Has anyone here set up a system with tiered subwoofers handling different bass spectrums?
Has anyone here set up a system with tiered subwoofers handling different bass spectrums? I currently have bookshelf speakers fully crossed over to a pair of smallish symmetrically placed, force-canceling stereo subwoofers at 160Hz, and I am thinking about adding a big, ported sub and fully crossing that over to the stereo ones at 60Hz. My setup will easily allow me to do it (I have a miniDSP Flex that is applying DIRAC Live room correction to my current 2.2 setup downstream and that preamp is handling the full bass management duties right now, so the miniDSP only sees a pure 2.0 system at the moment--I can just attach the new sub to the second pair of outputs and use the miniDSP to handle this level of the bass management). Am wondering if anyone else has tried this? I am looking to improve bottom end impact and extension with the big ported woofer (looking at SVS PC-2000 Pro) since the stereo ones are not currently reaching down as low as my previous sub (currently a pair of SVS 3000 Micros; before these, I had a single SVS SB-3000).
-Ed
I think you need to change the oil in the car before going for the expensive engine upgrade. I don’t know why in the world your subs are crossed all the way up at 160hz. Any bookshelf speaker worth keeping shouldn’t need this. Your best path forward should be to get the crossover point as low as possible. This will likely be repositioning your speakers. Even a couple of inches can make huge differences. |
That's a very high crossover frequency and almost guaranteed to muddy up your sound. I agree with @rick_n - you'd be much better off lowering that to 100 hZ and experimenting with placement to perhaps improve the LF of the mains. |
Lower your crossover point, look at AM Acoustics room mode simulator for guidance on placement and refer to the miniDSP application notes on using multiple subs. |
Let's face some facts. The KEF LS50 don't do bass well. On their own they lack bass extention and begin to distort. You are compensating for their inability to produce bass and dynamics by pushing the sub into upper bass territory @ 160hz. IF you had speakers that could properly handle bass down to say 50hz then your subwoofers could be adjusted properly to give a dynamic low end and operate as they were designed. Bottom line... if you want great bass and dynamics these aren't the right speakers. The subs are fine. No need to buy another one. These speakers are great for near field, low level listening for classical music. But if your looking for some punchy Jazz tunes or electronic chill music the little drivers in these things can't handle it.
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