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Klipsch Rp-8000f vs. 600m


AKosc

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I plan on installing eight 15" Subwoofers, but my RP-8000f Towers are blocking the subwoofer placement because of their size. Can I swap the 8000f with the 600m and get the exact same performance from 100hz upwards? Everything below 100hz will be handled by the Subwoofer, so actually I really don't need those big towers. But again, I don't want to compromise on Mid- and high frequency performance, how do they compare above 100hz?

 

Thanks in Advance.

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The R

59 minutes ago, AKosc said:

Everything below 100hz will be handled by the Subwoofer, so actually I really don't need those big towers.

The RP-8000F is a fine speaker and yes you do need those big towers for a full sound.

 

There's nothing wrong with being a bass head but what you don't need is EIGHT subwoofers.  Three to four subs is overkill and will provide 99% of the performance of eight.

 

I suggest you re-think your music needs and be realistic about how many speakers/subs will fit your space.

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47 minutes ago, willland said:

Can you stack some of the subs to add more floor space?

If at all possible, I would keep the RF-8000Fs.

 

Bill

 

 

Yes I can and I will, thanks for the advice, still there Is a notch on the side of my front-stage, and I need to get the subs on 1/4 room length, 1/4 height each for a proper Double Bass Array. So the question still stands, how similar could the 600m perform if not equally as good, compared to the bigger brothers?

 

12 minutes ago, wvu80 said:

The R

The RP-8000F is a fine speaker and yes you do need those big towers for a full sound.

 

There's nothing wrong with being a bass head but what you don't need is EIGHT subwoofers.  Three to four subs is overkill and will provide 99% of the performance of eight.

 

I suggest you re-think your music needs and be realistic about how many speakers/subs will fit your space.

Thanks for your reply, but I really do know what I need and to get a proper Double Bass Array set up, you should have at least 2, preferably 4 subwoofers each in front and at the back, positioned at 1/4 room length/height.

 

It is not about output for me, its about a flat frequency response. With a DBA Array I am able to get rid of all my Room modes and cancellations. So IT IS  actually just 4 subs that I am hearing, the ones in the back are actively absorbing the reflections that are coming from the back wall.

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42 minutes ago, AKosc said:

Thanks for your reply, but I really do know what I need and to get a proper Double Bass Array set up,

you should have at least 2, preferably 4 subwoofers each in front and at the back, positioned at 1/4 room length/height.

 

It is not about output for me,

its about a flat frequency response. With a DBA Array I am able to get rid of all my Room modes and cancellations. So IT IS  actually just 4 subs that I am hearing, the ones in the back are actively absorbing the reflections that are coming from the back wall.

 

I'm not telling you what you need.  I am suggesting you don't need 8 subs to accomplish what 2 or 4 will do.

 

I read what you wrote about a problem between speakers and subs and not having enough room for both.  I suggested a possible solution based on my knowledge and experience.  I have a DBA in my home theater.  I also own the RP-600M which I'll get to in a moment.

 

The 600M is a monitor, not a floorstander.  The exact answer to your question is "no" the 600M is not an exact replacement for the 8000F in the HF.  The 8000F will play louder and with less distortion than the 600M.  A single 6.5" woofer is no match for dual 8" woofs.

 

The 600M is a really nice sounding speaker, I have used it as L/R in a 5.1 system and as L/R in a 2.1 setup.  It needs some power to get it going, then has a great midrange sound then it falls off at higher SPL.  It will play the frequencies you suggest but not a higher SPL.  Very simply it will not keep up with 8 subs.  You would have to greatly lower the gain on the subs, not getting their fullest potential.

 

You can achieve a DBA as you said with 2 or 4 subs which will reduce standing waves.  If that is the goal, and the subs interfere with the placement of your excellent 8000F, then what is the purpose of having 8 subs which take up a LOT of room, when the same goal (flattening the peaks and nulls) can be achieved with 2, 3, or 4 subs?

 

Here is the Youtube vid which influences my thinking on single vs dual subs.  Charts and graphs are included and you can see how dual subs flattens the reflections.

 

 

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After seeing this video, the dual subs really only got rid of the extreme suck outs, there is still a 30db difference from 30hz to 80hz. Kick bass from 50-100hz gets absolutely drowned by deep bass, this is absolutely unacceptable.

