to Sub or not to Sub...dedicated listening room

[madbrayniak]

I have won a battle and lost a battle in the same day.  My wife originally did not want me to have big speakers in another room of the house for listening to music.  This is the battle that I won as I get to turn my office  into a listening room.  However, I lost the battle of putting the big speakers that I have been designing in the family room to also take advantage of for movies...

SO!  I was designing monitors so that they could go ontop of a large entertainment shelf that would have all of my audio gear and tv and speakers.  This is still a possibility in the future so I still may not scrap the Monitor desing

I was planning to use the B&C 6MD38 for mid, DE250 compression driver w/ horn(not sure yet), and an AE TD15M....so these were going to be BIG monitors already and they will have pretty good extension into the Bass but may still need a Sub

However, if I start to go another direction and try and build some floorstanders with say two AE TD12M or TD15M or other variety I could avoid the sub all together and have a great stereo system.  So my question to you guys is what do you think would be the better route to go?  Monitors with a Sub or towers?

 

[jrebman]

Hey, congrats -- I won the same battle sometime last year and now the conversion of my old office to a dedicated listening room is all but done.

I guess my first question would be how big is the room going to be?  Typically in a smaller room, smaller mains and 2,3, or 4 small subs will work best (see the Audio Kinesis Swarm sub system for what I mean), but you  may really nott need the subs.  The floorstanders may overwhelm a smaller room, but then you're kind of stuck with respect to repositioning the bass modules for best room loading, and I'll assume that you don't want to go with a digital crossover/eq to try to fix the problem.

It's taken me quite a while to get things close to being setup for best sound, including 3 or 4 different layouts, many iterations of types, sizes and locations of room treatments, and I'm also finding I like my BUF subs lying on their backs and to the outside of the mains with the drivers pointing up.  The setup I now have is the one I thought would be the least workable in my space but now is actually turning out to be quite nice.

-- Jim

 

[grufti]

plus one for many/multiple small cheapo subs in anything but a concert hall: some corner placement - who cares about room modes when you get free gain - some randomly scattered about - for fairly even levels everywhere as frequencies add up and or cancel out.

 

[madbrayniak]

the room is 10.5 ft wide x 10.5ft deep x 8ft tall not counting the closet.  it has double doors one on side and then a door at an angle in the opposite corner.  I have a older PDR-8 subwoofer that I can put in here for the bass if I need it but even without it I should get pretty good sound out of the monitors I have been working on so I may not even need the 8" sub.

I also know that this room may even be a little small for such big speakers but my main goal is sensitivity.

Not sure how I am going to amp them yet as I was thinking either an F5 clone or a bottlehead amp.....right now I am working on restoring my father-in-laws old JBL 120Ti that I may use with this at first because I may steal one of his adcom amps until he gets ready to finish his media room.

 

[madbrayniak]

BTW, my father-in-law gave me his JBL 120Ti that I will use until I can build my speakers....since I am now not goign to be putting these speakers in the family room I need to get an amplifier.  So my question for you is will the SEX drive them well enough or would I be better off building a budget F5 clone?

 

[jrebman]

Yes, that's a fairly small room, but also totally usable as a dedicated listening room, but I doubt you'll need the sub.

I honestly don't know what the overall sensitivity/efficiency of either your monitors or the JBLs are, so somebody els with more experience with those should comment on the amp requirements.  If you want to go Firstwatt, you could build the s.e.x. amp and feed an F4, though it still may not fare all that well into a complex crossover.

-- Jim

 

[4krow]

Man,  I sense this will be a 'hot topic' for sure. My two cents says that in most situations, I really like small satellites with a sub. The imaging is outrageous, and the sub can be placed where you like it best. So, it is more versatile. The trouble I have is with your room dimensions. Basically, you have a cube, and that will excite a handfull of frequencies in the bass that may prove to be unbearable. Two things I would attempt to use as tools for this problem would be: as much bass traps/room treatments as you can haul in. Second, an SMS bass controller made by velodyne will give you a lot of compensation and will give you a visual interpretation via tv monitor. I have used one for years, and won't part with it. In my opinion, putting a sub in ANY corner of THAT room will not help, but all kinds of trouble will arise from this placement. The problem may well not be is there enough bass, but how do you deal with mountainous peaks that will be present? Not impossible, but a challenge indeed.  Regards, Greg 

 

[madbrayniak]

Yea I knew there was going to be a problem with room reflections.  there is only one solid wall in this room and the desk is up against it and goes 5/6th the way up the wall.  The opposite this wall are some double doors that open up to the rest of the house.  The other walls have one big window with a closet opposite.  Carpet floors as well.  

you mention running the stereomour to F5....

I have the Quickie coming next week.  I was planning to go ipod/computer to quickie to amp to speakers. Once I get a TT ill be getting that piped through there.

