Should I upgrade my sub?

[feav66]

Evening all.
I recently bought my own place to live and the first priority was the surround sound system. Never had the space before or with neighbors above or below it didn't seem worth the trouble.

Anyway went out and bought a Yamaha RX-V375 amp and my Dad gave me his old speakers. Set it all up and sounds great, big improvement on the old logitec 2.1 pc speakers I was using. The only thing is im finding the bass is lacking that real kick at times and was wondering if it would be worth upgrading the sub to something from B.K.

The speakers given to me are quite old 10 to 15 years with a passive sub. Google tells me very little about them but i believe they were quite good ones.
Richard Allan speakers Model Minette 2. 8 ohm.

So I guess my question is should i spend £350 on a new sub or would it be better to upgrade the all the speakers on a similar budget.

 

[lucid]

You probably know that Richard Allen speakers were based out of Batley in W. Yorkshire. They're a well respected if slightly idiosyncratic Hi-Fi brand. I'm not sure about Minette 2, but Minette 3 date from around 1998-99 and cost approx £200 at the time.

The company built many of its own drivers rather than buying in units from other manufacturers. The complete speaker were built for vocal precision and speed. They're revealing and very "old school Hi-Fi" in the way they present sound, but that's no bad thing because they set the performance bar quite high. IOW, you'd have to spend a lot of money on speakers (even used ones) to match what the Richard Allens do well.

The passive sub follows in the same Richard Allen tradition. It's designed for speed and accuracy rather than outright weight and slam. If most of what you listen to is movies, TV and games then a BK or similar sub will add that extra dimension. The BK won't be as precise for music, but seeing at the system is driven with a basic AV receiver then that's kind of irrelevant.

One other possibility is buying a S/H Hi-Fi amp with stronger bass performance to use to drive the sub. My first thought would be a NAD.

How is the system currently wired and driven?

 

[feav66]

Hi Lucid.

Was hoping you would reply, I've read many of your other posts always seem to know what your talking about.
At pesent the sup is wired via the two front speakers, i presume there is some kind of internal cross over in the sup to strip out the lower frequencies then sent the rest of the signal back to the fronts. The amp is mainly used for movies played via my pc through the graphics card hdmi out.
To be honest is sounds great, a big improvment on what im used to and very pleased with considering it only cost me the price of the amp to set up. By the sounds of it spending that much on a new sub wouldn't bring much of an improvment. The base is very good and can be heard down to 30Hz when i tested it. It just at times it seems to lack the kick on explosions and such.

Think I will stick with what i have until i decide to upgrade the amp.

Thanks for your input. Probably saved me spending twice the price of the system on a new sub and being dissappointed with the differance.

 

[lucid]

You'll get some extra slam and better depth by driving the sub via its own amp coming off the subwoofer out. A used NAD or a Rotel Hi-Fi amp would do the trick. Taking the load of the sub away from the Yamaha would benefit the Minettes too.


Yam sub out > used Hi-Fi amp > speakers out to RA sub input.

Yam front L&R > Minettes

Yam set-up menus:
- fronts - small
- LFE out to sub
- Crossover - try 60 and 80Hz but with the sub switched off. Listen if the Minettes lose any bass info running at a higher crossover point.