 

here are some measurements on DBA variations (it is in German, but the graphs speak for themselves): http://hannover-hardcore.de/infinity_classics/!!!/Alternative DBA-Anordnungen.pdf 

 

Just to clarify, a two subwoofer setup is no Double Bass Array. DBA means there is a subwoofer wave coming from the front, and when the wave hits the back wall, the back subs play with delay the reflected sound simultaneously, but phase inverted to cancel out the reflected sound, hence, the reflections are actively canceled out. With no subs in the back, it really does not matter a lot how many subs are in front, as long as you don't have subwoofers in the back or a baffle wall who absorbs the bass waves. If you take a look at this Youthman guy, there is a blank wall in the back, which will never result in an even bass response.

 

But yeah, I will most likely keep The towers and cut a hole into the notch on the front wall to place the tower further to the right, not ideal, but that's how it is.

 

 

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1 hour ago, AKosc said:

Just to clarify, a two subwoofer setup is no Double Bass Array. DBA means there is a subwoofer wave coming from the front, and when the wave hits the back wall, the back subs play with delay the reflected sound simultaneously, but phase inverted to cancel out the reflected sound, hence, the reflections are actively canceled out. With no subs in the back, it really does not matter a lot how many subs are in front, as long as you don't have subwoofers in the back or a baffle wall who absorbs the bass waves. If you take a look at this Youthman guy, there is a blank wall in the back, which will never result in an even bass response.

I get what you are saying.  A bunch of talk these days about DBA and it will(can) accomplish what is needed.

 

Bill

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4 hours ago, AKosc said:

here are some measurements on DBA variations (it is in German, but the graphs speak for themselves)

 

Thank you for the link.  I found the article most interesting and I enjoyed reading it!  I believe I now have a much better idea of what you are trying to accomplish.  When I first responded I was completely off base thinking of a similar but very different idea of DBA.  My apologies for the confusion.

 

I was able to translate from German into English using Google Translate.  The one thing I found confusing was the two DBA types, Mono-DBA and Stereo-DBA.  It's probably not important for the sake of what you are trying to do but if you would like to explain further I would be interested to know what DBA you have in mind.

 

I did find the conclusion similar to what I was suggesting which is how to take the more complicated DBA and use fewer subs to achieve most of the advantages of the setup with more subs.  This means I was only half wrong, which still means wrong!  😎

 

7.  Fazit

 

7. Conclusion

 

The first longitudinal and latitudinal modes are completely eliminated from all arrangements. The reduced arrangements 4.2 and 4.4 work almost as well as the full DBA arrangement. This means that very good results can be achieved with just two drivers per grid. For stereophony and a single seat along the longitudinal axis of the room, very good results can be achieved with just 2 drivers. Here, 5.2 seems to produce the smallest deviations outside the longitudinal axis. Furthermore, the rear grid density can be lower than the front. Since the level of the rear grille can be lowered in many real living spaces anyway, the costs of the overall arrangement can be optimized.

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Thats nice to get more people to know about this very complicated, but sophisticated method of bass management. It’s not that popular outside of Germany. In my opinion, it is by far the smartest solution out there, unfortunately not very practical for living rooms and also rather expensive.

 

I have a Mono DBA in mind, and as you said right, you practically get the same result with 2 drivers per grid (4 total) as with 8. In theory. This measurements are made in a hypothetical perfectly rectangular shaped space, where reflections come back perfectly mirrored, which is rarely the case in real life. I have like I said a notch in my room, and a window on my back wall. All these little imperfections can have influence on how effective a DBA works. Therefore, with 4 drivers each, positioning them at 1/4 room length/height, this practically makes the entire front wall a single subwoofer making it a super even soundwave, and reflections are hitting the first reflection point equally in time.

 

But yeah, I get your first reaction (8?? is this guy nuts), but actually, it is not that much. Again, 4 are absorbing, so you only hear 4 of them. Secondly, people underestimate the power in bass output the room gains them, through modes and peaks. Without any extreme reflections, you loose a lot of power, resulting in a more accurate, but thinner sounding image. To get that max output back, 8 sounds, for many reasons as I stated above, the perfect number :)

 

Maybe you too are interested in such a system (providing you have an enclosed listening room, preferably rectangular shaped) I‘ll keep you up to date!

