Sub Neccesary?

Kronologic said:
7 days ago my answer would have been "Pah 5.0 is good enough, if you have the right amp and front speakers". 5.1 is only worth it if you have £700 + for a sub.

However. I listened (I don't watch films I listen) to Jurassic Park just over a week ago and I was a bit undreamed by the T-Rex scene, I said to the missus, that a sub was back on the "To buy" list. ( I'm broke so the "To Buy" list is actually very long)

Last Monday I saw that my local hi-fi store has a sale. I saw a Yamaha YSTFSW100 on sale for £119.00 I had a quick look online at the specs, and it seemed decent enough for the price, sure it was a lot less powerful than I would like and the low end of the frequency is about 14 Hz higher than I would like. But for £120 it was not bad. (to get the power and the range I want it would cost at least £700).

ATM I am living with my parents (whilst the bathroom is being renovated) so I hooked it up to my dads amp (which currently only has a mixed match front selection of speakers) and fired up the mines of morier in lord of the rings. Sub off - meh - ; Sub on - Wholly $%|7 I have not heard these sounds before.
But I was still not sold. My dads system is uncompleted and very mismatched. I took the sub home, hooked it up and fired up Jurassic Park, went to the T-Rex scene and listened. I was getting my thumps even on this "Tiny" little sub.

However I went to a demo of a pretty expensive (in compared to my system) system that my dad has his eye on. My first comment was "I need a new sub".

But TBH I think that it has added clarity to my main speakers, which were having to do the LFE and the rest of the sound, which made vocals especially sound muffled. I think the Bass and LFE sounds crisper and is more pronounced, there is actually a rumble and I feel more immersed in the scenes I have watched.
I certainly feel that I have been missing something from my system for the last 3 years, and I will now be sitting down to watch all my films all over again.

Would I like a better sub. Hell yeah. Should I buy one… No. I can neither afford the cost or to fall out with the neighbours (live in a semi)
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Exactly, until you hear better you're "ignorent" which is best. It's like thinking your midi hifi is brilliant, because it is. Until you hear a seperates system. I've dealt with people with Sony/Yamaha subwoofers that think these are brilliant, or their system reproduces undistorted bass during sound tracks, running their mains full-range yet all I hear is bass cones from all the speakers buzzing away. The people who have come round mine to have a demo suddenly go quiet and slyly upgrade their system or admit their system is wholly wrong and ask for a upgrade/tweak/subwoofer.

The bass that's being redirected from your speakers to the subwoofer will result in a clearer midrange to the rest of your speakers.

I think people that come from the "Hi-Fi" area still stick to Hi-Fi ideas when it comes to HT. It doesn't work the same way, from the material being placed, the higher number of speakers, usual frequency range of the audio soundtrack, dynamic range, and requirements on the amplifiers, speakers, subwoofer, bass nodes and how each speaker interacts with each other.

btw I'm into Hi-Fi and HT so I know of both areas.
 
james.miller said:
i know its not a brick wall. it can be anything as low as 6db/octave, depending on type of crossover. thats what im talking about - its not a brick wall so content over 80hz will also get thru. Anything in the region is entirely directional. im suprise you dont prefer running the mains at a lower crossover point, frankly i would if i could but im only using bookshelf's so i really dont have that luxury:)
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For music, I agree I would run full-range speakers (if room allows) and full-range signal)

I've tried various crossover settings, there's actually very little difference in my setup, my room. No doubt if you put my setup in another room other crossover settings will sound better The sub isn't audible over the main speakers in that you can makeout higher frequencies over the mains, and for HT it sounds the best this way.

I have used lower quality subs which do in fact show themselves up badly >80hz, and upto 120hz cutout off so perhaps the reason to your opinion?

Regardless in a HT system good 5.0 speakers + good subwoofer = :D
 
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Mr_Sukebe said:
Come on, don't be coy. Heard a couple of big Meridian dems, though they were with 5.1 music and not films. Very impressive, though not my cup of tea.

Clearly if you have virtually unlimited funds and already have some Living Voice OBX (of whatever floats your boat), then adding a high quality sub for AV DOES make sense, though I'd still maintain that for 95% of users that we've all be sidetracked by the latest AV "fad". Still, that's nothing new when you consider how CD took over from LP.
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Well I have better audio system than Jim Davidson, and considering the wealth differences not bad I would say! :D

For Hi-Fi/music I would say a subwoofer is a fad, and certainly I woundn't use one, but for HT 100% recommended, if you're a film nut.
 
squiffy said:
Well I have better audio system than Jim Davidson, and considering the wealth differences not bad I would say! :D

For Hi-Fi/music I would say a subwoofer is a fad, and certainly I woundn't use one, but for HT 100% recommended, if you're a film nut.
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The guy of big break? He's bankrupt isn't he? So considering the wealth difference I should hope you have a better system ;)
 
Fine, apart from the fact that Ewan McGregor owns a Prius, which I'd claim my car is better than. Maybe JD has no significant interest in music and how to reproduce it.
 
My point is I've had various items from budget to fairly high end ish gear, various types of each, of both Hi-Fi and HT areas...so had experience and therefore imo a more valid opinion than someone saying from their limited experience that "this is better" or "this isn't required"

Some Hi-Fi people can be right snobs too, so when/if they branch into HT they carry over the same principles. Downmixing multi-channel soundtracks to stereo is a good example. Multi-channel is what the director/sound mixer intended. Would you downmix a stereo soundtrack to mono because you think it's better that way? Or perhaps because you only have one speaker you can buy a higher quality mono instead of lesser quality stereo pair? :D
 
squiffy said:
My point is I've had various items from budget to fairly high end ish gear, various types of each, of both Hi-Fi and HT areas...so had experience and therefore imo a more valid opinion than someone saying from their limited experience that "this is better" or "this isn't required"
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Always good to get someone else on the forum with a wide range of experience with high end systems to get a different perspective on things.

