The thread I recently posted regarding whether or not towers were needed with a good sub got me thinking about getting impactful midbass (about 50hz-150hz range) with a subwoofer integration.
Frequencies between 50-70hz are generally responsible for most of the “kick in the chest” tactile response from heavy bass (think of the impact from a loud kick drum).
I’ve always preferred a crossover at 60hz or lower when possible, most large subs tuned low just don’t seem to reproduce midbass frequencies with the same fullness and impact in my experience as speakers capable of reproducing at least 50hz, which is why I prefer lower xover points.
The real question, is how much speaker is needed to reproduce this range with movies or highly dynamic movies? Based on my own measurements, my Klipsch RP 150ms with a single 5.25” ceramic/aluminum woofer and box tuning of around 60hz are capable of reproducing 50hz-200 at low distortion (>3% THD) with the with the volume control set to -10dB with -6dBfs pure sine waves, which have a crest factor of 6dB, which translates to about 95dB at 10 1/2 away at the mlp. The RP-250c, which utilizes dual 5.25 inch woofer and an identical box tuning, is capable of reproducing 50hz @97dB at the same distance.
Since I don’t exceed -10dB volumes due to the fact that 1. My subwoofer bottoms out at 35hz above 105dB @10.5’, making this the max safe volume, and 2. My wife can’t tolerate full reference level (0dB), I would assume this is plenty sufficient. The max headroom in the midbass for the front three speakers seems to be about -7dBon the volume knob, at this point, significant distortion sets in (likely due to exceeding xmax causing the vc to extend outside of the gap). It seems the cerametallic woofers do an excellent job remaining pistonic even at high excursion, and the tractrix flared port is chuff free. Would there really be any benefit to larger midbass drivers if my current speakers are capable of comfortably handling my spl requirements?
I wonder if a dedicated midbass sub would be useful. A 12” behringer pa sub is tuned to about 50hz (since most music doesn’t really require much below 40hz) and would be capable of dishing out stupidly high levels of midbass, a few members over at avsforum have used it with a separate crossover like this, low passing the regular sub at ~50hz with an external xover and setting the avrs xover to 150hz-200hz. Hsu also make an MBM, as does diysg.
Secondly, has anybody else tried a lower xover point at 60hz and below and noticed better midbass impact than offered by crossing over at 80hz? IME most bigger subs seem to really lack in performance above 60hz, especially at producing good tactile response.
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