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Why not just get bookshelf speakers if even the big ones need subwoofers?

Mystery

Mystery

constantly upgrading...
This could be beating a dead horse but after reading 1000's of threads, there are very few speakers that handle low end on their own.
Even large 4 feet towers need subwoofers.
When subwoofer is added, those towers are only reproducing 80hz and above. Some do leave them full range with a sub most use a crossover point.
So what's the use of having that big foot print when the same frequency range can be handled with a much smaller bookshelf when there is a subwoofer being used? Some companies even make tower and bookshelf with same drivers like Klipsch RB and RF series.
I understand towers have more listen-able sound/bass on their own when we don't want to use a sub but assuming that a sub is always in use, it doesn't make sense to spend that much more on towers and then limit them to 80hz and above.
There is one advantage on the towers that they don't need stands like bookshelves do but what's the main reason? :headscrat
 
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You don't have to cross over at 80Hz. In many (most?) distributed bass systems you let the mains run free and crossover fairly low, but with a bit of overlap with the mains. The idea is that you're not necessarily adding lower bass, but using the subs to counteract the effects of the room, which dominates anything below around 40 or 50Hz, and smooth out the bass response that's there.
 
Mystery said:
This could be beating a dead horse but after reading 1000's of threads, there are very few speakers that handle low end on their own.
Even large 4 feet towers need subwoofers.
When subwoofer is added, those towers are only reproducing 80hz and above. Some do leave them full range with a sub most use a crossover point.
So what's the use of having that big foot print when the same frequency range can be handled with a much smaller bookshelf when there is a subwoofer being used? Some companies even make tower and bookshelf with same drivers like Klipsch RB and RF series.
I understand towers have more listen-able sound/bass on their own when we don't want to use a sub but assuming that a sub is always in use, it doesn't make sense to spend that much more on towers and then limit them to 80hz and above.
There is one advantage on the towers that they don't need stands like bookshelves do but what's the main reason? :headscrat
Click to expand...
My bolded text points out an invalid assumption and sets up a straw man argument.

If you are using an AVR, you have the option of applying a high-pass filter to your mains but it's not always mandatory, depending on the ARR.

In most two channel systems, this is not even an option. There is no low-pass available.

Some of us like fullrange (or as close as feasable) for their mains and choose to onlty have the sub take over on the low end where the mains fall off of their own accord. My Maggies are good down to almost 40 hz and do everythng above that with amazing clarity. I see no need to turn this range over to a subwoofer.

but, to get those bottom octaves I have no problem using a sub with it's intrernal adjustable low-pass filter set to the mid forties so the mains do what they do quite well and just use the sub for the bottom.

Also, without that high-pass filter limiting the mains performance, it affords an option to use the speakers sans sub, which is more than adequate for most music.
 
For music listening, I for one don't care for subwoofers. I've owned several over the years and MUCH prefer a fullrange tower over any sub sat system I've ever heard. For me, the bass I hear from subs always sounds fake, rubbery and detached from the rest of the sound. I'll admit that for Home Theater that bass can be useful for reproducing explosions and such, but for music... I'll pass. Again, I'm not speaking in absolutes here, I don't have unlimited resources to drop thousands on a subwoofer system and I'm sure many people love their subs and thats great. If there was only one way that sounded best to everyone, there'd be only one type of product sold.
 
well in my humble opinion its about a few things , sound stage and crossover points the biggest i would say- the smaller your front 2 speakers are the bigger the difference in the crossover Frequency will be ,i have read about sub base being omni directional but mid base is not so i guess the higher cross over point to smaller tower/satellite speaker leaves a bigger gap in the mid/base to be covered by the sub -mono in some systems
 
The big ones don't need one - some folks just want one.

Never have, probably never will own a subwoofer.:no:
 
Big towers only 80hz :scratch2: strange...

My mini-monitors can achieve well below 50hz in room. Their bigger brothers (still a two-way stand-mount) from the manufacturer are stated at 35hz in their specs.

And this is clean articulate bass, no need for a sub as far as I'm concerned, and they are a pain to integrate properly, not to mention that you need to get a very good one if you want good bass.

Just my view.

A short clip of the ML-2 Limited playing ( the bigger brothers of what I have), no subs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNxS4Ll_vNc& feature=player_embedded unfortunately this track doesn't show off what I wanted to show.
There was another clip that showed off bass lines but is no longer available for view. Shame, as the bass notes were beautiful on it.
Mind you these are the limited version, so a no compromise build.
 
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My floorstanding speakers will dip to 32 hZ which is enough to add a nice bassline to my tunes. I do have a subwoofer as some music I listen to goes below that and of course, some movie tracks go even lower to create felt, rather than heard, frequencies.

Large ones go only to 80 hZ? Nope...
 
bentpencil said:
The big ones don't need one - some folks just want one

Never have, probably never will own a subwoofer.:no:
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So what you're saying is big speakers, by virtue of simply being big, are able to overcome standing waves and the nodes they create?
 
