Sub overkill? (1 Viewer)

Is it possible to have to many Subs?
I have a 10" and a 6" active and I have a 10" passive sub sitting in the other room that is not being used that I could hook up. feels like rumblevision but I dont want to overpower the audience (me)

the room is small 16 x 10'6" and is soon to be closed off from the rest of the house.

In my experience I have come to the conclusion that you can never have too many subwoofers. Although.. I deal with car audio alot and With some of the setups i do for friends i use a 12" spl Subwoofer for those really low frequencies, And pair it up with a "10 High Powered subwoofer to kinda tighten up the mid level of the low end frequencies. When it comes to home audio Having alot of subwoofers is great sounding to me. But I am thinking that might Overpower all the highs. Personally, I think if you could Find a "moreso professional" manner of wiring 3 subwoofers without the classic splice and share methods All you would need to do is try to balance the power levels, Make sure your speaker wires are proper lengths *May slightly affect unicine* And do ALOT of calibrations. Another suggestion Would be to maybe look into investing in a "12 Powered subwoofer that would have sufficient performance specs unto itself to take care of your bass cravings. (May be the pricey way But may also be what you are looking for)

Anyway, I hope this helped, Im still a "toddler" in the home theatre world as a whole So if any of my information is misleading im sorry :b

It depends on the quality of the subs. I don't think the 6" sub is going to add much of anything, and the room is a bit small. A single, good sub, should be more than enough.

The 6" sub can be saved for something else, maybe a little sound system for your office.

Uh, just a quick question. What's the difference between passive and active in a subwoofer?

Sub Overkill

I am planning on building a custom box for dual 15" woofers for my HT system. Eventaully the plan is to have dual 18" JBL woofers powered by a mono block amplifier.

Lets Feel It In THX

Mark, please read our Primer. Active sub means the sub has its own amplifier.

Lyle, of course you can have too much sub-power. Totally blasting your windows out would be a pretty fair token of that.
However, even at lower power totals, you must be careful how you calibrate a system with more than 1 sub. Especially make sure that they are in phase, or they may (partially) cancel out each other.
In particular, switching one off as a test should not increase the bass, or some of the frequencies.

Cees

Lyle, I'm currently running 4 subs in my HT setup, so in my opinion, it wouldn't be sub-overkill. You might reconsider using the 6" sub, don't think it will do much for the really low frequencies. Good Luck. Johnny

I would personally not muddy up the soundfield with the 6" active sub. The placement of two subs, while not impossible, is sometimes hard to do right. I would rather place one great sub than try to place 2 or more subs.

There are several problems with running multiple subs, including the fact that in some placements you may wind up causing some frequencies to cancel each other out. This problem is nornally addressable however.

In your particular case, you are not likely to get much additional support for the low end frequencies with a six inch sub. The passive sub is another matter altogether. How much it will help depends on your receiver (especially how much clean power it delivers) and the efficiency of your R/L front speakers.

This is because the normal method of running a passive sub is to drive it from the R/L power (it is wired directly from the R/L outputs of the receiver and passes along frequencies above the crossover point of the sub). This means that your amplifier must have enough power to power both your main speakers and your passive sub. If you don’t have a robust receiver, you may wind up with less power for your main speakers (and potentially all of your other speakers) than is optimal.

So I would advise not adding the passive sub.

As to what you should do, get a SPL meter and calibrate your system, so that your sub is producing the amount of low frequencies relative to your main speakers that was intended by the audio engineers who mixed the soundtrack. Many people like to run their subs a bit ‘hot’ (or a few dB higher than is indicated by the SPL meter).

Even so, you may find that your sub is just not up to reproducing low frequencies at high volume levels. Now you have two choices: add another sub or purchase a new one altogether. Since you can add one or two more (6” and passive) more, you can now do so with measurements that will help you determine if you are improving your situation.

Calibrate and good luck.

Thanks everyone, I was thinking of adding the passive sub but I have opted not too due to the responses i have gotten.

The 10" Klipsch handles the low freqs (100 KHz and lower) well and the 6" inch just seems to take care of (excuse the terminology) upper low end frequencies (150KHz and up). As time and money permit I may replace the 6 with a 12" or better someday.