DynosBM6A + Why dont you like subs?

5

5ergo

New member
Reading this forum i realised that you guys dont like subwoofers and id really like to know why.
I just bought Dynaudio BM6A and they are good but of course im going to buy a sub and set crossover low, thats 50Hz cause i have a small room and i like it low.
For playback i think theres no way you can hear it all if not using a decent sub.Im not mixing music i use my gear for playback only.

Im going to buy this sub:
http://www.svsubwoofers.com/subs_pci_20-39.htm

Yes this topic is also about the monitors but unfortunately i cant tell you much about them since i also bought a defected Presonus Central station so i cant use monitors.
Of course im going to return Presonus tomorrow so i promise a test and pics!

Admins: I can post some pics, cant I? :)
 
I think its because subwoofers are expensive and not required. Some people might not even benefit from them because of their room acoustics. Why throw down another $500 on something you might not truelly need.

Although it definately would be nice to have in general. But i also dont think its a good idea to use a sub unless it is actually built for the monitors your using as tops. Also placing could be pretty difficult.

Danny
 
Subs are great, if you have the space. In most bedroom size rooms, they don't make a lot of sense unless you are running 5 inch or smaller satellites or you have a lot of bass traps set up.
 
for what its worth, i got my sub and its staying in there.
i only pop it on and off, for checking mixes. its not normally on fulltime.
but it is a permanent fixture for now!? :eek:

but then again, i'm not good enough at mixing yet to say it hurts or helps... :confused:

but i do believe checking your mix out on a sub..this just makes sense. ;)

sound advice, right, the whole concept of nearfileds...
because almost anyone who listens to music (movies),
pc or home stereo..
has a sub hooked up these days.
so 20-50hz is going to be amplified whether you checked it out or not.

BM6A's...mmmmmmmm... thats fhkng downtown.. :)
 
Often times subs can create more of a problem than they solve when they are setup improperly or in the wrong type of room. That can make it very hard to mix. The BM6's actually put out a lot more lowend than you might think, it just isn't as apparent in the typical listening field. When I used to check low end on my BM6's I would open the door to my control room and go outside for a smoke. Once you get 15 fett away from a pair of BM6's that is when you will realize how much low end they actually do have. However, if I were using them for purely my own listening enjoyment I would certainly add a sub. That way I would have the full range within the primary listening space. Personally, I am still holding out for the actual Dynaudio sub for my BM15's. The problem is that it is just expensive enough that I never get the money for it. Every time I get close gearlust kicks me in the rear and I buy something else:D
 
Thanks for replys guys!

xstatic take a look at svs subs.They are better than Dynaudio subs and cheaper.
I cant say for sure i havent heard svs yet but everyone agrees so.

PCi or PCi Plus should shake your walls and you can have crossover as low as 40hz with BM15s.
I think when using low crossover its hard for a sub not to match monitors.

btw im still waiting for Presonus to come as they are out of stock. :mad:
 
i would be more concerned with accuracy of the bass not whether or not it can shake your walls. I would rather have a nice tight bass response then a boomy one.

danny
 
darnold said:
i would be more concerned with accuracy of the bass not whether or not it can shake your walls. I would rather have a nice tight bass response then a boomy one.

danny
Click to expand...

i think thats were music taste comes in or application. i read some studios have the subs just for the customers so they can blast their heads off and not blow out the studio mix monitors!

Blue Sky, acoustic suspension sub's...tighter bass. They claim to have made this a priority in their design...tighter bass. if nothing else, its a refreshing different approach. small woofer would have a bit more detail/tightness in theory too, but trade off on how low can you go....without a port. :)
 
Subs totally screw up how your bass will translate. There is a HUGE learning curve.

First of all, most of your listeners probably won't have a sub at all. So, you'll probably end up relying on the fundamental (30-60Hz) to carry the kick and bass, because it sounds great with a sub, but on a normal system it suddenly doesn't sound too hot. Midbass is your friend as far as translation goes.

Secondly, you need to get it calibrated exactly right. This means by a professional. It is incredibly hard to do it right yourself.
Otherwise you will end up with too much or (more likely) far too little bass in your mixes, because your sub level and placement, which may sound "right" and good to you, actually isn't accurate.

