If subs aren't the most misunderstood thing in audio, I sure don't want to know what is!
Take me. Been into audio since the early 70's. Built my first amp in high school. My first speaker was a transmission line in 1978. Thought I knew all about sound and even so never could get really good bass. Thought it was physically impossible.
Until about this time last year, when quite by accident came across some posts about the Audiokinesis Swarm and started reading articles on the physics and psycho-acoustics of low bass and something called a distributed bass array.
This sounded promising and so after reading a ton of both technical theory type articles as well as feedback from experienced users I decided to take the plunge and built my own distributed bass array.
Based on the same Dayton amp and 10" drivers and cabs similar to the Audiokinesis Swarm this has turned out to be probably the most revelatory improvement ever.
Combining reading and theory with a lot of hands-on experience this is why I say its so misunderstood. Almost don't know where to begin.
The problem of integrating bass isn't in which sub is used. Its in how many. Every sub no matter how good or how crap has the problem of room modes: some areas too loud, some too quiet. Most try to solve this with more power, or EQ, neither of which does anything but make the fundamental problem- which is physics- even worse.
With lots of subs (I run five) no one individual sub has to put out much power. So they all produce modes, but different modes in different areas because the subs are all over the place. All these small modes average out and the result is impressively smooth, fast, articulate and deep bass.
Integrating or matching with speakers is a non-issue. Read the reviews, the bass is so fast its a match for electrostatic speakers.
Low bass is non-localizable. But read that carefully. That means only you cannot tell where the subs are located. It is as if they don't even exist. It does not mean the bass they produce is unfocused. Quite the contrary, the sense of 3D location of bass is even more focused than anything else I've ever heard.
Location with one sub is everything. You can spend a lifetime moving here and there trying in vain to find the magic location with smooth bass. Placement with a DBA is trivial. You can go the Full Monty if you want. You might even notice an improvement. Or you could just plop them down one near each wall, bothering only to not have them be symmetrical, and congratulate yourself on your expert placement. Either way, state of the art bass.
Almost everything people "know" about bass is wrong. Take timing. Experiments show we cannot even hear low bass at anything other than a full wavelength. That means a 20 Hz wave has to last 0.05 seconds or you won't hear it- at all! Midrange though you can hear in a tiny fraction of that. The same timing that is crucial to imaging and midrange on up simply does not apply at all to sub frequencies.
I could go on and on. Which I tend to do, both because this is so important as well as its really hard to understand. Took me a few weeks of research to really be sure myself. Sure enough to invest $2k anyway. Which is a stone bargain. Nowhere else in audio can you blow away so much expensive gear so easily for so little. Provided only that you actually understand what it is that you're doing.