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6 hours ago, wvu80 said:

when you first mentioned Double Bass Array this is what I thought you had in mind.

 

 

 

This is very interesting... I wonder where you put the mids and highs in a system like this though... do you put floorstanders in front of the wall, or did I miss something along the way? I also wonder what a system like this will end up costing... 🙂 

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  • 4 months later...

Update: Took a while,  but I have finally installed the subs. Against previous plans, I did NOT go with a DBA and eight Subwoofers but a Single Bass Array with four in front and a Rockwool Sonorock Baffelwall in the back, because I thought it would be sufficient. And it was. I built the subwoofer out of cheap MDF plates, glued and screwed them together and installed the four 15 inch Dayton Audio Ultimax chassis. Costs: Around 1000$ for the subwoofers, 1200$ for the 3600W amplifier. This is less than the price of my single (!) SVS Pb16 ultra that I had before. That sub is a monster with insane deepbass and max output. So how well does my 1000$ SBA hold up to the reference subwoofer? Not an easy task.

 

As you can see in the graph there is less than a five db fluctuation in my frequency response between 17 and 100 hz. This really is as good as it's ever gonna get. I am so happy to finally have a more or less scientific bass experience, I mean look at the graph, it's pretty much flat. The graph in Room Eq Wizard is set to show 40-90db, which is a rather unforgiving setting. I have seen people out there claiming they have a "flat" response and in reality the curve is totally stretched horizontally, making a 15db variance look rather flat, although it is not.

 

All the suckouts, modes, nulls in my room are gone. My 3500$ SVS was not even near that flat response, I had a huge 25db suckout at 50hz and modes from 30hz downwards.

In term of output, and this might be surprising, the four 15" do closely match the one 16" Pb 16 chassis, so it is again absolutely ridiculous what one 16" from SVS was capable of. So from 35hz downwards, I'd say it's a draw, maybe the four 15" have 95% the output the SVS had, and 90% of the output in extremely deep bass down 20hz, but most LFE tracks don't dig that deep and the ones that do only occasionally. But I could be imagining this, perhaps because the SVS had ports and I could literally feel the air coming towards me. Still, sound pressure is pretty much equal. They both could bring my house down. I tested all the LFE classics like Blade Runner 2049 and Aquaman, Godzilla etc. - it's a draw.

 

From 35hz upwards and for music, it's not even close. The four enclosed boxes have tighter, faster bass, and with the suckout gone, kickbass Is now equally as loud as the rest of the frequencies. I do understand this is up to the room, and that theoretically the PB16 plays kickbass just as tight and loud, but in reality, the room is soo much more important, and It just simply was not possible to get that frequency response with one subwoofer.

 

Don't place your subwoofers just on the floor! Have a baffle wall in the back (60-80cm thick)! Place four subwoofers in a grid (1/4 room length, 1/4 room height)! Enjoy a flat frequency response ;) I understand this is not a very realistic scenario for living room home theater enthusiast, putting subwoofers in an grid and having a Bafflewall in the back, but for everyone wanting a scientific experience and thinking about switching to a dedicated home theatrer room, I'd strongly recommend this approach!

Bildschirmfoto 2021-06-12 um 15.55.58.png

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Oh and regarding the topic that originally started this conversation, even though I crossover my 8000f at 100hz, you were totally right! I use the 600m as my surround backs, and placed them on top of my 8000fs as a test, cut down the signal below 100hz, and STILL the 8000f sounded much much better than the 600m above 100hz. Wider soundstage, better mid bass. The 600m are still great surround back speakers though.

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On 6/12/2021 at 9:08 AM, AKosc said:

Oh and regarding the topic that originally started this conversation, even though I crossover my 8000f at 100hz, you were totally right! I use the 600m as my surround backs, and placed them on top of my 8000fs as a test, cut down the signal below 100hz, and STILL the 8000f sounded much much better than the 600m above 100hz. Wider soundstage, better mid bass. The 600m are still great surround back speakers though.

I would imagine the sense of scale is the biggest difference between the two. They should have similar timbre.

 

I recently went from R-28F towers to a pair of Cornwall IVs. I wanted a pair of 8000f for a while too though. Super happy with the CWIVs though. 

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