to Sub or not to Sub...dedicated listening room

[InfernoSTi]

Interesting discussion...most enjoyable to read.  A couple of thoughts:

First, the room is square so you will have some big mode peaks/valleys unless you manage that with room treatments and/or multiple subs or some such.  Type your dimensions into a room mode calculator and you will find the problems spots...measure it later and you see they will exist.  Easy first step is the off-center  your listening position and perhaps consider a diagonal setup.  Second step is the add some room treatments...a big plus in a small room.  The smaller the room, the more helpful the treatments seem to be.  I'm a big fan of combining absorption with diffusion and going with serious bass trapping. 

Second, as Jim said, I've had good success with OB subs in a much larger size/number than common sense would predict. In a room slightly smaller than yours, I ran four 15" Hawthorne Audio Augie woofers as OB dipole speakers.  I finally had the bass I was looking for...musical, authoritative, and detailed.  It seems dipole subs don't "load" the room the same as a conventional sub...and having four (two per channel) really spread the load so the volume could be low and I would still move a lot of air.  The fact that I had four also helped them act as a "swarm" to a certain degree.  I should add that I also had lots of bass traps, so that helped keep the modes at bay.  My current "Augie Towers" look like this:

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hawthorneaudio.us%2Fforums%2Fdownload%2Ffile.php%3Fid%3D1144%26amp%3Bmode%3Dview&hash=f5ef2e84d75b0a67c41de6b9ee742452bc6fa933)

I have two of those towers each with two 15" Augie woofers.  I wouldn't go back to fewer than four OB subs.   

Let me know if you have any specific questions, please?

Best,
John

[4krow]

John, Your advice is spot on, especially the idea of diagonal positioning.  As a wood worker, I am very impressed by the OB subs that you have. I use OB speakers myself, but no subs(usually). The ob speakers that I have also utilize a an open box cavity that acts as a hemholtz resonator. Not the lowest bass, but it does extend bass further down than an OB normally does by itself. Photo of unfinished speaker. Will post completed speaker later.

[Jim R.]

Oh yes, forgot about the diagonal setup -- I had my listening room setup like that for a day or two when I was playing with the different arrangements (and when I was planning on using only the 10.5 x 10.5 portion of the room) and that was really the best option by far for that space, but then I decided to open the floor plan up a bit and then the diagonal setup was prety awkward to work with.  Had I stuck with the square room, the diagonal arrangement would have stayed.

-- Jim

[earwaxxer]

John - Wow, those towers with the 15's are beautiful! How low do they go?

[madbrayniak]

John,
I think I have seen your OB towers before...do you go on diyaudio.com or avsforum.com?

Ill take the BK12 under consideration.  However, I think for now I am going to use my father-in-laws JBL 120Ti monitors.  I need to build some stands for them and I am reconing them now.

I was looking at those frugal horns because of not needing any crossover. and the cheaper price comapared to the monitor design I have been working on.  As someone said earlier the pursuit of audio is just as fun as listening to it.....

I am honestly very lucky to have what I do.  I am currently unemployed and since my wife's dad has so much in storage from his pursuit it is fueling my obsession.  However, I have many obsessions....cooking, computers, speakers, and golf to name a few....and they are all expensive.....and i still have no car.....