A firmer bass for enjoyment!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Just moved into a new music room where I can turn the wick up a tad without risking divorce Ran a test disc to check out the frequency response of my trusty and beloved old Epos speakers, ES14s I think. Very noticeably weak on the two lowest test tones so I checked out subwoofers. Bought a secondhand Wharfdale via eBay for 70-odd quid by way of experiment, and oh the difference!

Early testing took me to the opening of Solti's Rheingold and it was quickly apparent that all I'd really been getting through the Eposes was upper partials of the bottom Eb on the double basses. Similar transformation of the start of Reiner's Zarathustra. yet it's not all hi-fi demo stuff, it's the ease of hearing detail in the bass lines of an awful lot of music. I've just tried a HIPP recording of the Trout quintet with a suddenly fully present db

I say 'fully present', which will probably get Jayne and other real audiophiles crying into their Chardonnay But it is a big and very cheap upgrade for me. Strongly recommended to others with not-that-huge main speakers!

[jayne lee wilson]

Bit early for much detail, bad head (up till 0400 watching the enthralling, uplifting Oliver Sacks biopic again - DNM!), need the Lavazza & (less) brandy etc.....

But those ES14s are a classic speaker from Epos' great years (the ES11s were great too)....and subwoofers often do far more than reinforce bass - they can fill out acoustic spaces and upper-register textures as well. Tricky to get right, very room-dependent, I never quite got around to tuning one in.....I wonder if REL are still going now. Hope so.

When I fitted Townshend Max Supertweeters a few years back, they clarified and defined bass better, as well as opening up acoustics and freshening HF etc....
Music and hifi are like the cosmos or the ecosystem. Everything relates.....

[richardfinegold]

About a year ago I improved my 2 channel system by adding an REL sub and Dirac Room correction (My experience with Room correction is that most of the improvement is in the bass) and I hate to use audiophile cliches such as jaw dropping, so let’s just say it was transformative. You never realize what you are missing until it’s there, and my floorstanders (B&W 803D) were already pretty good in low bass. A particular benefit is the Orchestral Music of Mahler and Shostakovich, who both use a lot of low level percussion that provides a foundation for even their less bombastic music. Other improvements are the delineation of instrumental lines. When the floorstanders are relieved of producing low bass, they can do a much better job reproducing the midrange where most music lives.
Several years ago my wife tired of our living room looking like like an AV Emporium so she banished the floorstanders I had in that Home Theater system, had built ins designed that hide the electronics, and the small satellite that I was using as rears had to become the fronts (sitting on shelves in the built ins). This is primarily a space that she uses, and it’s mainly for video, so ok. I was very pleasantly surprised when the the sub in the system, a Paradigm, dialed in at 80kz, combined with the Room Correction software in the Anthem AV Receiver, sounded about 95% as good as the previous setup when I did listen to music (I had in wall speakers installed to replace the satellites).
Subs have gotten a bad reputation, and are capable of being abused. In my case, to paraphrase the Monkees, Now I’m A Believer.

[HighlandDougie]

I'm intrigued as to the channel (in a 2-channel system) to which you would connect a single sub-woofer. I have a multichannel system in Scotland (previously with an Audiolab pre/power set-up) now with a Denon AV integrated amp which is set up for front/rear/central/side speakers and has a socket for a sub-woofer to which a single REL is connected. Here, with a 2-channel system used purely for audio, is it better to connect a single S/W to the left or right channel speaker binding post at the rear of the amp or doesn't it matter? Or is it better to buy two S/Ws? All advice gratefully received!

[LeMartinPecheur]

I'm intrigued as to the channel (in a 2-channel system) to which you would connect a single sub-woofer. I have a multichannel system in Scotland (previously with an Audiolab pre/power set-up) now with a Denon AV integrated amp which is set up for front/rear/central/side speakers and has a socket for a sub-woofer to which a single REL is connected. Here, with a 2-channel system used purely for audio, is it better to connect a single S/W to the left or right channel speaker binding post at the rear of the amp or doesn't it matter? Or is it better to buy two S/Ws? All advice gratefully received!

Low bass is very un-directional so you really just need one sub fed by both channels. Most allow input from the amp's speaker outputs OR line-level, as from your pre-amp stage. I've gone for the latter - thinner wires!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm intrigued as to the channel (in a 2-channel system) to which you would connect a single sub-woofer. I have a multichannel system in Scotland (previously with an Audiolab pre/power set-up) now with a Denon AV integrated amp which is set up for front/rear/central/side speakers and has a socket for a sub-woofer to which a single REL is connected. Here, with a 2-channel system used purely for audio, is it better to connect a single S/W to the left or right channel speaker binding post at the rear of the amp or doesn't it matter? Or is it better to buy two S/Ws? All advice gratefully received!

Not sure that it matters as low frequency sound waves are omni directional so they can’t really be pin pointed in the sound stage . Trouble is I’m not sure how low frequency that is though. The Eflat at the start of Rheingold is about 77hz which most speakers should be able to reproduce . Sub woofers kick in around 100 and below.