I went with the OPs suggestion but because of practicality rather than absolute sound considerations. When I bought my house 7 years ago I had big floor speakers. I soon gave them away and got two small monitors and a same brand sub. The room simply provided no good placement options for the big towers, which were always in the way and sounded bad firing at nothing.
I put up corner shelves above doorjamb level and mounted the (front ported) monitors on them with sub on the floor of the same wall. It is not optimal of course, but it looks tasteful, sounds worlds better, and all speakers are out of the way and harm's way.
 
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If you need one or not depends on the room acoustics (size, geometry, wall material, furniture) and the rest of your gear. Not to mention hearing and musical preferences.

I have AR-11B monkey coffins and I don't need more bass. Actually I am cutting down on bass each time I improve on something. I get more accurate sounding LF and less boom boom. Eventually it will come to the point where I will need distributed bass.
 
Mystery said:
This could be beating a dead horse but after reading 1000's of threads, there are very few speakers that handle low end on their own.
Even large 4 feet towers need subwoofers.
When subwoofer is added, those towers are only reproducing 80hz and above. Some do leave them full range with a sub most use a crossover point.
So what's the use of having that big foot print when the same frequency range can be handled with a much smaller bookshelf when there is a subwoofer being used? Some companies even make tower and bookshelf with same drivers like Klipsch RB and RF series.
I understand towers have more listen-able sound/bass on their own when we don't want to use a sub but assuming that a sub is always in use, it doesn't make sense to spend that much more on towers and then limit them to 80hz and above.
There is one advantage on the towers that they don't need stands like bookshelves do but what's the main reason? :headscrat
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you. I have searched for years trying to find speakers with decent bass. I would always get the speakers with the larger woofers and still no luck. Even the Cerwin Vegas with the 15" woofer (AT15) couldn't deliver. I would end up having to buy a subwoofer to try and get the bass I wanted. But like someone mentioned in one of the threads it is even hard to find a good subwoofer.

The AR series speakers which I got by chance are giving me new hope and they aren't even that big which amazes me.
 
Thanks for chiming in.
Definitely towers have advantage on low end on their own.

NO, I'm not saying towers are limited to 80hz.
That's just an example of a crossover point when using A/V receivers or external crossovers.

What I'm saying is let's assume I have Klipsch RB51 that goes down to 50hz (again 50hz is an example).
Then I add a Klipsch sub to handle anything below 60hz and use the RB51's for anything above.
How is that different from using Klipsch RF62 towers (as an example) and the same sub using the same crossover points?
Will towers still sound better?

I understand running towers full range will help on distributed mid-bass/bass but adding another sub can easily do a lot more than what towers can do in that department.
:scratch2:
So the gist is if one is limited in space/budget, can the same sound quality be obtained by using bookshelf and sub/s or towers completely stump bookshelf even with sub/s?
 
Jet757f said:
I have to agree with you. I have searched for years trying to find speakers with decent bass. I would always get the speakers with the larger woofers and still no luck. Even the Cerwin Vegas with the 15" woofer (AT15) couldn't deliver. I would end up having to buy a subwoofer to try and get the bass I wanted. But like someone mentioned in one of the threads it is even hard to find a good subwoofer.

The AR series speakers which I got by chance are giving me new hope and they aren't even that big which amazes me.
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what pandovski said surly has meaning here , if you have a set of 15" bass units and cannot get a good deep bass then your room must have bad Acoustics or the speakers are not positioned correctly ( or the room size in badly matched)
 
Bottom line....a lack of strong bass content in the music is almost certainly NOT the fault of the speaker/subwoofer.....speaker meaning something that was designed to reproduce lower octave bass frequencies. Frequencies in the lower octaves are HIGHLY susceptible to room resonances that CANCEL OUT bass content. Room acoustics are almost always the issue...NOT the speaker/subwoofer.

And you're right, Mystery. This is TOTALLY a friggin' dead horse. The fact that it isn't common knowledge in the audio community isn't nearly as pathetic and inexcusable as the resistance I see in accepting the science.
 
tomlinmgt said:
So you're gonna throw basic (room) acoustic theory out the window as well, Tom?
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I think what a lot of people find that when they start diving into the depths of doing subwoofers it can really complicate things and start driving up costs to where it is not worth it.

Case in point- matching up subwoofers to properly play along with my Altec A7 setup gets very expensive and very complicated very quickly. At this point I don't have the money to do it properly and I probably don't have the space on top of not having the time. So they run without it but it sounds fine to me.

Good luck with properly matching up subs to keep up with Magnepans too, another daunting task.
 
I've always found bookshelf/sub combos miss out on midbass and/or clarity as the smaller midrange drivers to try compensate.

There's also the directivity, if you're running your crossover high at say 200hz it could sound weird if the sub isn't next to the speaker as things get more directional the higher the frequency

With a sub/tower speaker combo the sub is doing what a sub is actually meant to do. play the lowest frequencies. Ideally I'd cross a sub over at 40-50hz.

Something else to consider. If you use a sub for all the bass, you are getting plate amp quality in your playback. I've not heard so far a Class D sub amp that sounds as nice as a class A or AB dedicated amp. If you're running a sub at a high crossover point this is going to be more noticeable. Sure, they probably exist, but most likely for $$$
 
Even if you have a sub, why wouldn't you also want extra bass from your mains to the extent they are capable of producing it?
 
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