Post by ludi on Jul 27, 2014 13:17:26 GMT -5
And... with all respect to Ken Rockwell he is a great photographer, but not an acoustician. He loves to write about everything but here he starts with wrong assumptions and then builds a theory. Well... hypothesis, that is unfounded.
And... summing acoustically IS the same as summing electrically! There are just many ways to sum it depending on where are you in the room when electrically you do it predictably and the same for all listeners. If you are exactly in between of two sources and have no room effects (large room or free space, or good symmetry in the room) out-of-phase will null just like with electrical summing. If you move off the centre sum will change, the same as with electrical sum will change if you do it with different delays.
But, as was noted above - in real small room practically all the phase-difference between the ears will not come from the direction of the bass source, but from the room modes. So, again no point in stereo anyway as you will get this kind of 'room ambiance' anyway (if it is something you want to have).
I linked to this article because it added a different opinion to stereo versus mono subs. Most of the discussion before was about if the sound of a sub is locatable or not. Maybe in certain circumstances a sub is locatable, there are different opions also. But this article added something more to this mono/stereo discussion, that was the reason I linked it from here.
In the past I had a single sub, but after a couple of months I got myself a second one. I wired these subs in parallel to my speakers from the amplifier, the preferred REL way of connecting. The LFE was from directly from the pre-amplifier to both of the subs. I have never done a blind mono stereo comparison with that setup. But it sounded definitely better with two subs than with one.
I changed a couple of times gear. The setup I’ve used for quite a while was a setup with an active crossover and an equalizer, both from Behringer. In my Yamaha receiver I selected large-speakers for front and no subwoofer: the LFE channel was send to the front channels. Then the crossover separated the left and right low frequencies (below 55Hz), both went thru the equalizer (REW used to determine the settings) and then to the left and right sub. The other signal (above the 55Hz) went to a separate power amplifier. I had this set up for a couple of years and I really liked it.
Then for several reasons got rid of this whole setup and I moved to an Emotiva UMC-1 and a I sold the Behringers and the RELS. I got two Rhythmik subs, but the UMC-1 offers only a mono sub output. So I have the set now playing in a double mono setup. And to be honest, this sounds very good to me. But as soon as I can get my hands on an XMC-1 I’ll get back to the stereo sub setup. Once with the XMC-1 I have the opportunity to switch quickly between stereo and double mono. I can than make a better decision what sounds better I my room and to my ears.
To make a long story short: I've used both double mono and stereo, but never had the opportunity to compare. I think I'll like stereo better, but at the moment I have no way of knowing if that is really the case. To be continued ...
