internet is a great place to read and learn ... Actually owning said equipment and testing it for yourself cannot be duplicated on the net... Paper stats, opinion and knowledge of others can only go so far.
It's easy to troll when you have no clue on the subject.
You can't dispute several studies on the matter which clearly show that music information below 40hz is practically nonexistent. It's not my problem if you fail to understand that and continue your feeble hunt of the useless bottom registry. You do realize that most home speakers roll off around 60hz? Only the largest hi-fi speakers extend all the way to 40hz and there are only a handful of models that go all the way to 20hz. Those are man sized towers with 12-15" drivers.
Well... you can only talk for so long about desktop speakers, if this is where the action is, so be it. I can tell you that I've heard on the recording end of things, for live indoor concerts of classical music they don't bother with microphones that can go any lower than 40Hz.
Obviously they must need to use some pretty expensive equipment to be able to pick up "sound" that is basically only vibration from a pipe organ. I want to go hear one now.
I don't expect *most* bands go around with equipment that can make the ground move beneath your feet, but I expect *most* big acts do. I can say for sure, having been inside and out of Sunken Gardens Theatre (outdoor) in San Antonio, TX that the in-house system can do it. I've seen boring acts like "The goo-goo dolls" push buttons there that made sub bass rumble through your soul and the water in your tummy jiggle funny. Maybe the place has special acoustic characteristics... but it's not exactly the Hollywood Bowl.
The slam that you feel in your body, all the dynamic bass that you hear in music does not come from below 40hz but above it. I'm not saying it's somehow bad to use an array of several subwoofers to produce 20hz correctly inside a room - what I'm saying is that most people do not have the front end required to handle even the 40-140hz area properly, to match the subwoofers. Once you lack the mid-bass dynamics the subwoofer will just become a glued-on addon that deducts, not adds to the experience.
I'm curious where these discussions are happening with HT guys arguing with crown about 20 hz roll off... Not many people I know use crowns for sub amps... Let alone use crowns period. Plenty of other amps out there that kick their ass for nickels.
Funny my HSU VTF's have no issues going below 30 or 20... I don't have many of them and they certainly don't need a shitload of power either. I think you're simply full of shit.
When is it ever hard to troll B00nie?
I think everyone in this thread sees you as the troll, whether or not you "have a clue"--because you are relentlessly discourteous. I have learned nothing from you, except that organs get real low. I never claimed to "know what I was talking about", in fact I was careful to point out that certain technicalities were "over my head" so I don't know why you are continuing to attack me and repeatedly point out that I am "clueless".
And thanks |Tch0rT|, that's how it goes. To add to your text: doing 115db and doing 115db _cleanly_ are two whole different ballparks. It's trivial to produce 115dbs of noise, a clean signal then again...
Funny I can produce base down to 15hz with very little effort on hsu vtf15 's and no , they don't vibrate the shit out of the room.
Mind blown. You guys are smart and polite suddenly. The whole feel of the discourse has changed, and I'm totally sober.
I am less interested in picking apart the graphs and especially the debate about super low freq bass like 15Hz which I think is out of the ballpark as far as what is useful in terms of harmonics-maybe in rock quarries and aquatic studies?
Much more interested in tiny speakers that actually sound good. Some people like miniature ponies and goats, too--but they are essentially useless and purely ornamental--at least my speakers sound good to me. They don't sound like most of my car stereo systems turned out... they sound... in control.
Going from the onboard DAC that the Asus ROG boards use to the Xonar was a weird experience, too... I realize there are "even better" DACs available but they mostly seem to be USB and after my experience with the Klipsch wireless USB DAC I'm frankly terrified of them in general. But I didn't really expect to be "wowed" by the STX at all, but--first off, the noise floor dropped out like the grand canyon when I flipped over to 24-bit from 16.. duh. And then once I got some subtle reverb and the Dolby Pro Logic processing going... I... didn't hate it. I'm usually all about a completely flat EQ setting and no post processing but... this shit just sounds interesting. It doesn't work all the time because sometimes there's already too much reverb or spacialdelay or whatever on a recording, but usually it sounds great. I expected to be totally underwhelmed... by both the speakers and the soundcard actually--just based purely off of how much they cost me--and they have BOTH enhanced my quality of life immensely. That's big for a guy that doesn't feel so hot of late.
For example you should never place a speaker close to back wall or corners unless the speaker is specifically designed for that. And if you have the small speakers, you should elevate them above your desktop so that the tweeter of the speakers is at your ear level. And theres much more to it.
Yes, I'm THAT short. They are maybe 6 inches too low. I tried some felt speaker isolators to raise them up a little but they attract dust and cat hair really badly. I am a little uncomfortable about raising them up on my desk for fear of knocking them over. The isolators were cool because they angled them slightly up without making them seem precarious. Not sure what to do. Pretty sure these are fine to wall mount they have that screw opening in the back to do it. Maybe I can find a wall mount that angles? The position I'm in the walls are going to be oblique from the speaker. I'm facing a corner and the sub is definitely amplified because of its position--but it's decent, the acoustics aren't overwhelming at any one frequency from my seating position.
That said, I could enjoy a home-theater without a true subwoofer. 1st world "problem" of little importance I guess...
Much more interested in tiny speakers that actually sound good. Some people like miniature ponies and goats, too--but they are essentially useless and purely ornamental--at least my speakers sound good to me.
I'm usually all about a completely flat EQ setting and no post processing...
If I have a complaint to make it is that the mids and tweets are so transparent it makes bad recordings worse. Couple totally different examples. I had a scary moment where I thought one of the satellites was damaged while listening to Miles Davis's tune "So What" from the album Kind of Blue--every time the sax would play it got bad whispery distortion with it. The instrument is only being played through one side of the stereo mix and switching the line outs confirmed both speakers produced the distortion from this recording. So it's either the amp channel or the recording. Guess what? Google Play cheaped out on that recording. I found a post from14 years ago someone had the exact same issue trying to demo their system with that cut. The engineer must have transferred the tapes badly and the levels on that saxamaphone are clipping throughout much of that entire album.