Our current setup is a 5.1 system for TV and music when reading, we've been okay with that, though I guess we do put it in full surround for music listening some of the time. I do like listening for detail from time to time, so a balance between room filling and good sound stage would be nice. I just don't love a super directed system. Because of a tough room (not the one this new setup will target), our listening "triangle" is quite bad, about 1.5m between front left and right. From each of our seating positions we pretty much just hear the left or right since there isn't enough separation.
I'm aiming for a 3 way for better clarity especially as my current setup distorts especially in the midrange if turned up to "fun" volumes, though we rarely play that loud. FWIW current setup is a collection of okay speakers collected from my youth until now, two NHT Absolute Zeros up front, two similarly sized Cambridge Soundworks in the back, and an SVS SB12 sub.
My first DIY project was an 8" ported sub under the bed with a pair of two-ways, 1" dome tweeter and 4.5" mid in a cherry cabinet with a crap crossover from calculations but not measurement that I replaced a month later with one done properly in VituixCAD. Man that made a hell of a difference.
or two subs acting as physical supports for pole mounted tops. like this but smaller:
i agree with mark that if a system is specifically designed to play at low levels a 3-way is not needed. studio nearfield monitors are designed to play at low levels paired to a subwoofer and that's kind of your situation here.
two 10" subs and 5" 2-way monitors. active XO to subs at 120 hz and passive XO to tweeter at 2 khz.
the purpose of multi-way systems is to be louder. headphones are full range because they don't need to be loud.
if you MUST have 3-way simply because you already did a 2-way you can go with a ribbon tweeter and dome mid just for fun ... 6.5" woofer, 2" dome midrange and true ribbon tweeter. 800 hz and 4 khz crossovers. will sound very special.
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Simply building a 3-way is not a panacea. Lots of 2-ways are excellent performers. It sounds like yours are not.
A pair of omnis is my recommendation. 2-way Omni tower~30" tall, drivers firing up, with reflectors like this:
Sorry, couldn't find the right pic. The 2 in the middle. When correctly positioned, they provide big, spacious somewhat diffuse soundstage almost anywhere in the room. With miniDSP 2x4hd, the crossover is silly easy* and no need for sub with a decent 6-7" woofers. DSP EQ can be dialed in to compensate for bass hearing deficiency at low volume. Everyone who has heard these omnis like them -- except heavy rock headbangers.
*Easy: no need to worry about driver directivity matching as deflectors direct the sound 360 degrees horizontally. Just position mic to your preferred listening height with speaker in middle of big room, put the filter whether neither woofer or tweeter distort much & EQ for Harman curve.
EDIT: Here's a better pic --
A pair of omnis is my recommendation. 2-way Omni tower~30" tall, drivers firing up, with reflectors like this:
Sorry, couldn't find the right pic. The 2 in the middle. When correctly positioned, they provide big, spacious somewhat diffuse soundstage almost anywhere in the room. With miniDSP 2x4hd, the crossover is silly easy* and no need for sub with a decent 6-7" woofers. DSP EQ can be dialed in to compensate for bass hearing deficiency at low volume. Everyone who has heard these omnis like them -- except heavy rock headbangers.
*Easy: no need to worry about driver directivity matching as deflectors direct the sound 360 degrees horizontally. Just position mic to your preferred listening height with speaker in middle of big room, put the filter whether neither woofer or tweeter distort much & EQ for Harman curve.
EDIT: Here's a better pic --
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Oh I quite like the two-ways I have, but they lack mid bass and bass, as they're meant to be paired with a sub. I was kind of hoping for a subless system because the room doesn't have a lot of spots for a sub. Was even considering building a hidden sub into custom built bookshelves, which isn't off the table, but some larger mains that could handle bass down to 40hz would have also been fine with me, hence the 3-way.
And for what it's worth, those speakers are right out, not just for SAF, but MAF as well. I'm not interested in speakers that stand out, no matter how good they sound.
The pentagon tower omnis evolved out of experimentations with Linkwitz's LXmini. In-room F3 is well below 50Hz. Plenty of subjective bass. A friend made a version modeled after champagne flutes, CNC built, meticulously painted. Maybe that's more to your liking. (Don't know what you mean by SAF or MAF are but I presume it has to do with looks.)
The design combines omni bass, cardioid mid & monopole top end. Lots of folks like them very much. And the reflectors in my omni's can be easily hidden or integrated into a cap with a wrap-around grill.