I am new to this kind of audio...by this kind i mean the tube amps so i dont know the best way to do things.

The JBL 120Ti are rated at 89db 1w/1m sensitive from what I have found online.
b
The ones I am working on should be rated at or above 92 when done.  The TD15M is rated at 97.6db w/m.  6MD38 is rated at 96db w/m. de250 with a horn will be about 99.  with step-loss and all those factors I expect that I will have to have them voiced more around 94db w/m as I will lose sensitivity with the TD15M and I will need to get the other drivers down to that level if not a little lower.....i just want it 92db w/m or higher....

I could try and look into open-baffle instead but like I said before the one I have been working on for some time now was originally intended for music and movies and I hope to one day use them for that in a dedicated theater.

 

[jrebman]

Actually, I was talking of using the s.e.x. into the FF4, not F5 -- the F4 is a impedance converting/buffer amp meant for current gain only and thus can be driven from the output of a SET amp -- the F5 is not really ideal for this unless you convert the s.e.x. to be s preamp.

Greg is right about the  cube dimensions, and I agree with the idea of small monitors and one or two small subs -- that's what I use, more or less with the Nagas and BUF subs.

And actually, OB subs may be your best bet here.  I know John (InfoernoSTI) had a room this same size and used some large OBs in it to good success.  The OB subs just don't seem to load the room the same way sealed or ported ones do.

I'd also like to add that it is very easy to overtreat a small room -- as I discovered, there is a point beyond which the room just becomes dead and there may stilll be low frequency nodes to deal with, so long term you should probably be looking for a mix of absorbtion/reflection con trol and diffusion.  For my diffusion I have most of the front wall covered with a 4' x 6' heavy, coarse weave wool/cotton/jute rug/wallhanging that is spaced about an inch off the wall -- this and the wall/cieling seam and tri-corner treatments make the biggest difference, but the 3 GIK 244 panels in the front corners and the wall behind the equipment rack ( to the left of the couch) do a good job of controlling the bass nodes.  Then there are 2 GIK 242 panels on the first reflection points, and a carpeted floor and that's it.  Of course not everything is optimally placed but I just had to work around what I had and the results are quite good so far, with maybe some fine tuning down the road if I feel I need it.  BTW, the only speakers that I had that really overloaded this room were my old Cornwalls, but those are long gone now, but I was getting close to overload with a pair of speakers with 8 inch bass/mid drivers.  I think 6 inches would be about right (if it were a single speaker), but so far, the pair of 3" drivers and the pair of 6" subs seem to do the job very nicely.

-- Jim

 

[madbrayniak]

Oh ok i see what you mean then about the F4.

I have been doing alot of thinking about how i should approach this. I am simply selling all of my old paintball gear to fund this project and for all of it I dont expect to get more than $1000.  So i have been doing some thinking and searching and I think that I should maybe instead look at doing something like the frugal-horns with the single rear loaded full range fostex drivers.

That will save me alot of money for the speakers and they supposedly sound really good from what I have read.  This will leave me enough money for an amp of some sort wether it is from classdaudio.com, bottlehead, or a firstwatt clone.

 

[jrebman]

I've not heard the frugal horns or this other speaker I'm about to show you, so it is not about which one is better or not, and I also have no idea what the Frugal costs, but check out this thread in the speaker area:

http://www.bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,2123.0.html

Last time I looked the full kit including the drivers and all was $315 for the pair -- that would leave you close to enough for a Stereomour, which would be a fine amp for either the frugals or these.  There are owners of both speakers here so maybe they'll chime in.

Also, I have no idea what climate you live in, but in that room you can pretty much count on being cooked with one of the firstwatt amps -- they do run quite hot.

-- Jim

 

[4krow]

If I were a rich man, I would own many rooms for audio, and have ALL kinds of stuff. Over the years, I have owned a mountain of equipment, mostly out of curiosity. My point here is that the chase is as exciting as the finish line. The Frugals seem to be one of those speakers that defy cost, and if you choose them, I would be very interested in the outcome.
  Before I forget, you mentioned that the room you will be using has double doors. That would help a lot experimenting with the doors open or shut. Even the other door that you mentioned would have an effect. I have also found that near-field listening at low/moderate levels doesn't excite the room modes so much, so I think that there are variables that you can kick butt with. In the end, enjoy the new room and the music.

 

[earwaxxer]

Hey Madbrayn - The sub can be a strange animal. Much adjustment can lead to insanity! Good results though. 1. You can pump huge amount of power to them (independent of mains), 2. You can move them around (blessing and a curse). 2. Dedicated driver that can be tuned to fit ones tastes. I have had an interesting relationship with subs due to having the maggie MMG's as my mains. Those little guys definitely need them for 2 reasons. 1. Not much bass below about 70hz. 2. Not much 'punch' below...well, add a number.

