Apparently vertical line array woofers work much better with room acoustics, because of how they fill in each others cancellations on all three axis, rather than with the more conventional 2 woofers on the floor. Many high end companies have gone this route. Roger Russel, former head of speaker development at McIntosh seems to be completely sold on it (although his is wideband). I'm thinking maybe 10 five inch drivers with good Xmax per side, sealed box, electronically forced to be acoustically flat from 20HZ - 200HZ with active EQ ahead of the power amp. I also love that they have a very small footprint. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's tried this. Photos encouraged.
I've only used them in stadiums and large theaters but they do work well for semi directional bass. this is a good reference on the topic: http://www.electrovoice.com/sitefiles/downloads/Subwoofer Arrays v03 .pdf
Hold on a moment!!!!
First question: who is trying to solve what problem with a "magic bullet" (while causing other problems using tiny drivers that might be more distressing)? What are their constraints?
Let me start by saying that, in my humble opinion, the solution to room modes is to have two very different kinds of subs parked in very different kinds of places in the room.*
Can a high-class manufacturer like Macintosh ever suggest something so outlandish while selling their beautiful pairs of matched boxes? Never. So they have to advocate a far less helpful idea like spreading the woofering around high and low, using the conventional symmetrical front positioning.
Ben
*I also recommend using mixed-bass below around 120 Hz. But that is thread for another day.
First question: who is trying to solve what problem with a "magic bullet" (while causing other problems using tiny drivers that might be more distressing)? What are their constraints?
Let me start by saying that, in my humble opinion, the solution to room modes is to have two very different kinds of subs parked in very different kinds of places in the room.*
Can a high-class manufacturer like Macintosh ever suggest something so outlandish while selling their beautiful pairs of matched boxes? Never. So they have to advocate a far less helpful idea like spreading the woofering around high and low, using the conventional symmetrical front positioning.
Ben
*I also recommend using mixed-bass below around 120 Hz. But that is thread for another day.
The problem is uneven bass in many areas of the room. The theory is that by putting out bass on all three axis, the response will be flatter in more places in the room, and therefore less boomy sounding. Does that not make sense to you? Why?
Multiple subs, carefully distributed around your room and integrated level wise with the rest of your system will do more to provide a even LF listening experience that is also tight(not boomy) than any other method short of a significant investment in acoustical design/treatment via room reconstructing.
btw - for frequencies below 120Hz in a typical home size room LF from a line array pretty much act just the same as having a single LF driver - line arrays are not going to solve LF room modes and resonances
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I'm gonna agree with cokewithlime, mostly. In a large room (think covered stadium) line arrays work because you are trying to "focus" the bass away from the side walls and get even coverage over a very deep area, in a home the back wall is too close and reflected energy is dominate, distributed bass is the way to go. If you are thinking of using multiple "arrays" or "stacks" the same theory of distributed bass applies you're just distributing it on three axis as opposed to two. I don't think that two arrays in symmetrical placement will solve anything, you're still going to need to put them strategically around the room.
Live Sound: Real World Gear: Developments In Cardioid Subwoofers - Pro Sound Web
A good read on y'all's delimmas of low frequency cacellations....
A good read on y'all's delimmas of low frequency cacellations....
that's about something completely different, Cardioid arrays, which use phase cancellation to remove speaker back energy from the stage or to kill back echo, Very helpful for a venue with a "backstage-wall" some distance from the stage (100ft+) but in a home you'd just make mud.
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Well cardioid isn't mutually exclusive with multiple subs. Line arrays for subs don't really make sense in a domestic sense unless it's a packaging thing. I'd be spreading them around.
Also, it's probably best to look at more recent work than a thread that died out quickly from 2011.
Also, it's probably best to look at more recent work than a thread that died out quickly from 2011.
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Cardioide sounds interesting and probably even necessary in a large venue. My latest theory for my system, which is for a relatively small apartment living room, is that having the woofers further from room boundaries will increase the ration of direct vs reflected bass energy at the listening position, so I'm planning on having a vertical array of 6.5 inch Peerless woofers in a tower cabinet, with mid and tweeter at the top. I'll have a switch on the back of the cabinet that allows me to turn off the two lower woofers, leaving only the two upper woofers, in case that works better with room acoustics. The rest of the story is that these woofs will go up to 480HZ, so at the higher frequencies the line array might actually improve things a bit (get a bit directional on the vertical axis). The reason for the arguably high crossover frequency (480HZ) is because I want to use a Peerless TG9FD1008 3.5 inch driver (2 inch cone diameter) to cover from 480 to 7kHZ, where a Fountek 1.5 inch ribbon will do above 7kHZ. The idea being to avoid having a crossover in what I consider the critical frequency band of 800HZ - 6kHZ, where it can be argued that most of the stereo imaging effects actually work, and this is due to inter-aural crosstalk blurring imaging below about 1kHZ. I'm presently using the TG9 driver in another system doing from 480HZ to 15kHZ, and I love how it sounds. At my age (63) I don't even need a separate tweeter, but I have all the drivers already, and still think I can hear the high end fairly well. And for the sake of off axis treble. The system will be tri-amp'd with 4th order Linkwitz-Riley active crossover which will also have active EQ making the woofers acoustically somewhat flat down to 30HZ. The woofs will be in separate closed chambers, part so the associated wavelengths won't fit inside the enclosure (and resonate), and part for the bracing effect of the front panel. The whole cabinet will be 3/4 inch MDF (unless I can get HDF), except for the internal separators which will be 1/2 inch MDF. In a smaller room, the small footprint is nice too.
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