Recommended sub for 705/HTM7 set-up

[alpina]

Hi all,

Our room is approximately 4.6mt * 10mts and we are wondering which sub you guys would recommend fot the following setup - 705s with htm7 and fpm6 for surrounds.

Cheers,

Julie

[Loner]

I'd look into the 750 if you want to stay with B&W. If not, I'd consider an SVS PB-12 Plus/2. You have a large room.

Re price, the 750 is $1600 USD
the Plus/2 is $1400 USD plus shipping from Ohio. Duty fees?

Are there distributors in Australia?

[Karma]

HI,
I did not vote.
As was said, you do have a big room. Don't cheat it. Get 15" subs minimum. 18" subs would be better and is probably the only real choice if you can afford them. Get two of them. Two will be needed. If you set it up properly you will have awesome bass, you lucky dog!

[alpina]

Hi all,

Do i really need such a big sub? Even from an aesthetic point of view such a big sub sounds (no pun intended) like a nightmare.

The room is our living and kitchen combined. I have attached a pic of the room in hope that your opinions might change in respect to the size sub I will need.

Cheers,

Julie

[bsodmike]

Wow, that's a beautiful place lol...

Yea, I'd personally go with 2x ASW675s, they each do 500Wrms

--Mike

[Karma]

Hi all,

Do i really need such a big sub? Even from an aesthetic point of view such a big sub sounds (no pun intended) like a nightmare.

The room is our living and kitchen combined. I have attached a pic of the room in hope that your opinions might change in respect to the size sub I will need.

Cheers,

Julie

HI,
Sorry for the bad news but the answer is: yes you do. Almost everybody buys subs that are too small. You are being influenced by unwise decisions usually based upon cost issues. Oh, you can get by with smaller subs. They will work. They will produce bass. But not well. Especially when the going gets tough.

Question: Have you ever heard really good bass? In other words, do you have a reference for your expectations? Go to a church organ concert where the pipe organ has 32 foot pipes. Make it a point to do this. These will produce 16 Hz fundamental notes. They will seem to swell and fill the space with unheard but felt pulsating energy. That's what bass is all about. Most listening rooms are too small to reproduce the experience but yours is big enough, I think, to yield a reasonable bass experience.

Maybe you should modify your question by asking for subs that will give mediocre performance. It that case, yes, you can go smaller. Which do you want? Great or not so great performance? Your room will definitely handle the larger units. Again, are your priorities audio first or the beauty of the room first? You must give us that information.

Also, the volume of the room is the critical number not the area. You did not indicate the ceiling height so the volume cannot be calculated. It is obvious that your room size is capable of great bass. I hope you go for it.

Sparky

[Nolan B]

Julie,
To me the amount of base you "need" and the amount most people want are very different. For me I have a room that is the same size maybe even slightly bigger then yours and I have the PV1 ( as you know from my other posts) and we dont have the sub turn all the way up, not even close.


I may get some slack from others for this, but to me the way something looks in my house is as important as it sounds. The PV1 would look great in your place! Think of it as a piece of art and buy 2 if you can afford it

If I were you I would buy the PV1 try it and return it if it didnt work. Subs are the easiest thing in your home theater to change. Ask your dealer if you an borrow one, or even two if he has it.

[RobP]

Julie, what is your budget for a subwoofer?

[Nolan B]

Julie,
I dont mean to through a wrench into this, but the more I look at that room the more I think how great B&W FPM 6s or Vienna Accoustics (link below) would look great all the way around.

http://www.theperfectvision.com/newsletter/tpv49/vienna_acoustics_schonberg.html

the vienna accustics are wall mounted speakers like the FPMs too and sound just as good.

[alpina]

HI,
Sorry for the bad news but the answer is: yes you do. Almost everybody buys subs that are too small. You are being influenced by unwise decisions usually based upon cost issues.

To a certain extent we are driven by cost contraints but more by the fact that I don't want a room dominated by speakers. Stealt is the key here! Hard to explain, but eventually there will be a cabinet on the left hand side of the wall that will house a cabinet (cystals at top and av gear at bottom). Off that cabinet will be a bench that will stretch from it and go past the plasma - plan is to sit bookshelf and center speakers off it. We will try and remove the bulk of the cabinet/bench as much as possible by mounting it off the wall and giving it that "suspended" affect.

Also , we live in a terrace home (attached houses to either side of us). Not sure how church bass will work for them

Maybe you should modify your question by asking for subs that will give mediocre performance. It that case, yes, you can go smaller. Which do you want? Great or not so great performance? Your room will definitely handle the larger units. Again, are your priorities audio first or the beauty of the room first? You must give us that information.

Also, the volume of the room is the critical number not the area. You did not indicate the ceiling height so the volume cannot be calculated. It is obvious that your room size is capable of great bass. I hope you go for it.
Sparky

Ceiling height is about 3.4mts - now i know you going to say i need more/bigger subs Of course, we want a great sounding system. The 705/htm7/fpm6/+ whatever sub is not considered a cheap buy for us. Add the pioneer 506, yamaha 2600, pioneer 989, rotel (looking like 1075), STB and for us this all adds up to serious money. We've bought a house (our first) and I know hubby loves his entertainment (mainly HT over stereo) and thought we may as well do it right. Only proviso being that I still want my home to look like a home After all, this is not a dedicated HT room but a shared living room/kitchen.

Hope this help and loving the constructive feedback. Please keep them coming.

