A firmer bass for enjoyment!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sub-woofers are the plague of cinema sound. I’ve never understood why so many cinemas have too much bass and too high a volume.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sub-woofers are the plague of cinema sound. I’ve never understood why so many cinemas have too much bass and too high a volume.

Yes particularly when the infra bass from the screen showing the action movie next door breaks through during a Verdi love duet in a Met relay …

[richardfinegold]

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.

Couldn’t disagree more. Adding a sub gives the instruments so much more palpability. The double basses have more color. Listen to any work conducted by Boulez, who apparently spent a lot of time working with percussionist on the tuning of their instruments, and with a good, musical sub you will hear a lot more going on than simple thwacks. The cellos and double basses sound so much richer (try a Mozart Symphony conducted by Krips from Amsterdam, particularly in those long slow First Movement introductions, and see much variety And gradation of sound the composer gave to those instruments).. Even solo flute benefits . And if the front speakers aren’t straining to produce low bass, they tend to do a better job with everything else.

The trick is getting a musical sub, that is fast, no overhang, instead of one designed as a lease breaker

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Sub-woofers are the plague of cinema sound. I’ve never understood why so many cinemas have too much bass and too high a volume.

Exactly this. Ms Stoatfoe and I got round to seeing the new Bond film last week in an Odeon with that problem. So much of the dialogue was unintelligible, and the general volume so high, that we're going back to see it again in the hope that a smaller cinema means they feel less need for subwoofer-waving.

[richardfinegold]

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.

I wrote a long answer here but it seems to have vanished in the ether. I have only done line out so I can’t compare alternatives.
And one sub is plenty, with perfect sound staging

[rauschwerk]

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.

Yes, but the proportion of energy in the fundamental is very low. Seehttps://rtaylor.sites.tru.ca/2017/01...ency-response/ in which you will find the following:-

But what about that 28Hz fundamental?

The note A0 does have a 28Hz fundamental, but very little energy is generated at that frequency. Actually the sound pressure is dominated by the 4th harmonic (at about 110Hz), which in my measurements is 35dB louder than the fundamental and 2nd and 3rd harmonics. Our hearing apparatus perceives the 28Hz pitch via the missing fundamental phenomenon, but the tone isn’t really present and we don’t need to reproduce it. The same is true an octave up at A1: the fundamental (at 54Hz) measures 35 dB below the 2nd harmonic.

[Dave2002]

I wrote a long answer here but it seems to have vanished in the ether. I have only done line out so I can’t compare alternatives.
And one sub is plenty, with perfect sound staging

I think the issue about subs is that the crossover and balance of those with the rest of the kit has to be good. Good subs are barely audible most of the time, but add an extra depth.

I think the cinemas which have the low end problem are almost certainly boosting the bass end far too much, and there is too much power in the lower bass - but not sub - end. I agree that sometimes cinemas and also DVDs and Blu Ray videos are almost completely unwatchable because of poor quality sound - probably because of a belief by the film industry providers that consumers want more sound effects, more bass etc, and it brings cash in. The fact that this might completely obscure speech doesn't concern them too much - unless it hits their profits. One film which I tried to watch years ago was War of the Worlds. Appalling. In the end I gave up on "high quality" or surround sound, and ran the audio through the TV speakers - it was the only way to hear any of the dialogue.

The issues for high quality audio for listening to classical music are different though, and I do believe that well matched sub woofers can enhance the experience.

What kind of circuitry is used to feed the speakers? I think usually it is a combination of the left and right - but how is it generated? It could - of course - be done digitally in the decoding - but I think it's usually some form of analogue "blender". As I wrote earlier, I don't know whether modern sub-woofers require special circuitry or driver amps.

[jayne lee wilson]

Sub-woofers are the plague of cinema sound. I’ve never understood why so many cinemas have too much bass and too high a volume.

Well, that is poor quality bass - all boom and spread and no definition. Truly offensive to many. I watch many movies, but all off streamers at home. There is a hefty sub attached to the Denon Bar, but I run it with restraint!
A well-tuned sub could make a very musical difference to Cassical Reproduction, as rfg has described. I don't have one with my Harbeth C7IIs, but they have good, well-defined-and-textured "tuneful" bass, and above all sound good at LF well out into the room here. Room-matching is the whole story as ever.

Years ago, I was into Massive Attack.... I had their Mezzanine Album and Blue Lines on Cassette. I adored them.

I was already caring for my old Dad, who after a few days (of what must have been very generous tolerance) said that the bass was making him feel sick.
This was from his bedroom.....

The LF off of cassette was quite warm and diffuse - resonating through the house..... well, when I listened from the landing I could see - or rather hear, how he felt.
Oddly enough, when I heard the same tracks off the CD (on an Arcam Alpha 8) it seemed disappointing, less enveloping or emotional....go figure, etc.

[Dave2002]

W
Truly offensive to many.
....

I was already caring for my old Dad, who after a few days (of what must have been very generous tolerance) said that the bass was making him feel sick.
This was from his bedroom.....

The LF off of casstte was quite warm and diffuse - resonating through the house..... well, when I listened from the landing I could see - or rather hear, how he felt.
Oddly enough, when I heard the same tracks off the CD (on an Arcam Alpha 8) it seemed disappointing, less enveloping or emotional....go figure, etc.