[jayne lee wilson]

LMP - nice review (1995) of the ES14s here......

https://www.stereophile.com/content/epos-es-14-loudspeaker-john-atkinson-review

Do check out the Robin Marshall interview via the link..... fascinating recent history.......

[Dave2002]

Not sure that it matters as low frequency sound waves are omni directional so they can’t really be pin pointed in the sound stage . Trouble is I’m not sure how low frequency that is though. The Eflat at the start of Rheingold is about 77hz which most speakers should be able to reproduce . Sub woofers kick in around 100 and below.

This is an area which I don't know too much about - re current equipment. It is pretty much the case that there is hardly any useful directional information in the lowest frequencies, but it is possible that due to recording anomalies the left and right channels will differ. How are the low frequencies "tapped off" in modern gear? It might be useful to have the options to have either the Left, or the Right, or the sum L+R fed to the sub woofer - but I don't know what circuits are used in modern kit. That could be helpful for some recordings, though generally the left and right channel signals should be very similar in the lowest registers. In earlier years perhaps transformers would have been used, but I don't think that's how modern systems work.

[HighlandDougie]

Low bass is very un-directional so you really just need one sub fed by both channels. Most allow input from the amp's speaker outputs OR line-level, as from your pre-amp stage. I've gone for the latter - thinner wires!

Many thanks for the advice. Line level instinctively seems preferable. Now I have to see how many bawbees I can scrape together - and what might be available in a world full of shortages of all sorts of hi-fi bits and pieces.

[Ein Heldenleben]

This is an area which I don't know too much about - re current equipment. It is pretty much the case that there is hardly any useful directional information in the lowest frequencies, but it is possible that due to recording anomalies the left and right channels will differ. How are the low frequencies "tapped off" in modern gear? It might be useful to have the options to have either the Left, or the Right, or the sum L+R fed to the sub woofer - but I don't know what circuits are used in modern kit. That could be helpful for some recordings, though generally the left and right channel signals should be very similar in the lowest registers. In earlier years perhaps transformers would have been used, but I don't think that's how modern systems work.

Yes sum l and r if you have it. The double bass sections of an orchestra are usually placed right of stage but subwoofers only kick in at 100 hz which is only a few semitones above their lowest note ( I think ) .I’m not sure subwoofers or ultra basses are necessary unless you are into organ music , vibrating floorboards, or like the kick in a Verdi bass drum. Whenever I’ve heard them I’ve thought them pretty unpleasant..but then I don’t like low frequency sounds, I find them psychologically unsettling . I think weapons based on ultra bass sounds are banned under the Geneva convention.

[jayne lee wilson]

That's interesting Hero....

When I used to attend the RLPO live, it was the bass drum that first gave me aural disturbances... choruses later......
So thank God for hifi, choices and control........

A friend once put on some recordings of Organ Fundamentals.... I left the room pretty fast!

[Ein Heldenleben]

That's interesting Hero....

When I used to attend the RLPO live, it was the bass drum that first gave me aural disturbances... choruses later......
So thank God for hifi, choices and control........

A friend once put on some recordings of Organ Fundamentals.... I left the room pretty fast!

For many years I used to roll the bass off on my hifi . I think there are police forces abroad that use ultra low (borderline audible ) sound for crowd dispersal. Not a pleasant thing to do.

[gradus]

... or you could try ESLs.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Yes sum l and r if you have it. The double bass sections of an orchestra are usually placed right of stage but subwoofers only kick in at 100 hz which is only a few semitones above their lowest note ( I think ) .I’m not sure subwoofers or ultra basses are necessary unless you are into organ music , vibrating floorboards, or like the kick in a Verdi bass drum.

Well, as per OP I can only say that a pair of very high quality speakers with claimed response down to 36 Hz +/-3dB (thanks Jayne!) just did not reproduce the fundamental of the Rheingold Ebs to any extent, and I'm not turning the wick up much on subwoofer to hear it now (AFAIK my hearing has changed very little with age, currently 67).

Plus there is rfg's point in #3 that by taking away the low bass from your main speakers they may well do a better job: "A particular benefit is the Orchestral Music of Mahler and Shostakovich, who both use a lot of low level percussion that provides a foundation for even their less bombastic music. Other improvements are the delineation of instrumental lines. When the floorstanders are relieved of producing low bass, they can do a much better job reproducing the midrange where most music lives."

As I say, whatever the physics I've found the effects massively, startlingly obvious and beneficial. And my wife agrees! So much so that I've had to promise to play her Siegfried's Funeral March sometime...

PS Further to the issue of what happens in real music below 100Hz, it certainly isn't just 64' organ pipes and Verdi bass drums. There are 16 notes on a modern grand piano at or below 65Hz where I currently have my SW's crossover set, and 100Hz downwards covers roughly the bottom 24 notes. That's quite a lot of piano!

A0, the lowest note on the modern piano, is 27.5Hz.

[hmvman]

Interesting discussion. I have a pair of Epos ES 11s fed by Quad amplification. I've found the bass repro of the ES 11s to be more than acceptable - although careful placing is necessary with the rear-firing ports. I'm intrigued now and wonder if I should try a sub in the system sometime!

One other point is that I've bi-wired these speakers and wonder if this makes much of a difference to bass and HF repro. I do like the sound though.