Subwoofer Advice

hornetstinger said:
I added a sub similar in spec to my sbu13 it definitely made an improvement. Also flattens response.

So I would recommend a second one later down the line.
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So you're recommendation, after reading my original post of course. Would be adding two subwoofers to a room, that only has space for one. Which would cost over £1000 and be over budget, to a set of speakers that cost £600?

Oh, and buy some other doodad thingy at an additional cost of £100 or more.

Not exactly the advice I was looking for. But thanks for the input.
 
barmyllama said:
If I ever get it.

Ordered on March 30th. Messaged BK on 6th April. Got a reply on the 7th to say the delay was painting it and they'd chase the painter. Heard nothing since.
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Heh, I ordered an XXLS400 on the 30th March too! :p

I was originally going for the P12-300SB-PR but after a long chat with Tom at BK and my usage changing from mostly AV to now weighted to a lot more music use then Tom advised to go with the XXLS.

I did get an email from Tom the next day acknowledging the order and he said it would be about 15-20 working days, so I'm expecting it by the end of April.

Though my new Kef R3's should be hopefully turning up today! :cool:
 
barmyllama said:
So you're recommendation, after reading my original post of course. Would be adding two subwoofers to a room, that only has space for one. Which would cost over £1000 and be over budget, to a set of speakers that cost £600?

Oh, and buy some other doodad thingy at an additional cost of £100 or more.

Not exactly the advice I was looking for. But thanks for the input.
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It can be done overtime and yes that doodad is worth it, I use one myself and just got one for brother system.

For £100 it's worth it, flattens response any peaks are flattened.

I assume you don't have avr with room correction?

And yes dual subs are worth it like I said adding sub similar to the xls400 helped mine out.

Sounds like you didn't want advice just wanted confirmation on your choice

Enjoy being bossed by your wife
 
barmyllama said:
If I ever get it.

Ordered on March 30th. Messaged BK on 6th April. Got a reply on the 7th to say the delay was painting it and they'd chase the painter. Heard nothing since.
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Everything is delayed at the moment bar the mass produced crap which doesn't have a raw materials shortage.

I had to wait 3 months for a mattress and 5 months for a bed.

So I'd just patiently wait tbh. There's not much you or they can do if the painters are having issues could be paint or staff off with Covid, etc.
 
hornetstinger said:
It can be done overtime and yes that doodad is worth it, I use one myself and just got one for brother system.

For £100 it's worth it, flattens response any peaks are flattened.

I assume you don't have avr with room correction?

And yes dual subs are worth it like I said adding sub similar to the xls400 helped mine out.

Sounds like you didn't want advice just wanted confirmation on your choice

Enjoy being bossed by your wife
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Aside from the wife swipe. Which is a kind of ridiculous thing to say, when most successful relationships require comprises to succeed.

I've already stated, twice now, that I don't have room for two subwoofers. I don't have the budget for two subwoofers. And even if I had both of those, it's seems pretty pointless spending double the amount of money on subwoofers than speakers. Particularly when most movie soundtracks are mixed with bias towards
the centre channel.

Congratulations on being only the second person to be added to my ignore list.
 
theone8181 said:
I assume he means most speech comes from centre so it's the most important.
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Whether I'm taking nonsense or not doesn't matter.

My original post stated that only have space for one subwoofer and my budget was £600.

But hornetstinger chooses to ignore these stipulations and just spouts the same thing, that he has before, in numerous threads regarding subwoofers. Often with a blatant disregard for what the actual thread discussion is about.

If we all followed his advice we'd all need to make space for four subwoofers costing £5000 each.
 
barmyllama said:
Whether I'm taking nonsense or not doesn't matter.

My original post stated that only have space for one subwoofer and my budget was £600.

But hornetstinger chooses to ignore these stipulations and just spouts the same thing, that he has before, in numerous threads regarding subwoofers. Often with a blatant disregard for what the actual thread discussion is about.

If we all followed his advice we'd all need to make space for four subwoofers costing £5000 each.
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I had to stick him on ignore years ago.

It's the same drivel in every thread. Someone asks I need a subwoofer and have a budget of £200.

He then says that OP needs to go spend £20k on several subwoofers. Rinse and repeat.

Can you imagine if in the gpu, cpu, car, basically any section you were just recommended to buy the biggest and fastest regardless of your needs or budget? I think he posts a lot in soundbar threads too. Probably telling folk that they need to ditch the soundbar and buy a 12.6.12 surround sound setup for £80k to be able to enjoy a movie fully even if you live in a flat.

I think I have 3 on my ignore list total.
 
It's worth looking into an Anti Mode @barmyllama

To give you a very brief idea of what it does, it helps it integrate (work) with your main speakers, so it's less black and white difference between speakers and sub, and more of a shades of grey system, where's there's a seamless transition between speakers and sub.

One of the best purchases I have made, and shortly after buying one, I moved to complete room correction :-)


It helps get the most out of any sub, and would recommend.


I would have offered to demo post covid, but you're quite a way from me :P
 
Psycho Sonny said:
I had to stick him on ignore years ago.