Anyway, don't reject all omnis just 'cus you don't like the way my admittedly unfinished ones look. They can be very pleasant.
The design combines omni bass, cardioid mid & monopole top end. Lots of folks like them very much. And the reflectors in my omni's can be easily hidden or integrated into a cap with a wrap-around grill.
Anyway, don't reject all omnis just 'cus you don't like the way my admittedly unfinished ones look. They can be very pleasant.
you can have subs built into the towers. by "subs" i mean they will be actively powered and crossed low, and side firing.
so a passive 3-way would have XO at around 400 hz and 2 khz but a 2-way + sub ( with sub in the same tower ) would have closer to 120 hz XO than 400 hz
the difference is a 3-way would have more output in midrange but the 2-way + sub more output in deep bass.
believe it or not there is quite a difference between a subwoofer driver and a woofer driver even of the same diameter. same as how a motorcycle and tractor engines are quite different even when they are both the same horsepower.
of course if i were you i would build a 3-way + sub ( integrated into the tower ). that way you would have a flexible speaker that isn't a one trick pony but can wear many hats.
consider this:
1" magnesium dome tweeter ( 0.2 mm xmax )
2.5 khz
3" fabric dome midrange ( 1.0 mm xmax )
600 hz
8" paper woofer ( 4 mm xmax )
150 hz
15" aluminum cone subwoofer ( 15 mm xmax ) ( side firing )
if you keep the sub sealed it won't get obnoxiously loud but rather it will give your bass a sort of limitless feeling such that you will be listening to music and not to the limitations of the driver ...
of course you will have to implement an active high pass for the 3-way, not just an active low pass for the sub.
Intriguing but probably too large for what I'm looking for. The sub portion alone would need a fair amount of volume. I kind of like the idea of integrated smaller sub with 2-way though. Especially because I'd get "dual sub" without two subs to place.
the difference between sub and woofer is MASS.
subs have large moving mass are inefficient and require lots of power, but can compress the air in a box in a way woofers can't.
but they can't go high due to all the mass and inductance.
so they work well with active crossovers at low frequency but don't work with normal crossovers.
a 12" sub sealed wouldn't need much volume at all. it is actually the vent that needs volume not the sub itself.
that one is actually a 3-way + sub though. there are hidden oval woofers that are slot loaded in that monitor, and the tweeter is actually part of a coaxial driver.
but the point remains ...
But do I actually need a sub if I have a woofer playing low enough for music? I don't need absolute minimum hz, and I don't need room shake. I ran my favorites through a spectrogram, and while they reach down into the teens, they do so at 20db below 60hz.
Edit: Pretty sure I can pick a woofer with an F3 of around 40 to crossover ~400hz to a mid, but I've never built something with a woofer so this is educational for me.
FWIW, no matter what I plan on at least two active channels, one for the lowest driver and the other for the other two drivers with a passive crossover. Pretty confident about crossover building for those two.
Edit: Pretty sure I can pick a woofer with an F3 of around 40 to crossover ~400hz to a mid, but I've never built something with a woofer so this is educational for me.
FWIW, no matter what I plan on at least two active channels, one for the lowest driver and the other for the other two drivers with a passive crossover. Pretty confident about crossover building for those two.
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no you don't "need" a subwoofer and besides, you can always add it to your system later.
however you will find having deep bass actually brings the entire frequency range into balance.
if any one frequency is missing from music all other frequencies sound wrong.
kind of like all the food tastes wrong after brushing your teeth.
you may not need 30 hz but you actually want your bass response rising all the way down to whatever is the lowest frequency you want to reproduce. you don't want -3db @ 40 hz you want +10db @ 40 hz. people who say bass boost is bad taste don't know anything about speakers or music.
you basically want low frequencies rising at about 3db / decade rate across the entire frequency range, and more than that in the very low end. this is called house curve. others may call it "voicing" ...
if you ever listened to perfectly flat measuring studio monitors they sound thin, brittle and sterile. they lack body. speakers that actually sound good are all biased towards low end.
however you will find having deep bass actually brings the entire frequency range into balance.
if any one frequency is missing from music all other frequencies sound wrong.
kind of like all the food tastes wrong after brushing your teeth.