Low bass is very emotional. It becomes a lot more difficult to overcome that and mix based on how well it will translate rather than how good it sounds, when you have a subwoofer involved. I can't really explain this properly if you haven't tried mixing with a sub in the past and then seeing how it translates.

So, it's harder to get a good sounding mix without a sub, and it probably will never sound as good on your monitors or have as much low information as when you mix with a sub, but the extra effort required will usually end up translating far better to more systems.
 
Blue Sky's take on this...

I hope nobody minds me chiming in...

...However I think it is important to point out that Subs don't screw up how things translate and the statement above is somewhat misleading (more on this below). I can say this with a great deal of confidence, because that is what our ever growing user base, physics, psychoacoustics and my extensive experience tells me.

Let me just cover the above points one at a time -

1) Most consumers actually do use a subwoofer. 90%+ of ALL new home audio systems being sold in North America, including HTIB (home theater in a box), include a subwoofer. This includes high-end and entry level systems. Most mid to high-end car systems, including OEM car audio systems, use a subwoofer. The worst thing a professional engineer can do is to compromise a recording because they incorrectly assume the consumer is going to be listening on a low-fi system.

2) Calibration is NOT incredibly hard to do yourself, all that is required is an SPL meter and some simple test signals. [ www.abluesky.com/calibration ] Our users do it all the time and even consumers manage to do it. With regard to subwoofer placement, this is also straight forward and is certainly a big benefit of using a SUB [ www.abluesky.com/subplacement ]. With a stereo pair of monitors, you don't have much choice of where to place them for the best bass response. In fact, in most rooms the best spot for LF response at the mix position, is never the best spot for imaging and coverage, therefore you always compromise the LF response of a pair nearfields by placing them in a poor location for bass-response.

3) The fact that LF is very emotional is not a negative. If you visit most consumer audio websites (such as the www.avsforum.com - 168,000 members), you will see that consumers want real LF response and constantly complain about modern mixes. This is because many professionals don't monitor on a full-range system and the result is that LF content on many recordings is all over the place. The only exception is movies, which are much more consistent thanks to SMPTE standards and practices. There have also been numerous instances of professional recordings having obvious LF faults (rumble, mic stand kicking etc), that the engineer never heard, because they weren't monitoring on a full-range monitoring system.

My real point of this post is to convey that the goal in any professional recording studio should be to monitor everything that is being recorded. The monitoring system and room acoustics seem to be the biggest impediment to this in most studios (especially in small studios). Using a subwoofer, along with proper bass-management electronics, can actually improve your chances of getting accurate LF response and getting a mix that translates better to other systems, without intrusive LF issues.

How does a subwoofer and bass-management provide these benefits, you may ask? First, bass management uses filters to extract low frequency information from the main channels and then reroutes that information to a single mono subwoofer (more than one sub can be used to reproduce this signal for greater flexibility and output). The advantages are overwhelming and include smaller main speakers that are easier to place, better LF response (because the LF source can be placed for the best LF response in the room - again this is not possible with two stereo speakers), reduced inter-modulation distortion and more repeatable LF response from room to room (small or large).

The point about "more repeatable LF response from room to room" is one that people often don't fully understand, or overlook completely. However, how low frequencies sum, from two or more sources, will depend greatly on room acoustics, the relative distances between the speakers, the relationship between the speakers and the boundaries in the room, which speakers are playing, what the phase relationship between these signals are, and where the listener is in relation to the speakers in the room. These factors are highly complex and will be different from room to room and will vary greatly between Mix A and Mix B. Electrical summation of the LF signals (as is done with bass-management), is a very predictable and repeatable way to get consistent LF response. LF phase issues between channels are resolved in the most absolute and accurate way - electrically. As a general rule it is our assessment that bass-management and subwoofers should be used in any professional recording studio that is creating content for direct consumer consumption (music, broadcast, radio, DVD etc.).

In large rooms, such as movie theaters, these summation issues become less of a problem, because the main problem in a big room is reverberation time (RT60) and not LF room modes (standing waves etc) which are a huge factor in smaller spaces. However, even in a large room bass-management & subwoofers can help ensure better LF translation between spaces.

Anyway, I hope that helps explain Blue Sky's view on this.

Cheers!
 