The sub has worked well for me in that I have over a kilowatt on hand, and I can put it right behind my listening position. Of course the adjustable crossover on the amp. For a DIY'er its a no brainer. Build a 2-3 cft cabinet. Get yourself a good 12" from parts express. While you are at it grab a Crown amp. Done. My experience -stay away from the 'plate amps'. I have two in my garage. Junk. Get the Crown.

 

[ssssly]

I have a couple different iterations of the frugal horn. And they sound pretty amazing with my SEX. In a room that size, corner loaded I doubt you will miss the sub unless you listen to a lot of hip hop or organ music.

Word of warning though, the fe126en needs a pretty long break in period. ~250-350 hours. Fresh out of the box they are pretty shouty. Once they break in they smooth out considerably and sound quite nice.

And at that price point I don't know of anything that will beat them. The only speakers I have heard that I prefer to them are my JBL 2441 front horn + 515 combo at about 10X the price. Which would neither fit in that room nor pass any sort of WAF test.

Have wanted to try out a pair of GR Research Super-Vs for a while but have never got around to it. Judging from the specs and comments I would expect them to be in-between the two on just about all points.

 

[chrisby]

If I may offer an opinion - for a room this size, the Madisound BK12 kit might be a better solution than the FH3 with FE126En.  The latter are a rear mouth horn and don't specifically need corner placement, although that does help to extend the bass response, but they can have some placement issues.

Being not only smaller overall, and with a single front mouth, the BK12 can have placement advantages in small spaces.    One of the rooms that I've had to give up on trying to use for serious listening was very constrained - L-shaped just slightly over 8' wide and 23' long.  No amount of treatment or fiddling with placement could get any of the rear mouthed horns  ( FH1/FH3, Buschorn MKI, Hornshoppe Horns, Ron Clarke A126) to work well, but little mini monitors and floorstanding MLTLs fared much better.

There are plans on the Madisound site for the BK12, and it's not that complicated a build. 

 

[InfernoSTi]

Interesting discussion...most enjoyable to read.  A couple of thoughts:

First, the room is square so you will have some big mode peaks/valleys unless you manage that with room treatments and/or multiple subs or some such.  Type your dimensions into a room mode calculator and you will find the problems spots...measure it later and you see they will exist.  Easy first step is the off-center  your listening position and perhaps consider a diagonal setup.  Second step is the add some room treatments...a big plus in a small room.  The smaller the room, the more helpful the treatments seem to be.  I'm a big fan of combining absorption with diffusion and going with serious bass trapping. 

Second, as Jim said, I've had good success with OB subs in a much larger size/number than common sense would predict. In a room slightly smaller than yours, I ran four 15" Hawthorne Audio Augie woofers as OB dipole speakers.  I finally had the bass I was looking for...musical, authoritative, and detailed.  It seems dipole subs don't "load" the room the same as a conventional sub...and having four (two per channel) really spread the load so the volume could be low and I would still move a lot of air.  The fact that I had four also helped them act as a "swarm" to a certain degree.  I should add that I also had lots of bass traps, so that helped keep the modes at bay.  My current "Augie Towers" look like this:

I have two of those towers each with two 15" Augie woofers.  I wouldn't go back to fewer than four OB subs. 

Let me know if you have any specific questions, please?

Best,
John

 

[4krow]

John, Your advice is spot on, especially the idea of diagonal positioning.  As a wood worker, I am very impressed by the OB subs that you have. I use OB speakers myself, but no subs(usually). The ob speakers that I have also utilize a an open box cavity that acts as a hemholtz resonator. Not the lowest bass, but it does extend bass further down than an OB normally does by itself. Photo of unfinished speaker. Will post completed speaker later.

 

[jrebman]

Oh yes, forgot about the diagonal setup -- I had my listening room setup like that for a day or two when I was playing with the different arrangements (and when I was planning on using only the 10.5 x 10.5 portion of the room) and that was really the best option by far for that space, but then I decided to open the floor plan up a bit and then the diagonal setup was prety awkward to work with.  Had I stuck with the square room, the diagonal arrangement would have stayed.

-- Jim

 

[earwaxxer]

John - Wow, those towers with the 15's are beautiful! How low do they go?

 

[madbrayniak]

John,
I think I have seen your OB towers before...do you go on diyaudio.com or avsforum.com?

Ill take the BK12 under consideration.  However, I think for now I am going to use my father-in-laws JBL 120Ti monitors.  I need to build some stands for them and I am reconing them now.

I was looking at those frugal horns because of not needing any crossover. and the cheaper price comapared to the monitor design I have been working on.  As someone said earlier the pursuit of audio is just as fun as listening to it.....

I am honestly very lucky to have what I do.  I am currently unemployed and since my wife's dad has so much in storage from his pursuit it is fueling my obsession.  However, I have many obsessions....cooking, computers, speakers, and golf to name a few....and they are all expensive.....and i still have no car.....