One uber sub vs 2 great subs

[Blackened]

I'm just curious as to what you guys think about running one fantastic sub vs running dual slightly not as awesome subs. I'm pretty sure I'll go with svs, but what out of these 2 options... Btw. My setup is lsi15s, lsi center and lsi7 for surrounds. Front 3 are running off of an acurus 200x3, surrounds are powered by my harman kardon avr254. My room is 18x25x8 so around 3600 cubic feet. The room is fairly open and expands into the laundry room and staircase that goes upstairs.

1: run a single pb13 ultra box

2: run dual pc12 plus cylinders

I have plenty of room and both these options will cost within $100 of each other. Svs is way more in Canada. I go 80% movies and gaming, 20% music or less. So I am looking for the BOOM

 

[djreef]

My thinking would be to do the dual cylinders just for the sake of added flexibility with the placement, in helping to even out the response.


DJ

 

[Blackened]

My thinking would be to do the dual cylinders just for the sake of added flexibility with the placement, in helping to even out the response.


DJ

How would spl and low frequency differ? Better on the ultra or dual pluses?

 

[no. 5]

How would spl and low frequency differ? Better on the ultra or dual pluses?

The Ultra would have an edge for low frequency extension, but off the top of my head, I don't think that there would be a great difference in SPL.

But the thing is, good sound doesn't come from having the lowest, loudest thing. Because of the room's control at low frequencies, far, far, better results can be had for all listeners using two subs than can be had using just one. This should answer some questions.

 

[Alex2507]

Get the big bad motherf^%&er and then when you feel like you need two you will be forced to get another big bad motherf^%&er by the necessity of matching what you already have. Nothing beats two big bad motherf^%&ers.

My very first sub was and is a pee-pee sub. The necessity of matching and budget issues made it easy to get another pee-pee sub. The only thing sadder than 2 pee-pee subs is one pee-pee sub.

 

[Adam]

The only thing sadder than 2 pee-pee subs is one pee-pee sub.

A close second is two pee-pee subs sitting on the floor with a couple of Grammas sitting next to them.

 

[Alex2507]

A close second is two pee-pee subs sitting on the floor with a couple of Grammas sitting next to them.

They weren't on the floor! They weren't on the Grammas but they weren't on the floor. I had the home made isolation pads under them ... and once I did get around to moving that stuff around ... well I just today got done doing the final calibration with the Avia II Disc.

Sheesh!

 

[Adam]

They weren't on the floor! They weren't on the Grammas but they weren't on the floor. I had the home made isolation pads under them ...

My apologies. I did see you mention that in an earlier post, but you deleted your Photobucket account with the images!

 

[fredk]

The dual subs may also give you more headroom in the midbass. Thats where the punch comes from.

 

[Blackened]

The Ultra would have an edge for low frequency extension, but off the top of my head, I don't think that there would be a great difference in SPL.

But the thing is, good sound doesn't come from having the lowest, loudest thing. Because of the room's control at low frequencies, far, far, better results can be had for all listeners using two subs than can be had using just one. This should answer some questions.

That link was a very interesting read. The dual axiom ep400s are quite a bit smaller than the ep500, but be preferred it anyways. The pb12 plus should be a hell of a lot better than either of those subs he was using as well. Of course I could always get an ultra now and then one later. Hmmmm.......

 

[MatthewB.]

That's a tough one, because a few months back I atteneded a S&V GTG where the owner had a huge dedicated theater (three rows of seating that sat eight total in the room) and he was using just one PB13 and with the gain set at just 12:00 he had far more than he would need and the bass was incredible.

I have the lesser SVS PB12 NSD/2 and for my small room it gives plenty of bass, but I found with the design of my room I benefitedgreatly by adding extra subs to fill out null voids. So this is a difficult question to answer.

If your room is a basic square design you may do just fine with one powerful sub, if your room is awkward (like mine) you will benefit by using two.

If I were in your shoes, I would buy two, because you can have the most powerful sub in the world but your not going to use 1/2 of it's potential, but with dual lesser subs, you get the added benefit of combating null voids, you can set the subs up in a stereo configuration and get a 3db increase by hardly doing anything.

BTW even SVS "lesser" subs are no slouch by any stretch.

 

[fredk]

If your room is a basic square design you may do just fine with one powerful sub, if your room is awkward (like mine) you will benefit by using two.

If you have a square room you will end up with one big honkin' peak no mater where you put your sub or even if you have multiple subs.

Sort of like this:

Fortunately I was able to EQ that out.

A rectangular room is much better.

 

[Blackened]

its a rectangular room, a little oddly shaped but rectangular.

does anyone have a frequency response graph for the newer pb12 plus and one for the pb13 ultra? what kinda difference would i be looking at for FR and max SPL?

 

[no. 5]

That's a tough one, because a few months back I atteneded a S&V GTG where the owner had a huge dedicated theater (three rows of seating that sat eight total in the room) and he was using just one PB13 and with the gain set at just 12:00 he had far more than he would need and the bass was incredible.

Did you have a chance to sit in each seat? I'll bet some chairs had noticeable differences in bass quality.

does anyone have a frequency response graph for the newer pb12 plus and one for the pb13 ultra? what kinda difference would i be looking at for FR and max SPL?

I don't know of a place that has comparable measurements of the PC12, but here are some of the PB13: 20Hz tune, 15Hz tune, 10Hz tune, sealed. Comparing that data to SVS' own information, SVS' data doesn't look to be that much different above ~15Hz (except for the sealed tuning), so this should provide a reasonably good look at the performance of the PC12 Plus.

 

[JerryLove]

The question also exists: does your AVR put out stereo on the sub channel (though I suppose you could wire it inline with the L/R speakers and set them as large).

I have heard some compelling arguments that stereo bass converted into mono has some issues (particularly where the bass is 180 degrees out-of-phase).

 

[bandphan]

here is the older pb12 plus@20

to give an idea

the newer driver@20

 

[Blackened]

here is the older pb12 plus@20

to give an idea

the newer driver@20

that is only the 12.3 driver, i'm pretty sure the new plus uses a 12.4 driver.... so even better?

 

[Blackened]

so i spoke to SVS customer service about my needs, and he told me that dual PC12+ will have an advantage over a single PB13/PC13 ultra in every way. Frequency response, low frequency, and distortion will all be equal or better than a single ultra, and output will be greater. Does this sound reasonable?

EDIT: from these graphs, the 12 plus drops off a bit more rapidly, but would it be as noticeable with 2?

pc13 ultra:

Single pc12+

 

[fredk]

The PB13 has a 2-3 db advantage over a single pb12+ and looks to extend a few Hz lower. I would think that two pb12+ will have an spl advantage. I don't know about extension.

I would go with the two pb12+: more headroom, smoother response across multiple seating positions.

 

[BigSkreen]

It sounds like to me the advantages of dual subs are that you get a more even response across several listening positions. Assuming that is correct my HT has just me down there playing games like 75% of the time and since I am only one man I can only sit in one place at a time. The other times my wife sits next to me when we watch movies. It seems that in my situation one uber sub would work better than dual subs.