you may not need 30 hz but you actually want your bass response rising all the way down to whatever is the lowest frequency you want to reproduce. you don't want -3db @ 40 hz you want +10db @ 40 hz. people who say bass boost is bad taste don't know anything about speakers or music.
you basically want low frequencies rising at about 3db / decade rate across the entire frequency range, and more than that in the very low end. this is called house curve. others may call it "voicing" ...
if you ever listened to perfectly flat measuring studio monitors they sound thin, brittle and sterile. they lack body. speakers that actually sound good are all biased towards low end.
this analogy leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
Science (by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive at Harman) says that people in general like a curve where the bass is +3dB higher than treble with no big variations in the frequency curve. That is the so called Harman curve that is general accepted as what most like, and done by testing hundreds of people in a double blind ABX test series. Exagerated bass works on the dancefloor (very well), but not in hifi situations for most. But it's true that bass should be a bit louder than treble, and that the low frequencies do matter for good sound, even when they are not obvious hearable. Remove them and you will miss them.
If that is very relevant for the OP case i don't now. But i like to have my bass, even on a very low level of music. That is harder than most think, and works best with low mms/high BL cones for subwoofer so they also move the cone on very low signal.
What is relevant for him, is that music must not be intrusive. And in my (and many experience) that is when the music sounds good, but very low level. That is for me the perfect background music. If the speaker is to coloured, my attention is distracted (disclaimer, i have ADHD, that does not help). while with a very clean neutral sound it doesn't when the volume is low enough or the speaker is far enough from me.
That is why i stress on that it should be very well phase aligned and neutral in sound.
do not forget about LOUDNESS COMPENSATION
the lower the listening level the more bass has to be boosted due to the way equal loudness curves work
if you're listening at 100db you may not need any bass boost, but at 60 db listening levels you will need +10 db of bass boost as i said.
the response of music energy spectrum:
when combined with Harman Curve and Loudness Compensation should roughly match the Equal Loudness Contours
that's according to me. and i have a much, MUCH better track record than "the science"
so i stand by what i said earlier, namely that you don't necessarily need to go below 40 hz but at that 40 hz you should not be -3db or even flat but you should be UP and not by 3db but by much more than that ...
if things start to sound muddy it's not because you have too much bass but because either your room has nasty modes or you haven't dialed in the curves right, or most likely both.
there is no such thing as too much bass. there is however such a thing as bad bass.
in fact when you think of systems you heard that had bad bass chances are none of them actually had very much of it. more likely they had a loud single note midbass to try to compensate for overall lack of deep bass, or maybe they had too much harmonics or other artifacts.
i had a 18" TC sounds LMS Ultra subwoofer driven by a bridged QSC prosound amp in a NYC apartment bedroom and not once did i think it was too much and my friend who helped me build it eventually concluded i should have built two of them and that was in a room that was about 12 by 15 feet with 8 foot ceilings with both floor and ceiling of concrete and walls of cinder block.
because you simply cannot have bass that is too low or too clean. ask anybody on AVS - they know.
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Go figure...I placed my two minispeakers on the radiator. They are part of my portable BT speakers( it works with the mains, either) and are supposed to work with the sub.
They are 3.5" mid + horn tweeter, 16 Ω.
I need to use the preamplifier with bass (+ subsonic) at minimum, and they sound ok! Like the good old days! Now I use 'em for the only purpose of using the 16 Ω tap of the amplifier...lovely glow!
Reminds me when using the amplifier at max volume and needing to lower bass & treble to maintain distortion at reasonable levels other than blowing the tweeters.
Those days are passed and nowadays I keep distortion low in the 1 W range -I guess - and usually I don't feel the need of adding a -say- 5" bass.
Just to keep Xmax under 2mm for the mid and not to fry the tweeter.
Loudness...
Adaptive loudness...
They are 3.5" mid + horn tweeter, 16 Ω.
I need to use the preamplifier with bass (+ subsonic) at minimum, and they sound ok! Like the good old days! Now I use 'em for the only purpose of using the 16 Ω tap of the amplifier...lovely glow!
Reminds me when using the amplifier at max volume and needing to lower bass & treble to maintain distortion at reasonable levels other than blowing the tweeters.
Those days are passed and nowadays I keep distortion low in the 1 W range -I guess - and usually I don't feel the need of adding a -say- 5" bass.
Just to keep Xmax under 2mm for the mid and not to fry the tweeter.
Loudness...
Adaptive loudness...
