Truly deep, accurate bass does indeed improve imaging, midrange, and treble, and contribute to a sense of envelopment. It improves midrange and treble because of the way the ear senses volume balance. Two speakers can easily produce enough midrange and treble, its deep bass they can’t do. Low bass improves the sense of envelopement, feeling like you are in the soundstage instead of it being just in front of you. This happens because our sense of space is tied in to very low frequency sound. At very low bass frequencies the wave lengths are much longer than any room you will find in any normal home. 40 feet or longer. So we hear that, our brains assume we are some place big.
Okay so that explains the why.
Now, how to get this. The good news is its easy. The bad news is it can’t be done with one.
Every speaker no matter what is in the room which as mentioned above is smaller than the lowest bass wavelengths. Because of this they reflect and bounce back and cancel and reinforce. The areas where they cancel and reinforce change depending on the frequency, and where the sub is, and where you are. But they are always there. For every sub. No matter what.
This is why with one sub you have all these problems moving it around trying to get the best smoothest most even bass. You never can get there because all you can really do is move the modes around. You never can get rid of them. Its impossible.
So what you do instead is use a lot of subs. The more the better. Four is pretty good. Then you put them in different locations. This spreads the modes around. Lots of very small modes is way better than a few really big ones.
Its called a Distributed Bass Array. DBA. Do a search. Audiokinesis makes one called the Swarm. Doesn’t have to be a Swarm. Any four subs will work just fine. DBA. Totally the way to go.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367
Okay so that explains the why.
Now, how to get this. The good news is its easy. The bad news is it can’t be done with one.
Every speaker no matter what is in the room which as mentioned above is smaller than the lowest bass wavelengths. Because of this they reflect and bounce back and cancel and reinforce. The areas where they cancel and reinforce change depending on the frequency, and where the sub is, and where you are. But they are always there. For every sub. No matter what.
This is why with one sub you have all these problems moving it around trying to get the best smoothest most even bass. You never can get there because all you can really do is move the modes around. You never can get rid of them. Its impossible.
So what you do instead is use a lot of subs. The more the better. Four is pretty good. Then you put them in different locations. This spreads the modes around. Lots of very small modes is way better than a few really big ones.
Its called a Distributed Bass Array. DBA. Do a search. Audiokinesis makes one called the Swarm. Doesn’t have to be a Swarm. Any four subs will work just fine. DBA. Totally the way to go.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367