Have a Yamaha AX-596 100W amp and Carver Preamp.
I never heard of "Bass management" before until now.
I know my ceilings are low so I thought maybe a 10" or 8" sub would suffice but I decided on a 12".
I'm not buying anymore audio stuff until I figure out what's best to get the bass I want. And realistic vocals are a must-have for me and L110 are the only speakers I've owned that produced that.
In fact, I can easily sell my JBL L110s (for $700) and Carver Preamp (for $200) and I'll try to sell the Monoprice 12" sub (but it's going to be HARD because shipping is going to cost a fortune - it weighs a TON and I'm going to have to take a loss).
But I'll need a new amp, too. Probably a more powerful amp if I want to buy 3-way 200W speakers.
My Integrated amp must be broken like I said because when the Pure Direct and CD/DVD Direct buttons are Off the bass/treble/loudness do not work at all. (I could never get them to work and I bought the amp "New".)
Yamaha support said something must be wrong internally with the amp because the bass/treble/loudness should work with those Direct buttons turned Off. Attached is a photo of the Yamaha amp and you can see the Direct buttons at the top.)
My money is very tight and I'm also looking at several expensive classical guitars around $2000. So I really shouldn't be buying ANYTHING with my finances but nothing's going to stop me because Music is the only thing that gives me pleasure...
(I've had a bunch of severe disorders the last 45 years, haven't been able to do anything the last 20 yrs and developed anhedonia really bad and lost interest in everything last 20 yrs except for Music, thank God. And no stupid professional or hospital from Philly to Baltimore has been able to help me the last 35 yrs!)
Sorry for all the bitching!!! But I've been extremely frustrated with my life and didn't accomplish a damn thing I ever wanted to since I was 13 yrs old when I became very sick. I managed to get an engineering degree somehow! (I was very sick in school and hated Penn State with a passion and even had a nervous breakdown at PSU but went back and finished school) and I got accepted to UNC School of Music but got interested in engineering.
Thanks for listening and your help. I appreciate it very, very much!
Have a Yamaha AX-596 100W amp and Carver Preamp.
I never heard of "Bass management" before until now.
I know my ceilings are low so I thought maybe a 10" or 8" sub would suffice but I decided on a 12".
I'm not buying anymore audio stuff until I figure out what's best to get the bass I want. And realistic vocals are a must-have for me and L110 are the only speakers I've owned that produced that.
In fact, I can easily sell my JBL L110s (for $700) and Carver Preamp (for $200) and I'll try to sell the Monoprice 12" sub (but it's going to be HARD because shipping is going to cost a fortune - it weighs a TON and I'm going to have to take a loss).
But I'll need a new amp, too. Probably a more powerful amp if I want to buy 3-way 200W speakers.
My Integrated amp must be broken like I said because when the Pure Direct and CD/DVD Direct buttons are Off the bass/treble/loudness do not work at all. (I could never get them to work and I bought the amp "New".)
Yamaha support said something must be wrong internally with the amp because the bass/treble/loudness should work with those Direct buttons turned Off. Attached is a photo of the Yamaha amp and you can see the Direct buttons at the top.)
My money is very tight and I'm also looking at several expensive classical guitars around $2000. So I really shouldn't be buying ANYTHING with my finances but nothing's going to stop me because Music is the only thing that gives me pleasure...
(I've had a bunch of severe disorders the last 45 years, haven't been able to do anything the last 20 yrs and developed anhedonia really bad and lost interest in everything last 20 yrs except for Music, thank God. And no stupid professional or hospital from Philly to Baltimore has been able to help me the last 35 yrs!)
Sorry for all the bitching!!! But I've been extremely frustrated with my life and didn't accomplish a damn thing I ever wanted to since I was 13 yrs old when I became very sick. I managed to get an engineering degree somehow! (I was very sick in school and hated Penn State with a passion and even had a nervous breakdown at PSU but went back and finished school) and I got accepted to UNC School of Music but got interested in engineering.
Thanks for listening and your help. I appreciate it very, very much!
This is good info I got from a review of this Monoprice sub:
"You can also use an external crossover for additional control over the subwoofer’s parameters.
The pricey JL Audio F-112 sub can get down to 20 Hz, but the SW-12’s lower limit is 33 Hz, which will not get you the lowest notes on an organ.
I began listening to a track at a pretty robust level, and by the middle, the SW-12 began to emphasize its upper-range issues (between 50 and 80 Hz)—so the character of the bass changed somewhat, sounding less controlled.
Polk Audio’s PSW111 subwoofer sells for a similar price as the SW-12 but has a smaller woofer. It gets down to only 40 Hz and uses cheaper spring clips (instead of five-way binding posts) for the speaker-level inputs. The PSW10 weighs half as much as the SW-12 and has 1% distortion at its rated output.
Compared to my reference JL Audio Dominion D-10 subwoofer in the same system, the SW-12 created more upper-frequency resonances from its cabinet.