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Great explanation, Pascal. Once I added a subwoofer last fall--and spent many hours carefully integrating it--I've never looked back. In fact, I've wondered what took me so long to wake up to the benefits of mixing with a sub. Of course, if someone simply drops in a sub and slams it for maximum punch, the results will be predictably horrible. From my experience, a careful approach to integration, with some reliable reference CDs, should yield solid results. Using a meter, if available, would be even better although many home hobbyists may not even find this step necessary.

J.
 
Thanks for chiming in Pascal. Just to clarify, I used to work with a sub in the past, which helped me identify what was going on in the bottom octave, so I do at least also speak from experience. My main problem with it was that I was putting most of the bass emphasis on the fundamental.

BlueSky said:
1) Most consumers actually do use a subwoofer. 90%+ of ALL new home audio systems being sold in North America, including HTIB (home theater in a box), include a subwoofer.
Click to expand...

Two points about this:

1) Most of these system's "subwoofers" are nothing more than midbass drivers in a seperate box. Useful extension beyond 45 Hz or so is far more rare... yet this is what a monitor sub would provide us engineers, and would tempt us to use that bottom octave for information that might be better heard by most people in some other range.

2) It depends a lot on your target market. My studio mostly deals with indie pop stuff; the audience being poor young guys listening on crummy computer speakers and car stereoes and crummy headphones. Rarely anything else. I agree that a mix should not be made any lesser based on the audience, but it should be mixed with the audience (and their systems) in mind. If no one can hear the kick drum in my mixes because I put the majority of it in 30Hz space (and it sounded good on my sub), I'd say I've made a mistake. So while it's important not to make a crappy mix because 90% of your audience has crappy systems, it's also important to compromise a little for their sake and not to be stuck in an eliteist mixing attitude.

Calibration is NOT incredibly hard to do yourself, all that is required is an SPL meter and some simple test signals.
Click to expand...

OK, for the hobbyist, it's easy enough to "get by" with a sub tuned with a simple SPL meter and placed in a location that seems to sound okay. Problem is, ANY spot in the room is going to create some serious dips and peaks in the bass response. The physics involved are crazy and most people are not going to take the time to run the calculations to find the best combination of mix position, sub placement (and subsequent phase correction), listening distance, angle, etc etc. And even if you do find the best placement for everything, it still won't be anywhere near perfect if the room is the average "project studio control room" size (ie smallish). You either have to be smart and learn exactly how your sub responds, or ignore it and end up with crappy mixes, or avoid the whole problem by not bothering much with the bottom octave (i.e. don't use a sub).
Most people don't or can't do the first with a great deal of accuracy.

I understand that you believe in your products and the theory behind them, so you should and must really, but as good as they are and as much information as they do convey (which is a lot, I definitely agree), I don't feel that this necessarily results in mixes that translate the best in every situation.

If a sub is used, I think the best way to use it is for OCCASIONAL switching in to see how the bottom octave is behaving, but don't mix with the sub in mind.
 
Hello Bleyrad -

I do truly believe in the concept behind the products my company creates. It comes from experience and feedback, not from trying to be different. All of our systems are designed around an integrated subwoofer for truly full-range monitoring. The systems have been specifically designed and optimized for small to medium sized rooms. Our users are extremely varied and include home audio enthusiast all the way up to professional recording facilities (Skywalker Sound etc). They are used for audio creation for music, post, TV, radio and other professional applications (stereo, 5.1 and beyond). These users create content for all kinds of end users (simple Mono 13" TV to 100,000 home theater and Imax). The feedback we get from these content creators directly contradicts your experience with subwoofers. Ron Scalise, Senior Audio Production Supervisor for ESPN, has gone so far as to propose a completely new audio monitoring specification that mandates the use of subwoofers for their broadcasts. They are doing this because they realize that home users can monitor full-range audio and are demanding more engaging and full-range content. [This is not to say that every mix needs to have slamming bass - this is a creative decision. But, you should have a system that lets you hear all that is there and make the creative decisions based on this information.] Many of these consumers have "real" subwoofers, with extension well beyond 30Hz (SVS, Velodyne and others make a good business out of just selling subwoofers to these consumers and they are not that expensive).

Now, I am not saying that bolting on any subwoofer to any speaker is a good idea, because it is probably not going to work perfectly. But I can tell you that if you invest in a properly integrated system (SAT and SUB with complementary x-over slopes etc), then you can have a very accurate full-range monitoring system that translates well for many types of applications.

