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@thespeakerdude 1+

@kota1 There are very few speakers that do anything gracefully below 50 Hz. The specs are highly misleading. Standard frequency response measurements are taken at one meter. That is fine for wavelengths one meter or less. The longer wavelengths dissipate rapidly with distance in a room and the longer they get the more rapidly this occurs so by the time you get to the listening position a speaker that measured flat to 40 Hz is now down 10 dB at 40 Hz and depending on the room and interference patterns it could be down 20 dB in some places. Then you get some places in the 50 to 100 Hz area that might be + 10 dB producing what I call one note bass. Producing accurate bass requires clever room management, a subwoofer with a lot of power and room control. Why is the sub necessary? Simple, if you try to correct a regular woofer to run flat down to 18 Hz in most rooms you will either run out of power and clip your amp or break your woofer trying to get long excursions out of it that it can not handle. Subwoofer drivers are designed specifically to take long excursions and handle lots of power. They have ported and vented magnet structures so that there is no compression behind the voice coil and spider. The spider is the suspension element that centers and controls the voice coil and the apex of the cone. Another thing is, for a large high fidelity system do not bother with subwoofer drivers less than 12" unless you plan on using them in multitude. I would use no less than 4 10" drivers, or two 12" and up. The more driver area you have going the better. I would not use anything larger than 15" as I think the larger cones are more difficult to control. I have seen slo-mo videos of large cones wobbling instead of moving in pistonic fashion. The "speed" of a driver determines it's frequency response. The larger driver will not have to move as fast to produce a specific frequency because it does not have to move as far. Smaller drivers have to move faster! Larger drivers produce less distortion because they do not have to move as far as fast. They are thus capable of generation much more acoustic energy the result being you "feel" as if you are at a live show. Feeling the music is almost as important as hearing it. It is the feeling that is missing in most systems which IMHO ruins the illusion. 

You are overthinking it, many people have 2.0 systems and enjoy them without subs.

@thespeakerdude wrote:

They may go down to 32Hz, but that is probably with drop-off and high distortion, and if using 2, more room mode excitation. Subs are to reduce distortion, go deep without roll-off, and reduce room mode excitation. Ideally you cross your speakers higher so they are not taxed with frequencies/excursions where they distort.

+1

@mijostyn --

+1

I would not use anything larger than 15" as I think the larger cones are more difficult to control. I have seen slo-mo videos of large cones wobbling instead of moving in pistonic fashion. ...

Some of the high order bandpass designs I’m considering that are equipped with high efficiency, pro 21" neodymium magnet-fitted woofers (crazy powerful, extremely sturdy drivers) wouldn’t see problems with cone wobbling in any domestic setting, let alone in pairs or - God forbid - more. Both the output generated by the front- and back wave of the driver is utilized, and with high eff. to boot cone movement will be kept to a minimum - even at quite staggering SPL’s. These are tuned to offer "no more" than 25Hz honest extension, however (20-ish Hz in-room, plenty for me); if crawling well below 20Hz is needed, not to mention below 15Hz, a steep rise in cone movement is the result, as well as effective enclosure volume to maintain visceral impact. The 15" woofers in my tapped horn subs (also a high eff., high-order bandpass design, tuned just below 25Hz) move only a few mm’s at most at bonkers SPL’s that are viscerally felt. That’s making the most of a given cone area in a design that’s a force multiplier.

@kota1 wrote:

You are overthinking it, many people have 2.0 systems and enjoy them without subs.

Not a all, it just about the benchmark one is setting.

@phusis , let me change that to I’m overthinking. I have a well treated room that is nicely EQ’ed in my main system which does everything from 2 CH to 9.2.7 Atmos. I just got a new preamp/dac/headphone amp in the Sony Signature line. I can connect it via RCA to my HT processor and use the subs, the EQ, etc. I can also connect it via balanced directly to my active speakers. Too systems, totally different, in one room. Before I start messing with subs and EQ with the new 2 CH pre I want to let it go and see what happens. Paul McGowan disavows EQ in a 2 CH system (but still likes subs).

I got the new Sony Signature TA-Z1HES installed tonight and so far have only used it as a dac connected to my main system (subs, EQ, etc). I connected it to a laptop and streamed some ripped files as well as streamed tidal. I must have a bias to Japanese tuned products because my processor is a Marantz, this new unit is a Sony and my DAP is an Onkyo DP-X1. The dac in the Sony is crystal clear straight out of the box, I look forward to breaking it in. Of the upsampling features I like DSD remastering the best. You can only engage it with files of CD resolution or lower (44hz). The real surprise was when I let my Onkyo DP-X1 DAP upsample and output the files as native DSD. I have the song Angela by Bob James on an SACD and heard it many times. I never thought upsampling could approach native DSD and if I didn’t know it I couldn’t tell the difference. When streaming Tidal I have to let the DAC do the DSD remastering. The DSD choices available are limited, inconvenient, and expensive. What a pleasant surprise and I would say just as a dac this unit justifies the price. I’ll try it as a two channel preamp tomorrow and post. The engineers at Sony know digital.