Add a subwoofer to Von Schweikert 4Srs?

Driver:
Question well taken. I'm using a Spectron Musician IIISE, now in for the MKII upgrade, so I'm confident I'm on solid ground. Like I said, I love bass. This character flaw has recently been exacerbated when I attended a live music festival and experienced live bass...maybe too much for a discriminating home listener...begs the question...what is real and what is exciting.

I hear ya on the live thing. In fact, I do some pro audio sound reinforcement part-time & was just at band practice this evening. Yep, nothing quite like having the whole auditorium (mostly) to myself. Then again, not many home systems can compete against a LRC/sub EAW array w/an 8' stack of QSC. I digress.

I talked w/Albert Von Schweikert at the CES a few yrs. back & asked him to play a cut from Supertramp's "Some Things Never Change" album titled, "You Win, I Lose", which not only has a deep bass line, but the kick can really pound you if you have it cranked. I could play that song & easily hit 105 dB at my listening spot. Anyway, he liked it & told me he really liked bass & designed his spkrs. to play deep. I think he might even play bass?

Don't know why yours aren't delivering though. I always bi-wired & even bi-amped before. Don't know how good that pigtail wire is. I thought at one time he used the Spectron to voice some of his gear? I did a lot of tweaking on my pair-you might find my review interesting.

Speakers sometimes take longer to break in than we think, and bass should continue to improve as you go. Note that breaking in with music takes hundreds of times longer than breaking in with a good test tone, because the test tone constantly is working out the whole thing, while music CDs often only have bass or whatever other part of spectrum here and there. XLO Reference is the one I use.

That said - and repeating other people saying that the Sr.'s should have enough as-is, I use the Hsu VTF-3w/Turbo to great effect and absolutely love it. And probably as you might, you can use it with some tracks and not others.

The more well-known 'standard' go-to subwoofer for high-end audio are the various REL units. For speakers in your price range I would go above the basic ones.

Hey - get the Rives profile CD and a RS meter. Profile the speakers. Make sure they are in the right place in the room. Tell us what the bass profile is, i.e., db from average at 20 is -10, at 25 is -5, at 30 is -2, etc. Unless I have those numbers I can't tell you if you are crazy (as you ask us!) or not.

If it is flat to 20 Hz you are crazy. If it levels off, you might play with speaker placement. Then, you might find it levels off very lightly.

If it levels off very lightly, you'll perhaps want to think about an active crossover, such as the Bryston 10BSub. The reason for this is that if the roloff curves are not steep enough then the available crossover in the sub won't be gentle enough.

Anyway, this topic is quite a large one and there are many pros/cons we could get into and lets just say for now that proper sub-matching for highly resolving speakers is quite a science and takes several saturday's at the least to get right. The lower you cross over the more the sound will blend well if your mains actually support crossing that low. 80 is a reference number many people use, there are acoustical reasons to go with 80. You could probably get away with at least 50, maybe 40.

Remember - no sub (except getting the next Schweikert in the series :) ) will match perfectly...

Those are my ideas...

But - my main point is wait 3 months, you might be happy by then.

Oh - and I know this is verbose, but one more idea, if you are getting output after profiling down to 20 Hz but its not as strong you might also look at one of the high end digital EQs - that is becoming all the rage these days, and then you wouldn't need a sub.

According to:

http://www.vonschweikert.com/FreqGraph_vr4sr.jpg

This speaker is flat to 20 hz. That is one of the best response curves I've seen!! So, focus on break-in and room placement.

Give that several months, then verify with other vrSr owners, then think about sub. I think you have an awesome speaker for bass even if you are a bass-head!!!!!!!

(Some dealers are good at room placement and for 100/hr or 60/hr depending on where you live might be able to help after breakin is over. Some of those are Rives certified with involves various training things - they may not be better, but it is at least a standard for training. You might check with the place, assuming brick and mortar, where you got them from.)

If you want more bass from your 4sr take some of the Dacron out of the bass cabinet. Your owners manual has instructions on this. The bass is always adjustable. For those who want less bass you put more Dacron into the bass cabinet. Do not put anything into the port only the cabinet.