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No longer NEED a subwoofer....


SWL

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15 hours ago, SWL said:

It just doesn't fly. When I hi-pass my 30's, taking away 120hz and below is like a major sin with these speakers. That tight, punchy bass outclasses the bass coming out of the Tubas in my room. However, blending the two together....complimenting the 30's with the Tuba bass works very good for me.

This is where measurement comes into play. My numbers are of course my speakers + my room + using my geometry. Yours will certainly vary. Sounds like 60 Hz was working well, but neither of us still knows why that really was. I can make educated guesses all day, but in the end they're just that.

 

Note that dialing in 30Hz on the low pass, cuts the sub roughly -12 dB SPL up near 100 Hz, so make sure to go back and dial the gain knob on the sub amp +12 dB from normal. Otherwise, it'll sound rather muted.

 

And I realize some of the 2-ch folks are going to cringe at this, but at some point it takes at least a voltmeter, test tones, and an SPL meter to get a subwoofer to play nice. It's essentially the process of grafting another "speaker" onto your stereo. At a minimum one needs to "see" where the sub and mains are rolling off, how the filters / room affect that, and finally to lock in the phase at crossover. One tell-tale that things are in the ball park is that the system will get very sensitive to any further adjustment. When dialed in correctly, a flip of polarity will equate to a big hole in the bass, or just a little tweak of the gain or freq knob on the sub will push things around a lot. B):emotion-22:

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Funny, I just got off the phone discussing the Mini-Dsp. It's about time I dial this thing in the right way.

In the near future....[emoji106]

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  • 8 months later...

I've got bass up the ying yang!

 

This whole time I've been powering my THTLP's with the Behringer EP4000 from a consumer preamp (Marantz Model 3600, fully restored). Seemed to be a good match with anything else I've ever powered this way. No problems, sounded great.

 

Decided to hook up one of my unbalanced to balanced converters. Whoa nelly!! The subs integrate better and at low volumes you can just hear how they are begging to inflict damage on my house. Balls at low to medium volumes is what I'm all about these days. Good thing I don't drink anymore.

 

In addition, I finally got around to sealing up my KLF-30's and adding some additional bracing (front to back). These things are fricken animals. I cranked the hell out of these things and the woofers looked like they were gonna fly right out of the box. Before, they hardly moved! I should have done this sooner. This was with the subs off and it sounded/felt like someone was pounding on the floor and my chest with a sledge hammer. Fricken awesome! With the A55G midrange drivers there was no harshness or brightness. For rock and roll, these speakers really don't need a sub. When I had the subs on the house/fireplace doors were rattling too much to tolerate.

 

So now with the subs getting the proper signal, I played the same 24hz, 26hz, 30hz test tones and they play them with authority. 24hz I don't really hear it, only stuff vibrating in the other room. This is at low volumes.....74db or so.

 

Now, with everything working at full capacity (speakers and subs) I still haven't cranked it with both the subs and the mains on. I'm a little scared LOL. I've read over and over the power these things are capable of....I've gotten a small taste and now I know what they are talking about.

 

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

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On 3/6/2017 at 7:18 PM, SWL said:

Decided to blow the dust of my 30's tonight....and everything else apparently. Couldn't resist flicking the switch on for the subs.

Wow, these Tubas have some serious nuts. Combined with the 30's Metallica was just in my living room. Fricken awesome. Just like old times, the clock was bouncing on the wall. Reminds me of how many clocks I used to go through not to mention velcroing everything down to keep from flying off the shelves when I had 6 subs in here.

So yeah, scratch what I said about not needing subs. Well, not at normal levels.....but when you wanna rock out, the more/bigger the subs the better. emoji14.png

Man, that was awesome. Now I need to get my hearing back....

Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk
 

I just re read this thread and you had me laughing when I read this, that's funny. 

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2 hours ago, SWL said:

I've got bass up the ying yang!

 

2 hours ago, SWL said:

Now, with everything working at full capacity (speakers and subs) I still haven't cranked it with both the subs and the mains on. I'm a little scared LOL. I've read over and over the power these things are capable of....I've gotten a small taste and now I know what they are talking about.

I know how you feel, I switched subs, I had no idea how poor the Danley spud sounded until I heard the difference with a good horn sub. The spud was ok for movies but muddy/boomy for music. 

Trying different crossover points it seems here(this room and speakers) 80 is the best place, everything sounds better. For Ht, using Forte's 1, 2 and 3 crossing at 80 sounds better, I guess it takes some of the pressure off the forte's crossed this high, everything sounds better.

For 2 Ch it seems 80 still sounds best even with mwm's for bass bins, I had crossed the bins at 40 before with the spud. I guess it's doing the same thing, not making the bass bins work as hard ? They are much more capable than the forte's but it still seems to help.

I guess it all goes back to a very capable horn loaded sub, the bass sounds better and it allows the mains to be more efficient not trying to reproduce the lower frequencies.

 

All I know is everything's sounding cleaner with a better overall quality, I'm not touching anything at this point. 

 

It's strange you think everything sounds good, until you hear better, I guess it part of what drives everyone to always make changes. You just don't know until you hear the difference. 

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