Just hearing the boom-boom-boom of someone else's listening is infuriating, and sometimes the perpetrators are just plain selfish. I have on just a few occasions been surprised to discover that the experience - though perhaps still far too loud - does sometimes make sense if the higher notes are audible as well.

[HighlandDougie]

I wrote a long answer here but it seems to have vanished in the ether. I have only done line out so I can’t compare alternatives.
And one sub is plenty, with perfect sound staging

Thanks Richard - I've been convinced with what you and LMP have had to say about what it can add to listening to music. As an adjunct to a 2-channel system used for listening to music - and nothing cinematic - I'm now trying to source a REL S/W which might actually be in stock somewhere in the EU. My listening room is about 22m2 (and is pretty much square-shaped) so I think that a T7/x should fit the bill - anything bigger or potentially louder does seem a bit over the top for domestic listening.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well, that is poor quality bass - all boom and spread and no definition. Truly offensive to many. I watch many movies, but all off streamers at home. There is a hefty sub attached to the Denon Bar, but I run it with restraint!
A well-tuned sub could make a very musical difference to Cassical Reproduction, as rfg has described. I don't have one with my Harbeth C7IIs, but they have good, well-defined-and-textured "tuneful" bass, and above all sound good at LF well out into the room here. Room-matching is the whole story as ever.

Years ago, I was into Massive Attack.... I had their Mezzanine Album and Blue Lines on Cassette. I adored them.

I was already caring for my old Dad, who after a few days (of what must have been very generous tolerance) said that the bass was making him feel sick.
This was from his bedroom.....

The LF off of casstte was quite warm and diffuse - resonating through the house..... well, when I listened from the landing I could see - or rather hear, how he felt.
Oddly enough, when I heard the same tracks off the CD (on an Arcam Alpha 8) it seemed disappointing, less enveloping or emotional....go figure, etc.

Whenever I’ve heard sub bass woofers I’ve always found the sound too bass heavy and not an accurate reflection of what I hear in the concert hall. I would be amazed if Sub Bass or infra bass speakers can improve on the excellent sound of Harbeths. I spent quite a few years in recording studios , edit suites , and dubbing theatres and never once came across any one using sub woofers alongside the LS 5/8’s , Tannoys, JBL’s that were being used for professional monitoring.

That said no two people have the same ears or perception of sound and if they want that extra bass kick or indeed a rumble that rattles their rib cage good luck to them !

[Braunschlag]

I’ve been down the subwoofer path.
Having parted with a pair of ATC SCM20s I ended up with a pair of PMC Twenty 21s.

I thought the. PMCs were a bit bass shy, (I’ve always meddled and liked the ‘oh I wonder what that would sound like’ syndrome), I got a BK Gemini, their small sub. Very well made it was too, lots of connections, decent booklet and cables.

It was a mistake! I didn’t really need it (the PMCs went down to around 45hz anyway and the BK only gave me an extra 5hz),but the greatest bugbear was setting up the cutoffs and calibrating the blessed thing.
What seemed to work for one track or disc then became a booming mess on another, I ended up having to continually change settings which were at the back of the box, handy that!

If you have the patience they might well be useful but I’d suggest they need plenty of air space and room to integrate well. It was an experiment that failed in my case. At least I learnt that well-engineered speakers don’t really need one.

[richardfinegold]

Thanks Richard - I've been convinced with what you and LMP have had to say about what it can add to listening to music. As an adjunct to a 2-channel system used for listening to music - and nothing cinematic - I'm now trying to source a REL S/W which might actually be in stock somewhere in the EU. My listening room is about 22m2 (and is pretty much square-shaped) so I think that a T7/x should fit the bill - anything bigger or potentially louder does seem a bit over the top for domestic listening.

I can’t remember if the REL came with software to assist in positioning, since I had added the Dirac RC at the same time. Among other advantages, the RC software lets you plonk the sub in any location in the room. Audiophile magazines describe this process of dragging the sub around the room, trying test tones to listen for various outcomes, and then having to settle for whatever spot in the room is determined to be optimal. A lot of the bad bass reputation of subs is probably due to positioning, room modes, etc. For a few hundred Euros more it’s a worthwhile investment.

[ardcarp]

This is probably way off topic, but some of the best bass speakers I've heard belong to a Copeman Hart electronic organ. In their heyday, they made customised instruments, with analogue voicing and were among the most convincing substitutes for the real thing. They insisted on incorporating the bass speakers into specially designed brick cavities within the walls of the church (a new Methody) as they said it was the only way to get depth and definition without 'boom'. (In most churches the electronic organ speakers are just boxes hung on the wall.)

I guess this has much to do with the discussion above about the placement of dedicated bass 'woofers'.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well, that is poor quality bass - all boom and spread and no definition. Truly offensive to many. I watch many movies, but all off streamers at home. There is a hefty sub attached to the Denon Bar, but I run it with restraint!

That’s the key, isn’t it. Unfortunately, it’s a quality that most cinema technicians appear to lack. It’s often so bad that it sounds like feedback (which it can’t be).