With regard to calibration, I stand by my original statement. However, if the room is so poor acoustically that a subwoofer doesn't work, then I guarantee that a pair of nearfields will have equal, if not much worse problems (unless the nearfields have no response below 100Hz - in which case you have no LF anyway). This is because you can place a sub where it is best for acoustic performance, with a pair of nearfields you don't have many options.

In general I believe people need to consider the complete monitor / room interface (room acoustics) and use a monitoring system that is designed to compliment the realities of their studio. I certainly don't believe our way is the only way and definitely believe that acoustical treatment is critical, no matter what monitors you use, but subwoofers do make it easier.

Thank you for the lively debate...

Have a good weekend.

Cheers!
 
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man, every company is now doing subs..
i was in GC today reading mags, Ad's...jbl, krk,dyna audio..
their all having a sub/sat line..and promoting it heavier too.

an article on some DynAudio studio-sub, they went with the "sealed" cabinet, as did Blue Sky. so the tighter bass with sealed cabinets is in good company...but with newer technology than ol' Vil and the AR-1!

the gearheadgoal is 20-20K i guess, an oscilliscope can read more..but who cares if you can't hear it at 12hz? i'm not doing Star Wars rumble the seats....

Pro monitors that go to 30-40hz in detailed way, i wouldn't need a sub.
DYNBM5A,6A..on up. but until then i'll have the sub plugged in.
 
Technology is getting better and you can get ported sub with very tight and accurate bass today without paying a lot.
SVS and HSU proved that.Most of the subs made by those 2 companys can beat Dynaudio subs from what i read.
I think even if using monitors with 10inch driver, you cant beat a (good) sub in 20Hz-30Hz range.
 
subs

ported offers its thing. could i pass a blindfold test port/sealed..probably not.

My next monitors... if i went knowingly into a sat/sub system,
it'd be like a Blue Sky matching set, designed together, all tech stuff matching... yadyayda. (with surround expansion option)

if i had really good sht like the DYN5A's or more highend than where i'm at..
i'm not sure i'd need to worry so much about 20-30hz...10hz? for most indie/pop crap.

imo,
hearing details i think takes time and exposure, and need really good equipment to compare to...comparing crap in best buy or a busy GC doesn't count as a very good testdrive. :D

i thought my BW303 were great for awhile, until i traded for some used old Control 5, and played around..listening..and then realizing how muffled my BW303 were compared to the C5's...and these are old C5's..but there was reverb sht and stuff that was absolutely missing, details not present in the 303's???!!! My home HiFi Paradigms were even worse (scooped)..
but the SOS article said the BW303 were soooo awesome, flatter than the Wharfs AND KRK's!!.... hehehe :p

maybe its just coincedence, the BW303 are $300, the JBL $600...
 
Subs and swampy low freq.

damn thats a "cold" article for the V8?

i agree 100%..the 20-30hz range..rumbling Jets and explosions.

my JBL d110 150watt sub goes to 30hz. but one proME said try to drop everything below 40hz off for indie/pop music (mixing clean up).

Gearhead Soup:
i'm running my DIY SPL check today.
FREQ & TEST CD from ebay...
Set my SM-7 switches to FLAT..placed in my sitting ear position.
(I sit right behind it)

Turned on my Joe Meek VC1Q w/ db Meter...all flat..volume only.

and it was wild, the CD would say.."1Khz at -10db below...
and there was my Joe Meek VU meter sitting at -10db....with a 1khz tone.

then cd would say.. 4khz at 0db... and there would be my VU meter 0db.

seems i'l losing abunch around 350hz... and my subwoofer volume will be "better" setup...back to work.
 
room effects

SM7 can't be much worse than a $50 radio shack microphone hooked up to a dbVU meter?
i would think a SM7&JM preamp would possibly be many levels higher in quality and sensitivity and accuracy than a $50 radio shack mic+vu db meter?

either way, the CD said -10db at 1khz and the SM7/JM VU showed the same.
the 0db levels showed the same results too...and weak areas showed definately not flat.


so theres 3qty various VU sources all agreeing on db...which i would have to say is the test data is good.
Tascam 2488 VU, Joe Meek VU and the CD Test Source, all read the same...
which i'm not sure i can say for the radio shack job??never tested it, just used it asa newbie.
good gearhead stuf.
 
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