Mis-matched subs

Ok, so I hooked up the Klipsch. I stuffed the port because without this it was way too over powering. I played around with crossovers, level adjustments, phasing, etc. I tried adjustments on both, but mainly on the Klipsch. To be real honest, I did not like the sound with the Klipsch so much. Yes, it could add a lot of bass, but it almost seemed too boomy unless it was set to barely being on. It also seemed to muddy the bottom end a lot. The REL, although not adding a ton of knock your socks off bass is very tight and smooth. The bottom end it adds is very smooth and enjoyable, adding just a little more feel on the kick drum or feel to the acoustic bass strings.

I put the Klipsch back in the closet :)... I may eventually look into adding a JL or a second little REL, or a bigger REL (or two)... but for now I think I prefer the smoothness of my system with just the REL, without the Klipsch added.

When we move, depending on setup in the new house, maybe the Klipsch will go back with the surround system...
 
Randy,
I should have added that the multiple subs are pretty easy to set up IF you have a mic and REW or other analysis software. Doing it by ear would be pretty tough.

I started with one sub in my listening position, did the "subwoofer crawl" to find the best/loudest bass locations, chose the most convenient, put the 1st sub there and repeated the process with the second sub. Once the subs were placed, I did a frequency sweep, identified a null, and adjusted cut-off, damping, and volume on one and then the other to minimize the null, repeated the pink noise and dithered the settings on each sub to make sure I ended up with the best response.
 
Randy Myers said:
Oh, cool... well I believe we have decided... but now comes the fun times of selling and arranging for our new house to be built. So honest opinion... Is Ocala the very nice community that my sister and my brother are telling us?
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Well I was resided there from the 2nd grade until I moved to the awful Orlando area in 2002. I enjoyed Ocala, if you like fishing, golf, hiking, bike riding there are lots of opportunities.
 
Randy

Unless you like being surrounded by tourists, traffic and illogical road patterns not much to recommend about Orlando except to visit or the University.
 
Hehe.... so there is some traffic in Orlando :)... Well that will only be encountered when wife does a shopping trip (outlets, Costco, malls, etc.... Frys :))... or when someone visits that wants to go to Disney.... can almost guarantee that traffic is not any worse then what the 101 has become every day... even on the Central Coast, but certainly if you venture south of Santa Barbara.
 
Randy Myers said:
Hehe.... so there is some traffic in Orlando :)... Well that will only be encountered when wife does a shopping trip (outlets, Costco, malls, etc.... Frys :))... or when someone visits that wants to go to Disney.... can almost guarantee that traffic is not any worse then what the 101 has become every day... even on the Central Coast, but certainly if you venture south of Santa Barbara.
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Oh yes CA traffic is the pits but whats got Orlando all screwed up is the I-4 expansion project. I-4 runs from Daytona and goes right through downtown Orlando on to Tampa. The work is centered around a 21 mile area right in the middle of Orlando. More than a year into the job, the I-4 Ultimate project is humming right along toward its scheduled completion in 2021. So the roads are all backed up everywhere with detours etc.. its a blast.
 
Fun fun... sounds like for years whenever you were going south, Yankees game in Anaheim, Frys in Oxnard, etc.... Santa Barbara would always be backed up because of non-stop construction...
 
Well I have been playing around a little with the sub just to get it at it's best until the move.... I think I got it doing a very good job by running it low level (I hate running subs from high level input even though REL prefers this) and burying the sub in the corner. This give the REL an added boost from the walls and brings out the nice tight bass that it does so well in. Since I am not a bass head but want some added tight bass it appears to give me a lot of what I like. The little REL actually is currently impressing the heck out of me :)....
 
Glad you're finding something that works, Randy. Actually, I do run mis-matched subs, and I'm a bit concerned about going matched down the road. In my case, it has to do with non-room symmetric positioning of the two different subs. I have stereo subs located right next to L/R speakers. One of them is ported, and the other sealed. However, my L/R speakers are not symmetrically positioned left-right along the room width dimension. It's a large room, and having them off-center doesn't cause soundstage problems in mids/highs, luckily. However, this means that one sub is almost in the middle of the L-R room dimension, while the other is relatively close to a corner (2ft from left wall, and 3ft from front wall).

Aesthetically, I would prefer the ported sub to be the one on the left and somewhat close to a corner. However, due to its porting, it loads the room differently and stronger than the sealed sub. Specifically, when I used REW and put each sub in the two different locations and got independent frequency response graphs from them, it's clear that the sealed sub benefits from room boundary reinforcement. From mid-30's on down, it evens out when in the corner location. While when in the other location, frequency response drops strongly below 30hz. The ported sub stays pretty linear on down to 20hz when in the middle-room location, and becomes even stronger in the corner location. When you put the two together, having the ported close to the corner and sealed in the middle of the room, it's a boomy and uneven frequency response. When you reverse it with sealed close to the corner, and ported in middle room, it's a pretty even frequency response across the board - plus I happen to get some beneficial complementarity in knocking down room nodes/modes that I don't get in the reverse.

So, in my case, non-matching subs actually lets me get a pretty linear response without having to resort to parametric EQ functions on the plate amps or an electronic crossover.

But I definitely couldn't have figured all that out by ears alone.
 
That is very cool that you got it to work out. I will wait until we get into the new house ( a long time from now) to look into it further.
 
FYI, mixing sealed and ported subs is generally a bad idea, it can cause cancellations on the bottom end of the spectrum.
 
Face said:
FYI, mixing sealed and ported subs is generally a bad idea, it can cause cancellations on the bottom end of the spectrum.
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Yes, well that's where having REW and a mic at your ear position helps to determine what's working and what's not. I wouldn't want to try to dial in any two subs without this kind of tool. Or really even one sub...
 
Genjamon said:
Yes, well that's where having REW and a mic at your ear position helps to determine what's working and what's not. I wouldn't want to try to dial in any two subs without this kind of tool. Or really even one sub...
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I added a pair of near field subs to the love seat in my HT, that was the only time I've had flat response without any EQ.
 
It has been a long time since posting in this thread. First off, after a few months and dealing with the kids, etc., we decided to stay here on the Central Coast of California. We figured no matter where we go there will be pluses and minusis, but here is pretty amazing (although expensive)... and we are settled. The kids and my audio club are thrilled. Oh, we took the house off the market.

On the sub, I decided to add a basic but solid KEF. Besides being my favorite speaker company they also bring a passive into the mix. Since the one channel is close to the wall, keeping the REL close to the corner but getting the KEF with a slightly larger driver and passive out of the opposing corner seems to work really well!

So far happy with the mix.
 
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