IB Sub system for house?

[Generic George]

I have a fairly small house (row home) with floors of about 400 sqft and a basement of the same size. The room where I have my AV system is about half the first floor (roughly 10'x20'). Now the door to the basement is in the back left corner and the floor for the room is essentially the ceiling of the basement (you can see the nails from the floor poking through the ceiling).

Currently I am using a SVS PC+ as my sub, but it has occurred to me that this set up might work well for an IB sub system. From what I have read, these are best for lower frequencies than the SVS will do. Though the SVS does already rattle things pretty good. Is this likely to just be massive overkill?

How exactly do you set something like this up? I've tried reading some threads on it in various sites and the basic principles are fairly clear, but the specifics of the design considerations are unclear to me.

I take it I would need to cut some sort of hole in the floor or might it be feasible to use the open door to the basement?

[Bear]

Massive overkill? Probably. Unhappy neighbors? See question #1. WAF? Perhaps low.

You would not want to use a door unless you were willing to seal off your basement. You don't want the baffles for the IB to be anything less than structural, and a moving door won't qualify unless you shop at www.surplussubmarinedoors.com. Down the hatch!

Beyond that, I'll let the experts in IB hit the specifics. If you are going to use your basement, be sure that you have an appropriate space and that you won't be creating a permanent nuisance. I am not 100% confident, but I suspect that you will need to have the drivers toward the middle of your room and away from the walls of the basement. Since you are looking at about a 1.5' - 2' intrusion down into the basement, this may create a navigation hazard. Also, you won't want to be using the basement while the IB is in use, so if you have other occupants in the house, make sure that they aren't going to be using the basement when you have Iron Man cranked to "11".

(Net effect: it's probably more effort than it's worth if you are using liveable space in a small house)

[Generic George]

Massive overkill? Probably. Unhappy neighbors? See question #1. WAF? Perhaps low.

WAF is not a factor. I don't really crank things very often and based on past experiences there seems to be sufficient isolation between the houses that it shouldn't be an issue.

You would not want to use a door unless you were willing to seal off your basement. You don't want the baffles for the IB to be anything less than structural, and a moving door won't qualify unless you shop at www.surplussubmarinedoors.com. Down the hatch!

Well I was thinking more along the lines of using the open door to the basement as the "vent" into the room. I actually took the door off because that's where I keep my cat's litter boxes.

Sadly your link appears to be broken, unless it was just a joke to begin with.

Beyond that, I'll let the experts in IB hit the specifics. If you are going to use your basement, be sure that you have an appropriate space and that you won't be creating a permanent nuisance. I am not 100% confident, but I suspect that you will need to have the drivers toward the middle of your room and away from the walls of the basement. Since you are looking at about a 1.5' - 2' intrusion down into the basement, this may create a navigation hazard. Also, you won't want to be using the basement while the IB is in use, so if you have other occupants in the house, make sure that they aren't going to be using the basement when you have Iron Man cranked to "11".

That's what I was afraid of. Carving a large hole in the middle of the floor, just doesn't sound like a great idea. Though I could conceivably just park the coffee table over it.

House is just me, so other occupants are not an issue.

Re: Your sig - I always pictured Hugo giving a variation on the "You know what it is I hate about humans" speech to Frodo.

[cjd]

Basic setup: drivers in the barrier between two rooms that otherwise do not share air (heater duct, door, cat-flap...) - one room is the "box" and it should not be ported.

There are reasonable limits: if the distance between the drivers and any opening between rooms is far enough, the losses are manageable, but that's probably 10+ feet. And still not ideal. I have a door about 14 feet of surface away from my manifold, and door open it drops off more below ~20Hz.

Where in the room works best varies. But you can do the "put the sub in the listening spot and go around with a meter running test sweeps where you want to put your IB" thing since you have an SVS.

You DO need the drivers directly firing into the room, or in a manifold setup that fires into the room. With the other side in another room.

You should visit the Cult for ore info.

[Space]

Not that I've experimented with this exactly, but I would suggest you don't need to worry much about separating the space behind the woofers from the listening space. If the boundaries are very leaky, the effect should approach an open baffle rather than an infinite baffle. That reduces efficiency and air compression, but might be better from your neighbors' perspective.

If you mounted woofers in a wall with doorways open to the listening room, it wouldn't be an infinite baffle but still a large open baffle and able to go deep by OB standards.

[Bear]

Well I was thinking more along the lines of using the open door to the basement as the "vent" into the room. I actually took the door off because that's where I keep my cat's litter boxes.

If you can convince the cat to go elsewhere, then you can seal it up with little worry. Emphasis, though, is on seal.

Sadly your link appears to be broken, unless it was just a joke to begin with.

Most assuredly!

Re: Your sig - I always pictured Hugo giving a variation on the "You know what it is I hate about humans" speech to Frodo.

Yep, but I still love the movies and have even learned to forgive Peter Jackson of the casting error (Hugo is great, but just not really that particular role...).

[Generic George]

Well thanks for the suggestions and comments, but it does look like this idea just isn't going to work as things currently are. At some point I'm going to give my house a serious remodeling and it's something I will definitely keep in mind.

Yep, but I still love the movies and have even learned to forgive Peter Jackson of the casting error (Hugo is great, but just not really that particular role...).

It was a small part so it never bothered me, but he is definitely best as a heavy. He has an air of menace and rage to him that matches the best.

Jackson did commit one of the cardinal sins of movie adaptations though. I understand you can't get everything from a book up on the screen, but you should not be dropping something like Aragorn's speach to the Urukai, because you want to give Liv Tyler more screen time or do something else like that to make you feel like you're "contributing" to the story.

One of the things that impressed me the most about the Watchmen adaptation was that Zack actually avoided this and the one major change/addition arguably made more sense than the original, especially considering all of the side stuff that had to get dropped for time purposes.