How does adding a second subwoofer improve your systems SQ?

How is this even a discussion in the audiophile world any more?

- 2 subs is better than 1, due to evening out of peaks and valleys. 4 is better than 2. In a rectangular room, 3 may not be better than 2 (may not be intuitive but trust the math). This works because of inability to localize bass (see below).


- bass traps obviously can help. They also have to be very big to work really well, and the bigger the room, the bigger they need to be due to the frequency of the bass nodes. Small resonant traps also have small bandwidths.

- No matter how much some people will plead, we can't localize bass less than about 120Hz, hence using 80Hz with steep crossovers. There will always be lots of claims this is not true, and in every case this will be a factor of unequal room response between channels, poor sub/main positioning that causes unequal room responses and/or beamed cancellation effects, inadequate slope, or distortion. Don't believe me? You don't have to. There are a plethora of studies done on this (proper ones, not ad-hoc with improper setups). If you choose to ignore them, I can't help you.


- When Toole was talking about the potential for equalization, he was not talking only about frequency, but phase as well (between multiple bass units) for optimization

- If you think massive floor standers with deep bass response are the "ultimate" in reproduction, you either have an acoustically great room with a significant amount of acoustic treatment, and well shaped room at that, or you are misinformed. The position for optimum bass response in a room of two speakers is not going to be the same location for optimum in-room response, imaging, sound-stage, you name it. It sure sells some expensive speakers though, and since the average audio reviewer blathers over anything expensive, from pictures probably has a less than ideal listening room, and almost assuredly knows the bare minimum about acoustics and likely even less about the science of sound, should one be surprised? Most don't even attempt to measure in-room response, let alone direct/reflected energy at the listening position in order to optimize performance and/or provide consistent reviews.


- On the spouse factor, discreet subs are likely to be a better sell than large floor standers in less than optimum locations for bass, SQ, or spouse acceptance.


Whether you believe any of what I wrote or not, does not really matter, people will still pay me to design and implement acoustic spaces and the sound systems in them, and acoustic products that use these and more complex principles (and tools), that are based on science, not conjecture. Many aspects of the perception of sound are subjective. Many aspects are not. You will have an easier time achieving audiophile nirvana when you accept which are which. Reality is a harsh mistress. She's not your mom.

I know you have convinced yourself you have easily detected 100Hz bass frequencies in 10 seconds (why not instantly?), but no, you have not proved stereo bass, far more likely is that you proved your system has a room signature that varies from left to right, distortion, vibration, etc., hence why it took you 10 seconds, technically two switch-overs, to detect. Proper experiments for things like this are not as easy as they sound, and most people are not set up to do them.

p.s. If your eyes were closed, how did you know which was left and which was right, as opposed to just noticing a difference?  Didn't you set up the experiment as randomized left/right, record your results, then check after?

What speakers/amplifier?

All of us with eyes shut could easily detect which side of the room the 100hz sine wave was emitting from within the first left to right change over in 10sec!!!.

This is proof that digital with it’s over 100db of channel separation will be stereo in the bass to your ears if produced by the recording engineer, and you’d be surprised just how many are.

I won't be the "looser". 25+ years of acoustics with personal contacts with many of the leading people in the field, a bunch of peer reviewed papers, a deep understanding of the science of sound, psychoacoustics, and enough interaction with the research community, often helping to design experiments, and well beyond the need to prove anything to anyone in my community.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I care enough about audio that it gets my back up with people who think they know what they are talking about, but have no clue how to even design an experiment, let alone the underlying principles of what they are trying to test, speak with complete conviction and lead other people astray, causing them to waste precious time and hard earned money to achieve inferior results.


While your main seem to be of good quality, the subs are not very good quality. They were inexpensive new, and used are quite low cost. When they say "servo" they don't mean a servo in that their is position feedback on the amplifier, it is just a marketing term essentially for what appears to perhaps be a current feedback output design as opposed to voltage feedback. Odds are the distortion is not insignificant given the cost constraints.

So the left plays for 5 seconds and the right for 5. You still said it took 10 seconds, i.e. one complete cycle. Normally you can tell source location near instantly. You wouldn't have to wait till the switch back to be sure. This is a "really" moment, because it goes back to the difference between actually localizing bass frequencies, and detecting a differential room signature (potentially exacerbated by distortion).

Are you subs placed in close proximity to your mains?

You know when the Pet Audio Rock dude responds to your posts with ad-nauseum posts that have nothing to do with the topic and carry no relevant content that you must be doing something right.

George,

In my professional world, when you do something and get results that differ from people who have spent extensive research time on a topic, the normal inclination is to assume you have done something wrong, or assume there is something in your setup that you are detecting, that was not what you intended to measure. In this case, a low distortion microphone setup could probably reveal what was wrong, but I don't see an indication you have done that. If you are not willing to consider that something is wrong in your setup, then you are unable to fix it.

Maybe I am, maybe I am not, maybe I am just here to trigger the Pet Audio Rock dude. The universe is so complex, perhaps we will never know will we. Just remember, my words are but a conduit to aid you in making yourself look less relevant than I ever could.