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I have had a love/hate relationship w/ subwoofers since I first started fooling around with them many decades ago- and there weren't many options then. Of course, a lot has improved- perhaps because of home theatre and car audio, oddly enough. And, I've always been putting them to a difficult challenge- usually trying to get subwoofers to 'blend' with speakers like Quad electrostats, a near impossibility.
Fast forward to a few years ago. Our small home theatre system in the den was using an old Meridian processor that had been cast-off from the main home theatre system upstairs. Since the Meridian was well past its shelf life, I replaced it a couple years ago with a more modest consumer electronics unit- a Marantz that had a pretty basic Audyssey program in it. After I set that up, I was pretty impressed with how effectively the DSP controlled a very small subwoofer on that modest system (in addition to the fact that Marantz actually sounded better overall than the Meridian at a fraction of the cost- showing, t at least in the realm of mass market electronics, technology and sonic improvement as well as price reduction is possible).
My Avantgarde horns present a similar challenge to electrostats and I never seriously thought about adding a subwoofer. The horns come with woofers that, if you cross them over too high or run them too loud, mess up the presentation. To get the integrated woofer system to 'blend' well with the horns, you have to back them off a bit- hardly a surprise, since, like electrostats, you'll otherwise hear the discontinuity of the different drivers- planar or horn v dynamic woofer. I worked with acoustic treatments and placement over the years and my system sounds better than pretty good but it is still a bit bass shy except on records where the bass seems to be pronounced. I have no intention of investing more in this system or room at this point, because I'm still planning on relocating. But the idea of DSP woofer correction intrigued me. I didn't want to shell out for a set of big JL subs, or their equivalent with DSP on board, but have a few old subs that were languishing, unused, from the big home theatre system (which I have simply quit using- I have no interest in running a big projection system these days with the "theatrical experience").
Just as an experiment, I bought one of those inexpensive DSpeaker subwoofer interfaces- little bigger than a pack of cigarettes, with wall wart (ugh), and hooked it up to one of the smaller old subwoofers (a front firing 15" Velodyne). I electrically isolated this package from the rest of the system through a 240 volt line and step-down (another remnant from the old home theatre upstairs). Despite the low cost of the DSPeaker, it seems to do a pretty effective job- and after it self-calibrated, I adjusted the sub crossover so it hinges at around 45 hz- making it 6db down at 90hz and 30db down at 180 hz. It matches up pretty well with the Avantgarde woofers and isn't cranked up very loud- if you listen to the sub alone it is very subdued, both in volume and range. But it does add some gravitas. Total investment was about $350 dollars plus a set of long interconnects (and I used bargain basement ones at that, plus a positively ancient MIT Shotgun CVT that was pulled out of a box in the basement for the short jump from the DSP unit to the sub).
A thousand years ago, when I was experimenting with multichannel sound in the era before discrete multichannel was available, I had an old Sony digital delay line (that was marketed as an early home theatre enhancement before pre-pros, AC-3 soundtracks on Laserdisc, DVD, etc. existed.). I ran this as a rear channel system with a modest set of bookshelf speakers using my Quads, ARC tube gear and table on the front end. When one of my truly blessed audiophile buddies came over for a visit (Myles- the late, great Chuck Lamonica), he was horror struck that I had this purist system combined with some crappy gear as an add-on. He said, turn it off. Then, turn it on. Ultimately, Chuck said, Leave it on.
(It wasn't effective on all recordings but when it worked it added a real third dimension to the presentation, beyond what the Quads - no slouches in the the imaging department- were capable of).
Long way of saying that I've been having fun with this latest cheap, kludged together experiment. Perhaps that means I can have it all- full range, dynamic, jump factor and clarity with deep bass. (Granted, a modern woofer system will undoubtedly improve things even more, as a pair, but remember, I'm on a desert island right now making things out of coconuts). And that little DSPeaker woofer controller --not the Dual Core device which purports to do far more- is well worth the modest investment. Fun!
Fast forward to a few years ago. Our small home theatre system in the den was using an old Meridian processor that had been cast-off from the main home theatre system upstairs. Since the Meridian was well past its shelf life, I replaced it a couple years ago with a more modest consumer electronics unit- a Marantz that had a pretty basic Audyssey program in it. After I set that up, I was pretty impressed with how effectively the DSP controlled a very small subwoofer on that modest system (in addition to the fact that Marantz actually sounded better overall than the Meridian at a fraction of the cost- showing, t at least in the realm of mass market electronics, technology and sonic improvement as well as price reduction is possible).
My Avantgarde horns present a similar challenge to electrostats and I never seriously thought about adding a subwoofer. The horns come with woofers that, if you cross them over too high or run them too loud, mess up the presentation. To get the integrated woofer system to 'blend' well with the horns, you have to back them off a bit- hardly a surprise, since, like electrostats, you'll otherwise hear the discontinuity of the different drivers- planar or horn v dynamic woofer. I worked with acoustic treatments and placement over the years and my system sounds better than pretty good but it is still a bit bass shy except on records where the bass seems to be pronounced. I have no intention of investing more in this system or room at this point, because I'm still planning on relocating. But the idea of DSP woofer correction intrigued me. I didn't want to shell out for a set of big JL subs, or their equivalent with DSP on board, but have a few old subs that were languishing, unused, from the big home theatre system (which I have simply quit using- I have no interest in running a big projection system these days with the "theatrical experience").
Just as an experiment, I bought one of those inexpensive DSpeaker subwoofer interfaces- little bigger than a pack of cigarettes, with wall wart (ugh), and hooked it up to one of the smaller old subwoofers (a front firing 15" Velodyne). I electrically isolated this package from the rest of the system through a 240 volt line and step-down (another remnant from the old home theatre upstairs). Despite the low cost of the DSPeaker, it seems to do a pretty effective job- and after it self-calibrated, I adjusted the sub crossover so it hinges at around 45 hz- making it 6db down at 90hz and 30db down at 180 hz. It matches up pretty well with the Avantgarde woofers and isn't cranked up very loud- if you listen to the sub alone it is very subdued, both in volume and range. But it does add some gravitas. Total investment was about $350 dollars plus a set of long interconnects (and I used bargain basement ones at that, plus a positively ancient MIT Shotgun CVT that was pulled out of a box in the basement for the short jump from the DSP unit to the sub).
A thousand years ago, when I was experimenting with multichannel sound in the era before discrete multichannel was available, I had an old Sony digital delay line (that was marketed as an early home theatre enhancement before pre-pros, AC-3 soundtracks on Laserdisc, DVD, etc. existed.). I ran this as a rear channel system with a modest set of bookshelf speakers using my Quads, ARC tube gear and table on the front end. When one of my truly blessed audiophile buddies came over for a visit (Myles- the late, great Chuck Lamonica), he was horror struck that I had this purist system combined with some crappy gear as an add-on. He said, turn it off. Then, turn it on. Ultimately, Chuck said, Leave it on.
(It wasn't effective on all recordings but when it worked it added a real third dimension to the presentation, beyond what the Quads - no slouches in the the imaging department- were capable of).Long way of saying that I've been having fun with this latest cheap, kludged together experiment. Perhaps that means I can have it all- full range, dynamic, jump factor and clarity with deep bass. (Granted, a modern woofer system will undoubtedly improve things even more, as a pair, but remember, I'm on a desert island right now making things out of coconuts). And that little DSPeaker woofer controller --not the Dual Core device which purports to do far more- is well worth the modest investment. Fun!
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