Subwoofer for Magnepan 20.1s Yes/No/Why?


I have a pair of magnepan 20.1 speaker and have been building a great system over the past few years- pass labs x250.5 amp and xono phonostage, audio research ref 3 preamp, vpi reference super scoutmaster turntable/10.5 tonearm with dynavector xv1s cartridge. I am not a bass freak, but on some recordings, I sometimes wonder if it would be worth getting a pair of subwoofers would give me that extra bottom octave (ie like the nola thunderbolts that Harry Pearson uses) or if that would throw off the coherence of their natural sound? What do you guys think?
powerdoctor

Showing 1 response by travis

I found the SWARM by Audio Kinesis (Duke LeJeune) to work very well in evening out bass modes and giving me some low slam without mucking up the bass. From his website:

"The Bass System


The main obstacles to natural-sounding bass reproduction are the inevitable room interactions - which impose large peaks and dips on the bass response. By using multiple subs spread asymmetrically around the room, each sub will produce a unique peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position. The combined average of these unique peak-and-dip patterns is much smoother than any one of them would be, resulting in more natural-sounding bass with excellent pitch definition. The Planetarium bass system also avoids the subjective slowness of most subwoofer systems by taking room gain into account. Typical in-room extension is to 20 Hz, but the main advantage of this approach is bass quality, not quantity.


Planetarium Alpha and Beta modules available separately; bass system sold separately as "the Swarm"."