Questions - Subwoofers & Bass Traps
 

Hello everyone. I've got a small dedicated 2 channel room that's about 10x16x8 feet. I've got acoustic treatment all over the place, but I do not currently have bass traps. I've played around with speaker positions and listening chair positions and have pretty much settled where I want things to stay permanently. The way I have it now sounds the best to me in all the normal categories, except in the bass department. It just doesn't have the slam I want. Now I will eventually add a subwoofer into the mix. But I'm wondering if I should buy a sub first, or bass traps?

If you know for sure you want to add a sub, I would think you should get the bass traps after since you could take into account the whole setup.

Agreed..
 

I agree with the above.. Get subs first then assess before getting bass traps.

There is no replacement for displacement, so you are not going to get slam without sufficient cone surface area.

1) I would insure the speakers are in the optimum position (e.g. Coupled with the room). Search for Sumiko Masters Process on this site.

2) If you then have enough bass but it is inconsistent or 'peaky', I would get the bass traps.

3) If all else fails, a subwoofer, in the right location with the right crossover, would help further smooth out the room response and maximize your low energies.

IMHO - just adding subs is a brute- force method that may or may not give you good bass - only more of it.

There is nothing like that bass slam, I agree.
That said, its really important that the sub integrates seamlessly into your existing system or its going to detract from the overall sound quality.

What kind of speakers do you have.

This is my whole set up...

Bowers & Wilkins 683 Speakers
Rotel RB-1090 2 Channel Amp
Rotel RC-1082 Stereo Pre Amp
Rotel RCD-1072 CD Player
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon w/ Ortofon 2M Red (sitting on a piece of slate supported by 3 "solid tech feet of silence" isolation feet)
Rotel RLC-1040 Power Conditioner
Shynyata Research SR-Z1 Power Outlet & Venom 3 Power Cords x 4
Tara Labs RSC Vector 1 Speaker Cables & Interconnects
Primacoustic Room Treatments

I have played around with speaker placement, but unfortunately my room is rather small. It's about 16' long x 10' wide. My biggest difficulty was battling soundstage width/depth vs bass. If I had the speakers close to the wall behind them, the bass got more powerful but the stage depth was shallow. If I had them close to the side walls the stage was wider, but less airy (not sure if that would be the right term) outside of the speaker boundaries, and the bass seemed a bit more reinforced when close to the side walls. I messed around with about 10 different positions. I should note that standing in the corners of the room there is a lot more bass in those areas.

As for the crossover....

I listed all my equipment in a reply to someone else in this thread. Now what would be the best way to hook up my sub? As far as I know i have two options:

1) Use the second set of RCA outputs on the 1082 (the variable output ones that go to my amp) or

2) Use the speaker outputs from my amp to go to the sub then to the speakers. But this would require another set of speaker cables no? And what would that do to my sound quality? I don't imagine going through the subs speaker terminals would be as good as going directly from the amp to the speakers?

I really like that way of explaining it! No replacement for displacement [emoji2]

That makes a lot of sense. Adding traps before the sub might mean having to re-tweak them when I get the sub. Good advice.