Cheers,

Julie

[Karma]

HI Juliie,
If you anticipate trouble from your neighbors due to bass overflow, maybe you should forget subs. Any sub that provides even marginal satisfaction will probably cause domestic problems. You can't hide a solid "THUD".

You should understand, if you don't already, that it's not just low bass that I'm talking about. I'm really talking about QUALITY bass. This means low distortion, not pure volume.

Sparky

[Nolan B]

HI Juliie,
If you anticipate trouble from your neighbors due to bass overflow, maybe you should forget subs. Any sub that provides even marginal satisfaction will probably cause domestic problems. You can't hide a solid "THUD".

You should understand, if you don't already, that it's not just low bass that I'm talking about. I'm really talking about QUALITY bass. This means low distortion, not pure volume.

Sparky

This is true. Do you have an idea about how sound proofed your walls are? Are your neigbors tolerant?

[alpina]

double brick structure.

neighbours should be ok - one side is full of students. if we have to put up with with parties and musical instruments, they can up with our bass.

in terms of budget, we were hoping to get away with up to AUD$2500 - similar cost to 705s.

cheers,

julie

[RobP]

Julie,
Considering your needs for subwoofer that will not intrude on the decor and your budget I would go with the Velodyne for the money. First, the shape of the cabinet fits in well with the look of your room, second, it has the built in DSP room correction which will desperately be needed in that room. The fact that you "need" a large woofer to produce great bass performance is becoming a thing of the past. I personally have a subwoofer that is comprised of three 10" subwoofers, it accurately produces bass well below 20hz without breaking a sweat.

[Karma]

HI,
Be careful. I know you don't intend to but your are on the verge of leading folks down the wrong path. Things have not changed. Check out the distortion your subs produce at low frequncy, high SPL's. You should do this before handing out your recommendations. I think you will be shocked.

Sparky

[RobP]

Sparky, I understand and know what it takes to have great bass, but sometimes people are not willing or cannot go the level it takes to get there. There are always compromises unless you have a deep pocket and alot of room. I was suggesting my opinion based upon what she has to work with.

And by the way things have changed, if they had not, all of these 15" and 18" subwoofers on the market right now would still be installed in 6 to 10 cuft. enclosures in order to acheive the lower octaves. :W

[Guy]

I am new to this forum and this is my first post.

I just purchased the Velodyne SPL-R1000 a few weeks ago to use with my B&W 805s. I use it in a small room (4x3m) for stereo and it is superb. This is my third sub and by far the best (compared with my M&k & AMC).

Integration is seamless with my 805s and the eq feature is great. It has the presets for movies, rock, classical, games so you can change the eq to suit your listening tastes from the suppled remote.

Very small small sub which comes in three different colours so it may suit your requirments however you may need two for a room your size. I suppose you can start with one and see if it works for you.

Hope this helps.

[perato]

A subwoofer with equalization is good but there are equalizers available (e.g. Velodyne SMS-1, various Behringer products). You can buy any sub you want and then buy an equalizer to flatten the frequency response. The equalizer might not be perfect, but it does make an improvement.

[asrovnal]

I use a ASW 700 with 703s and it blends in perfectly. I do not like as much bass as Karma seems to need. If you choose the ASW 700 it "speakes" very well and clear when called upon to do so for both home theater and 2 channel use. Second choice would be the Velodyne.

[BlazeMaster]

I know the SVS PB12plus/2 might ruin the decor of the room, but as an ex-owner of the PV1 and the PB12plus/2, I'd take the SVS any day. If you like good clean effortless bass, and in a big room like that, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything else up to the task at that price point.

[JKalman]

I had the ASW750 with two 703s in the front, two 705s in the back and an HTM7 center. The 750 sounded excellent with the 703s, which probably had more to do with the Bryston SP1.7 performing its crossover function efficiently than with anything else. The 750 had plenty of bass and in my space, dimensions 14' x 34' (though generally the room size was 17' x 34' after the first 10' off the front wall), I had to keep it turned down more than the rest of the speakers in my surround system or my wife would come down to the basement looking for blood. She could hear the subwoofer two floors up in the Master Bedroom. :E

The bass sounded tight, well controlled, but with the crossover set at 80Hz it worked precisely enough that I could notice it unbalancing the stereo image when placed to the right or left side of the room. So if you plan on setting your system crossover to a THX specification level of 80Hz, or higher, you might want to consider two subs. This is likely going to be the situation with any good subwoofer that puts out well-defined sonics at the higher frequencies when the preamp/processor is set at the THX standard's crossover point.

I definitely recommend the ASW750, especially over the ASW700 since you won't have as much bass extension with the 705s compared to the 703s. There isn't a gigantic size difference and the price difference is relatively insignificant enough, IMO, to justify the expenditure. :T

Considering how much you are spending already, you should be able to get your dealer to let you try out the 700 and/or the 750, then after deciding on one, you could try demo-ing a second one from them also and see if it makes a big difference in the space you have for your HT. Of course, that is assuming you decide to go with the B&W subs. I personally prefer matching the sub brand with the other speakers in my system, since they are designed to complement speakers in their respective series, whereas with another company's sub you might have difficulties matching the sound, which could cause inconsistencies at the crossover point you choose. So, regardless of what you decide to do, make sure you listen carefully to anything you buy, especially if you decide not to match the subwoofer with the rest of your speakers, because it could mean a lot more work for you to get the sound you want.