It's the same drivel in every thread. Someone asks I need a subwoofer and have a budget of £200.

He then says that OP needs to go spend £20k on several subwoofers. Rinse and repeat.

Can you imagine if in the gpu, cpu, car, basically any section you were just recommended to buy the biggest and fastest regardless of your needs or budget? I think he posts a lot in soundbar threads too. Probably telling folk that they need to ditch the soundbar and buy a 12.6.12 surround sound setup for £80k to be able to enjoy a movie fully even if you live in a flat.

I think I have 3 on my ignore list total.
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And you're the guy with a low end system, jealous of people who have higher end gear and can't understand why it's so good and worth spending extra.

Hell you whinge about people buying expensive universal remotes lol
 
MrRockliffe said:
It's worth looking into an Anti Mode @barmyllama

To give you a very brief idea of what it does, it helps it integrate (work) with your main speakers, so it's less black and white difference between speakers and sub, and more of a shades of grey system, where's there's a seamless transition between speakers and sub.

One of the best purchases I have made, and shortly after buying one, I moved to complete room correction :)


It helps get the most out of any sub, and would recommend.


I would have offered to demo post covid, but you're quite a way from me :p
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I wouldn't waste my time, they're not interested only want people to confirm their decision...even though I agreed with the op monkey that xls400 will be ok in that room but I would recommend duals and antimode for obvious reasons.
 
hornetstinger said:
What a Muppet movies mixed to center channel?

Lol
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This is actually true. 5.1 and 7.1 soundtracks have a massive bias towards centre channel utilisation. If music is playing over the action or in the background one would expect it to be essentially stereo and hence equally utilise the front right and left channels. The reality is most of it goes through the centre channel. This is one of the reasons increasing centre channel volume does not always aid with increasing dialogue clarity as you are also turning up so many other things in the mix that are being pumped through the centre channel.
 
You'll benefit the most re: subwoofers bang for buck with some form of subwoofer calibration and using a subwoofer with plenty of output and headroom to enable you to have a smooth response as possible.

Important components of a subwoofer are:
1. Output
2. A smooth response curve which tries to eliminate nulls
3. Sound, dynamics, quality and bass response going as low as possible
4. Inability to localise a subwoofer.

Number 3 involves having a better subwoofer and this can get costly. The best ones on the market with a line to 10hz on most REW graphics are Arendal, PSA, JTR and Funk audio. They're all pretty expensive. However if budget can stretch to even an entry level subwoofer from any of these brands, you'll be pretty happy.

SVS is okay but their subwoofers are pretty outdated and get destroyed by the lower port-tuned modern subwoofers; in short SVS are due an upgrade.

Anyway, moving to less expensive solutions and trying to tackle 1 and 2 of the important components - a smooth response curve can be attained by two methods:
1. Multiple subwoofers
2. Calibration

Calibration can help you smooth our a response dramatically. Peaks and nulls really ruin the bass. I personally suggest buying a UMIK microphone anda MiniDSP2x4HD. This will last you for the rest of your audio lifetime in the hobby and has functionality even multi thousand pound processors don't properly pack in. It has a learning curve but it transforms a BK subwoofer (single) into having a very acceptable bass performance.

Component number 4 I mentioned is localisation. The lower the crossover, the more difficult it is to identify the subwoofer but not all speakers can handle this. Another solution is to have it in a place which is difficult/neutral to identify or finally, have multiple subwoofers which makes it very difficult/impossible to pinpoint.

Multiple subwoofers is costly because you're paying for two devices for only +3db more output in most cases AND you lose room real estate.



I hope this is of some help, but I'd definitely reccomend some form of calibration software and hardware if budget is of concern. If you can afford the very financially overbearing upgrade path of subwooofers (eventually you'll want 2-3!) then you'll get an exponential performance, but even then you'll still need a miniDSP2x4HD.


If you want tactility, no subwoofer is going to compete with a user-built hoverBOSS. it will give you tactility which £30,000! worth of subs can't give, but it still requires the minidsp2x4hd.



Outside of output, marginal upgrades in subwoofer are not going to dramatically improve performance imo.
 
The BK XXLS 400 arrived Friday.

Connected it up. Set the high and low level gain to the mid point. Phase on 0, filter to LFE and frequency to 120hz.

Then went through the room correction set up on the Denon amp. Which set the crossover on the fronts 60hz, heights to 40hz and rears to 80hz. I changed them all to 80hz and tried a few films out.

To be honest I was a bit underwhelmed, so checked the levels for the subwoofer, which was on -12db, which is the lowest setting? So I tried -9db and settled on -6db.

To my ears and backside it all sounded/felt pretty good. Generally I didn't feel as if I could localise the bass in the room and it's a definite improvement on the old Gemini II. Even the wife said it was better, less boomy was her words.

Although I'm happy with the product, I do feel as though BK Electronics need to improve their communication with customers. Or at least make it clear there's a three to four week lead time before you order. An order confirmation email wouldn't have have gone a miss either.
 
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