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In Reply to: Are two subs really much better than one sub? I am posted by audiogatorjim on April 27, 2007 at 05:27:49:
Okay, "much better" is subjective, so I will only claim "audibly better" for two subs versus one.There is a correlation between the number of low frequency sources in a room and the smoothness of the bass at any given location within the room (not just in the sweet spot). This has been the conclusion of several researchers (Todd Welti et al, Earl Geddes).
Dipoles have been shown to have smoother in-room bass than monopoles (James M. Kates), and this makes sense in light of the multiple subwoofer research mentioned. A dipole can be thought of as two monopoles back-to-back and out-of-phase with each other; in effect, four sources.
A desirable characteristics of bass produced or reproduced in a large room is "decorrelation" - which is to say (in simplified terms), the sound-field in the bass region doesn't have large, distinct peaks and dips. In small rooms, the bass from a single source will be well correlated - and we'll have a naturally-occurring pattern of peaks and dips large enough and far enough apart to be audibly detrimental. Now we can move either the subwoofer or the listening position and re-arrange that pattern of peaks and dips, and hopefully find one that sounds pretty good. However, there is still likely to be an audible difference between how a pair of dipoles interacts with the room and how a single monople subwoofer interacts with the room.
Now if we add a second subwoofer located somewhere else in the room, each will reproduce half of the total bass energy and their peak and dip patterns will be unique - they will not exactly overlap. So the result is, they will tend to average out and the bass will be smoother. Some people advocate symmetrical subwoofer positioning, but I advocate asymmetrical subwoofer positioning as this gives better de-correlation of the in-room bass energy (Earl Geddes is my source for this strategy). In either event, two subs is better than one and four subs is better than two from a smoothness standpoint. For loudest deepest possible bass for your dollar, one large ubersub will outperform equal dollars spent on multiple smaller subs.
Now an alternative approach is equalization, which will probably result in smoother bass within the sweet spot (but probably not outside of it - and I don't know how large that sweet spot will be).
If you have the energy to read a long thread in which I advocate scattered multiple subwoofers and am vigorously challenged, I have provided a link below.
There is yet another subwoofer strategy (credit David Griesinger) that advocates stereo subs located to the extreme left and right of the listening position, which has psychoacoustic benefits. If you go with two subs, you can experiment with several different positioning paradigms to see which works best for you.
Best of luck to you in your quest,
Duke
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Follow Ups
- Yes - Duke 10:16:49 04/27/07 (1)
- what about giant bass horns ? - Kloss 12:34:06 04/28/07 (0)
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