Not that you've actually given us much detail on either what you use on a day to day basis or have good experience with. Apologies if we ask, but it does help to understand the context of your comments.
 
Sorry, finally got around to doing a couple of mins of checking. From a few previous posts, appears to me that Squiffy is running:
- Marantz CD63
- Tag DAC20
- Audiolab 8000S
- a pair of Kefs (unknown)

Is this your second system? I'm guessing it might as you were talking about owning a system that was "nearly on par" with a full Meridian set of kit. Bearing in mind that the last time I heard one was at Bristol and cost around £90k.

I'd put the above firmly in the mid-range of gear.
 
That's the old system.

Care to give details of everthing you own? And Meridian have a range of gear, from similar to mine to the full works. So what I said is true. You didn't say from which range.

Why are you going through my old posts? Want to disprove my opinion is invalid just because I might not have a £1 million system? 99% of the general public have very little in audio/HT gear so compared to them I think I have a bit wider experience.
 
Mr.S's system is in the sticky at the top of the page along with most of the other forum regulars.

On the subject of Sub's the biggest flaw to HT is that there is no specific Sub output in 5.1 sound its down to the amp to decide what to send to the Sub.
 
BF-Bert said:
Sub's the biggest flaw to HT is that there is no specific Sub output in 5.1 sound its down to the amp to decide what to send to the Sub.
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Wrong. That's the LFE channel, which is for the subwoofer only. If setting the 5.0 speakers to large the subwoofer will get the LFE channel only. You'll also get more redirected bass from other channels if any are set to small of any setting (usually 80hz)

Bass managment is upto the processor though you're right there, but if BM is of any quality there shouldn't be a problem.
 
squiffy said:
That's the old system.

Care to give details of everthing you own? And Meridian have a range of gear, from similar to mine to the full works. So what I said is true. You didn't say from which range.

Why are you going through my old posts? Want to disprove my opinion is invalid just because I might not have a £1 million system? 99% of the general public have very little in audio/HT gear so compared to them I think I have a bit wider experience.
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Squiffy>
I'm not trying to pick fault, I'm trying to understand the context of what you're talking about.
For example, if you own a Ferrari GTO, Muira and an Aston V8, I'd think you'd be in a position to talk in detail about supercars, otherwise you'd be the rest of us basing are views on what's written in magazines and available on the net.

As for my own kit, as already stated it's listed in "my kit" and is accurate an uptodate, though I have to admit to not updating the photos (not that it matters as it's pretty ugly and I tend to listen to it with the lights out).

In addition, I'd hope that I set context when talking about recommendations, i.e. when I've actually owned/heard/used a product, as against making a statement based on what I've read.
 
BF-Bert said:
No LFE my be a bass only channel but its still down to the processor to decide how it distributes it. It is not a sub channel
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hmm...if setting 5.0 speakers to large (full-range) the LFE channel is a "subwoofer" channel as the LFE is not being directed to the other speakers at all. The rest of the speakers are receiving full-range of their own respective channels, so in theory the LFE is a subwoofer channel. Only when others are 80hz small that the 5.0 bass gets mixed into the LFE as well and then outputted to the subwoofer. And depending on your setup and/or DVD title you can class the LFE as a subwoofer channel or a full-range channel. The channels are discrete, but because of BM they sometimes aren't as depending on settings they're mixed into each other.As it is on my setup, my subwoofer is outputing LFE + from the other channels below the crossover point @ 80hz.

" There are NO clear rules governing the bandwidth of the LFE channel. The production statutes applied to LFE channels are so varied that determining the upper LFE cutoff frequency for a playback system is often an exercise in futility. Some LFE channels contain no content above 50Hz, while others (usually due to an error in mastering) are full range! The generally accepted safe approach on the playback end is to lowpass-filter the LFE channel at 80 Hz. However, some AV controllers do not apply a lowpass filter to the LFE channel at all, meaning that highly directional bass on some recordings could potentially be produced by the subwoofers. Beware of these controllers, as there is usually no way to add an external lowpass filter without serious repercussions to the main-channel bass
 
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"Dolby Digital programs may include a bass-only LFE channel, but this channel does not correspond directly to a subwoofer output. It is possible for a program to contain an LFE channel, but a decoder may provide no subwoofer output because all of the bass information in the program, including the LFE channel, can be reproduced by the main speakers."

LFE was an after thought added to stop cinema's having to upgrade the front 3 channel hardware.
 
BF-Bert said:
"Dolby Digital programs may include a bass-only LFE channel, but this channel does not correspond directly to a subwoofer output. It is possible for a program to contain an LFE channel, but a decoder may provide no subwoofer output because all of the bass information in the program, including the LFE channel, can be reproduced by the main speakers."

LFE was an after thought added to stop cinema's having to upgrade the front 3 channel hardware.
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True a 5.0 mix (usually concert DVD's) will rely on the processors ability to mix the bass from the 5 speakers to the subwoofer. So in that sense the subwoofer isn't a discrete channel.

I've used a few processors, when playing back a 5.0 mix nothing comes from the sub (poor BM) but in another 80hz filters are applied to all channels and the subwoofer is outputting sound. It generally sounds better with the latter (if done properly)
 
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