Top Ten Reasons Why Subwoofers and B&W Loudspeakers Don't Mix Musically... Usually

[Briz vegas]

My Rel has now been travelling around Australia for about a month looking for a suitable techician. I am running a pair of slightly underpowered 804s, minus the support of the sub.

Am I missing my Rel? Yes, but only for movies (and even there I could almost take it or leave it). This unfortunate event has me thinking that Rebelman is right after all, even before I scratch together the dollars for some better amplification. 804s alone are amazing with the right amplification - my Rel will be relgated to HT when it finally gets home.

[dmccombs]

Well, I keep experimenting and going back and forth on my preference. When I upgraded to the JL F112, I swung back to the "sub is better for 2CH" side. I have an SMS-1 so I get a very good sub/main blend when I use the sub. After re-reading the thread again, I experimented again.

My Prepro allows me to change the Bass Management settings and immediately hear the change. This make comparing various setup convienient.

Last night, I played several different types of music and switched between a 50hz crossover, and letting the Mains runs Full Range (with the sub added at 25hz and below).

You would think (ok, I would think) that changing the Bass Management settings would only impact the low frequency range, but instead, I could hear differences in the mids and highs as well.

In the end, the Full Range setup was the smoothest with nice clear highs, and stonger lows (27-45 hz). The reason the lows were stronger is that I have a room node that I remove when the mains are crossed at 50hz.

Anyway, the point of my post is: I think that to crossover the mains via the prepro adds one more step of processing. I think this degrades the sound from high to low. In my situation, I don't think it is a blending issue.

Now running the Mains as Full has introduced one lesser problem. I have a room mode from 27-45hz. I already have some Bass Traps in place, but I will want to reduce this somehow.

Overall, for today, I am seeing better results running the Mains as full range and adding the sub for frequencies ~27hz and below.

Darrell

[Briz vegas]

Music that killed the subwoofer

My troublesome REL Strata 5 is finally back 2 months later. The importer says its working fine (and gave me a big bill for wasting their time).

I put on Ani Difranco's "I know this bar" from her album "To the Teeth" and once again it makes my REL pop when playing at 74db. A couple of other doofy CDs I tried did not do this. You guys love your big subs, can they handle this track at moderate volumes or do they struggle and fail like my REL?

[RebelMan]

Maybe it's time to listen to the music and hear what it's telling you Britz. :B

[Tim92gts]

My troublesome REL Strata 5 is finally back 2 months later. The importer says its working fine (and gave me a big bill for wasting their time).

I put on Ani Difranco's "I know this bar" from her album "To the Teeth" and once again it makes my REL pop when playing at 74db. A couple of other doofy CDs I tried did not do this. You guys love your big subs, can they handle this track at moderate volumes or do they struggle and fail like my REL?

Hi Briz,
i've got a few tracks that do the same with my MA FB212; no idea why but after reading this thread i guess i should bin it!
Always try listening to the same track on other systems to see what is in there; i use the Sennheisers to eliminate the room. You will at times be amazed how bad some recordings are.
i was contemplating a pair of Stadium3s to get Nautilus performance from 801s but not sure any more
Cheers
Tim

[pengilly]

This is an outstanding thread.
I only wish I didnt live so far up in the woods so we could get together and tune -up my gear, you guys are way over my knowledge!!
Jeff

[pbarach]

Similar to hd99yr's experience with the 804s, I found the low bass of my 803S a bit lean with the Rotel equipment that I was using. Much of that changed considerablly when I moved up to Classe'. The Classe' equipment boosted my 803S to the limits of their lowband ability and the results were exceedingly gratifying. And while subwoofers would have enhanced the bottom-end further I didn't find the additional colorations worth the trade off.

So, if you haven't experimented with equipment lately, you should consider that more potential maybe hidden inside those 704s just itching to be tapped.

I'd certainly give Classe a listen if I were shopping for am amp. However. I am running the 704's with a Carver m1.0t that has plenty of power to spare--this amp did a great job with my previous speakers (Carver original "Amazing" speakers), which were a lot harder to drive (much lower sensitivity and some impedance dips, too) than the 704's and the combination had lots of clean bass output down to about 19 Hz.