I tested the SW-12 in two ways. First I used its own internal crossover. Later I turned the SW-12’s crossover control up to its maximum of 150 Hz and used JL Audio’s CR-1 external crossover set at 65 .Using the JL crossover, I could choose a 24-dB-per-octave slope, which gave the SW-12 a tighter, more controlled response. It still did not go any lower, but the 24-dB crossover cleaned up some of the excess upper-bass energy and let the SW-12 play slightly louder without distress. I further improved the SW-12’s overall performance by turning up the bass-damping control on the CR-1 crossover."
This is what I got from the Monoprice review:
Some issues: (1) Upper-frequency resonances from the cabinet. (2) Listening to a track at a pretty robust level level: upper-range issues sounding less controlled. (3) Using an JL Audio’s CR-1external crossover w/the Monoprice: the 24-dB crossover cleaned up some of the excess upper-bass energy and let the SW-12 play slightly louder without distress. Further improved the SW-12’s overall performance by turning up the bass-damping control on the CR-1 crossover."
Summary: Should I bother getting an external crossover since the Monoprice sub has a fixed 18-dB-per-octave crossover slope?
Should I consider a smaller sub, say a 8" sub?
Or should I not even bother with subwoofers and buy decent 3-way speakers like MRBoat discussed above? Will high-quality 3-way speakers w/6.5" woofers produce deep, powerful bass that I'm looking for?
I don't agree at all that classic/hard rock doesn't have deep bass content because I can plainly hear WELL-defined, powerful bass w/my 2.1 PC speakers using mp3's. And I had a fantastic car audio system few yrs ago with 4 audiophile ADS 6.5" woofers w/superb smooth, realistic tweeters w/crossovers (shown in attached photo), 2 Kicker subs and 3 amps in my car and had the best sound system ever! (I'm not sure if I overloaded my car battery with all of the amps I was using but I don't know much about electronics. So I bought the most powerful car battery that I could find for my Pontiac Sunfire.)
Today I'll disconnect my preamp and experiment with sub settings with my Yamaha Integrated amp.
I still have to read up on "Bass Management" because I never heard of it before and I'll do that today.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, it really helped me! - Rob
In your situation bass management is very important.
Very few cone type speakers were much good before the mid to late eighties.
The reason is they could not be tuned except by guess work.
The first speaker to use the work of Thiele and Small was released by KEF in 1973.
This all goes back to dear old Gilbert Briggs the founder of Wharfedale at Bridle Yorkshire, and huge promoter of audio and speaker building in particular. He was not an engineer by trade, but a really good classical pianist. So he had a good ear for the right sound. Even so it was all trial and error. The books he wrote and his columns were devoured by many, including me as a kid, and he really got me started. He knew that for reflex speakers (ported) it was all trial and error, and actually largely error.
GAB was always a charming and very funny fellow. I remember in one question and answer column that a builder was frustrated as the speaker he had built sounded better with the back off. GAB told him to leave the back off, as "there was no point in nailing down the coffin!"
Anyhow, he eventually hired an engineer, one Raymond E. Cooke to help design the speakers.
After a while Raymond Cooke wanted his own company. GAB always generous to a fault, encouraged and helped him.
Raymond Cooke, found a ruined foundry on the banks of the river Medway, at Tovil in the county of Kent, about 15 miles from where I grew up.
Raymond found an old casing at the site with the letters KEF, which stood for Kent Engineering Foundry, and KEF was born.
Raymond worked with two engineers, who were doing early work to understand the correct loading of speakers in the bass. Raymond Small in Australia and Neville Thiele in California.
One of the things that spurred all this, was that Peter Walker of Quad in Huntingdon Cambridge had produced the world's first tonally accurate loudspeaker, the Quad ESL 57.
When introduced at the Audio Fair of 1957 at the Hotel Russell it took the audio world by storm and sent shock waves through the burgeoning loudspeaker industry.
This literally was the catalyst for research into the improvement of moving coil cone type speakers.
Raymond Small published early work in 1961, and then collaborated with Neville Thiele in California. Raymond Cooke was aware of this pivotal work right from the start and funded it. Thiele and Small were brought in house at Tovil for a period of time.
In 1973 KEF produced the world's first speaker with drivers and enclosure using the work of Thiel and Small. Progress was rapid from that point on.
In the UK at that time the industry was very collegial and "open book". Between the speaker manufacturers and amplifier designers, the Golden Age" of British Audio was born, which the UK audio industry was dominant for at least 15 to 20 years.
In America all this was slow to catch on. JBL did not design a speakers using Thiele and Small's work until 1981.
This is pivotal, as it means any JBL speaker built before 1981 is going to mistuned in the bass. You are not going to get it right by chance.
Your speakers were made by JBL before 1981. JBL never did produce frequency response or meaningful measurements of your speakers. However the admen printed sales literature, and spilled a lot of ink trying to explain how measurements were misleading and of no value!
So this is a long way round of saying that your speakers are mistuned, they can't avoid being. This mistuning is going to occur and made worse by your sub, where your speakers and your sub overlap. You can worry about your room, but it won't change this fundamental problem.
This leaves you with two choices to solve you problem.
1). You can update your speakers to improved modern ones.
2). You can obtain electronics that will give you bass management and cut the low frequencies before the area of mistuning and let the sub reproduce them, which is hopefully not mistuned. Nothing else will solve your problem. You have two options, and only two, if you want to improve your situation.
