Sure thing. I thought it was a well-reasoned article - but I'm not sure I agree. Still experimenting. What he suggests (all speakers on small regardless of size, crossover set to THX regulation around 80 Hz) seems fine for HT, but I'm not sold on it for music. But then, with bass capable speakers, I'm not yet sold on using a subwoofer for music anyway. (I only bought my first subwoofer recently, so the experience is new to me.) Using a small - high crossover configuration seems to work on some music, but so far I've noticed this set-up can also make my M60s sound isolated and tinny while the bass is too pronounced. This can probably be fixed by a few days of tinkering with placement and settings. I read another article contrary to Florian (more proof that a little knowledge is dangerous) that questions the use of subwoofers for music because of the inevitable jarring of phase and timbre. It's over my head, scientifically, but it's exactly what my wife said, in her own way, when she first heard my attempts to integrate the HSU STF-2 with our M60s. The brief article is here for those interested:
Here's the writer's main point:
ADDING A SUBWOOFER
When an attempt is made to add a subwoofer to a system these principles come into play. Although the subwoofer is producing the fundamentals and some harmonics from a recording; the time or phase delay resulting from the alignment and mass differential (relative to the main speakers) causes the sounds from the subwoofer to become unrelated to those of the main speakers. This occurs even though the sounds were in sync and harmonically related when they electrically entered the respective loudspeakers. Unlike the unpleasant sounds described above which are distinct sound sources, the phase differential created makes all sounds that need both speakers to be unnatural and unpleasant. The addition of a subwoofer using existing technologies requires a greater mass and /or a different operating alignment from the mains and naturally perplexes the acoustic summation at the ear. The generally autonomous and high levels of special effects in home theater make subwoofers more effective in this application. When subwoofers are used to produce natural or musical sounds the phase errors contribute and cause annoying sound at the ear. Also when the fundamentals and harmonics are present and in sync, the required volume for pitch delineation is much less. A small speaker needs an equally small low mass subwoofer operating with less cone motion to assure that the fundamentals appear first as they naturally should. The ear actually prefers to synthesize the fundamental rather than interpret poorly aligned subwoofers. This is why audiophiles don’t add subwoofers to their systems preferring instead the natural roll off of the single smaller bass unit.
The second-to-last sentence is especially interesting, "The ear actually prefers to synthesize the fundamental ...." I've read elsewhere, and even in college psych if I recall correctly, that our ears are great at intuiting information that is not there but that we expect to be there. In other words, if all the anticipated sounds of a field are not present, our active imagination will substitute some of the sounds to round it out in our minds. This is the sonic equivalent of an optical illusion. Apparently this is one reason that bookshelf speakers, and even little old computer speakers, can sometimes sound good to our ears -- because our minds supply the missing information. I gather a problem with integrating subwoofers to music can be that in place of the pleasing sounds that our mind is willing to create for us, we substitute an actual set of low frequencies from the subwoofer, and these can often be out-of-sync in phase, timbre, and volume from the main source of sound, the main source of the sonic illusion. Great main speakers aren't just accurate, after all, they are also great illusionists. Maybe I'll invite more thought on this in a "life without subwoofers" thread.
Birdman
