Pinwa, I will put this to you straight. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how your system works and how to incorporate a subwoofer into it. You can take a million measurements but you will not achieve your goal with the way you are trying to set this up. The volume control that turns the sound to your speakers up and down must also be the one turning the sound to your subs up and down. You can not send a fixed level signal from your dac to the subs while adjusting the speaker volume from your integrated amp and ever expect them to be at the proper level to blend. Due to the kind of integrated amp you are using you have bought the wrong subwoofers.
Is this how a Subwoofer Crossover is supposed to work?
I bought two Starke SW12 subwoofers that I installed. So far I'm not particularly happy with them. They are way too loud even with the volume set almost to off. More importantly, I'm having trouble integrating them into my system and I'm wondering if that is because their crossover setting is really functioning as I understand a crossover should. Attached please find measurements from Room Equalization Wizard with SPL graphs of the two subs (no speakers) taken at my listening position with the crossover set at 50 Hz, 90 Hz, and 130 Hz. Ignore the peaks and dips which I assume are due to room nodes. All of those settings appear to actually have the same crossover point of 50 Hz. All that changes is the slope of the rolloff in sound levels. This isn't how I thought a properly designed crossover was supposed to work. I thought the frequency the levels would start to roll off would change, i.e. flat to 50 hz then a sharp drop, flat to 90 hz then a sharp drop, etc. etc.. But Starke says this is how a subwoofer crossover is supposed to work.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x4cr32pagwg48i/Two%20Subs%20Different%20Crossover%20Points%20No%20Speaker...
Any experts on here with an opinion about this? Is it possible to buy an inexpensive active crossover that I could use in place of what is built into these subs?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x4cr32pagwg48i/Two%20Subs%20Different%20Crossover%20Points%20No%20Speaker...
Any experts on here with an opinion about this? Is it possible to buy an inexpensive active crossover that I could use in place of what is built into these subs?
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Hello Pinwa, Imo the close-miced curve of the Starke provides a lot of useful information. Now you can tell what was room interaction and what was native to the subwoofer, and it is much easier to tell what the crossover is doing. Good job!! I think the close-miced curve on the Klipsh is giving you an incomplete and therefore misleading picture. From that curve I’d assume it has a port or passive radiator tuned to about 26 Hz. If so, getting a representative frequency response curve becomes vastly more complicated. You ALSO need to close-mic the port or passive radiator and SPLICE that curve with the woofer’s curve, adjusting for the relative RADIATING AREAS of the woofer cone and the port or passive radiator. You also have to take into account the relative phase rotation between the two and I don’t know how to do that math - I’d have to use a computer program. In other words, close-micing ONLY the woofer of a vented box DOES NOT give a complete and accurate representation of what the system is doing. I suggest simply assuming that the Klipsch is competently designed, rather than doing more measurements plus a ton of math. Also, pay attention to what geared4life is telling you. If his analysis is correct (and I think it is), your system configuration is not allowing you to adjust the level of the subwoofers with the same volume control that you are using for your main speakers. Duke |
The volume control that turns the sound to your speakers up and down must also be the one turning the sound to your subs up and down. Bingo! And I already provided the simple $2 solution to getting exactly that from his existing amp. https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/speaker_to_line.html |
- 98 posts total