Subs for the home studio

[Atardecer]

Just wanted to know what people's thoughts were on using subwoofers for a typical home studio setup for mixing (not mastering). I have read some articles saying that it may not be a great idea for project studios and smaller setups. I dont know why this would be the case.
I have a room about 8 by 6 by 3 metres and am using Tapco S8 monitors (8 inch woofer). The Tapco sub promoted for these monitors is 10 inches and claims to go only 10hz lower than my monitors. Will the sub give me better resolution in the bottom end, and will it improve the resolution overall by reducing the strain on the monitors? What are peoples opinions?
Just looking for some theory on this...

regards

[chrispick]

Subwoofers are tricky. Most home project studio rooms aren't tweaked for bass response. And many project-sized rooms aren't even really big enough to accommodate such big, slow waves. Moreover, sub-bass frequencies can be some of the toughest to wrangle even in acoustically-aligned rooms.

You might be better off investing in better near-fields with good low-end definition. Maybe step up to some Mackies if you like the Tapco line? I've read a lot of great things about the Dynaudio BMs. Or by acoustically treating your room to better deal with bass response.

Just my opinion. Others may differ.

[markwayne]

If you already have eight inch woofers in your nearfields, a sub will probably not add much at the kind of levels a room that size limits you to and may actually muddy the low end further.

only 10hz lower than my monitors

Keep in mind than 10 cycles at the lowest threshold of human hearing can represent a half octave of frequencies.

I have been using a pinch of low end from an eight-inch sub with my primary nearfields (NS-10s) for years now in a room slightly larger than yours and swear by the combination. However, there is no low end to speak of in a pair of NS-10s regardless of the room size so crossover issues are pretty easy to tweak. I also use only enough from the sub to give me an idea of what's going on in the low end of my mixes. I'm not trying to shake the room with this sub. I have a set of JBL mid-fields for that.

Wayne

[David Polich]

I'm not a fan of using subs in a home studio setup, or even in a large studio, while tracking and mixing. The only place you want to have them, in my opinion, is at a mastering house where it's critical to hear what's going on below 50hz.

It's better to get a higher-priced pair of great studio monitors that exhibit enough low end. Genelecs, Event Precision 8's, JBL's latest, Adam, these are all monitors that will give you enough low end to tell what's happening.

[Resonant Alien]

FWIW, I use Event Precision 8s for my main monitors, and I also have a Klipsch 10" sub (yes, a consumer HiFi piece). For the most part, I switch the sub out of the monioring loop when I am mixing, and just refer to the P8s. Where I use the sub is mainly as a checkpoint to make sure I don't have too much garbage going on in the low end that needs to be filtered. The P8s have such a nice low end that the sub is not really necessary, except to make sure that you don't have something really bad going on. I usually leave precision tweaking of the extreme low end to the mastering engineer, who has much better perspective since he/she has the killer room acoustics, etc.

There is a big danger in mixing with a sub, particularly if your room is not acoustically treated, and that is that you will not put enough bass in your mixes and when played through a system without a sub, they will sound like AM radio.

[mhschmieder]

Interesting feedback. I bought a KRK Rokit sub a few months back, and have had quite a struggle with it, which I had owned up to my own inexperience with using a sub in the home studio environment.

On the one hand, it seems to expose the mastering trend of the past five to eight years, of over-accentuating the frequencies below 80 Hz and over-compressing material. This seems borne out by how bloody awful anything after 1998 sounds with the sub engaged; whereas it adds more dimension to earlier material (and generally to most classical music, of all things, where in particular it seems to give more presence to acoustic piano).

My main monitors are the KRK Rokit 6's, which are almost identical to the Rokit 8's even though 6's usually have inadequate lower frequency response. I saw no point in spending extra for the 8's, but had budgeted for the Event speakers before doing some A/B comparisons and deciding the KRK's were actually better in many regards and way more bang for the buck (my ideal monitors would be the Adams, but they are way beyond my budget).

As it is, I pull the subs in and out depending on the material, and turn it down 12dB to 24dB on recent material. For my own mixing, most is done well past curfew and must be headphone driven, with fine-tuning later in the process using the KRK's. The sub in this case has helped me to avoid over-hyping the bass, but I have not had it long enough yet to have double-checked my recent mixes on different equipment as a sanity check.

[BradLyons]

Actually, subwoofers are BETTER in small spaces to to proximity of the monitors to the front-wall and placement in the room. The reason this isn't popular is it doesn't "look as cool" and is "more money". But in many cases, it's more ideal.

[Resonant Alien]

Actually, subwoofers are BETTER in small spaces to to proximity of the monitors to the front-wall and placement in the room. The reason this isn't popular is it doesn't "look as cool" and is "more money". But in many cases, it's more ideal.

Brad - I don't disagree, but wouldn't you say that unless your room is properly treated acoustically to handle such low frequencies at high volume, a sub could actually do more harm than good? I think the baseline assumption when using a sub for critical monitoring has to be that your room is properly treated for low frequency listening. Of course, your room should ideally be properly treated for all frequencies, but I think low frequencies tend to cause bigger problems faster than others.

[markwayne]

Of course, your room should ideally be properly treated for all frequencies, but I think low frequencies tend to cause bigger problems faster than others.

In my experience subs are only a bad idea when they are misused. People tend to turn them up way too much and cross them over far too high for any room. I use the rule that you really shouldn't notice a drastic difference with the sub switched on. It should just help clarify the low fundamentals enough to make it possible to mix your low end. In many ways it's common sense. You can't mix what you can't hear.

That said, I know the situation of which you speak; Some guy buys big-ass sub and cranks it till his little room is awash in low end mud. I often experience this when a friend invites me over to check out his new home theatre for the first time. Of course, the guy is going to crank the sub for maximum effect, and, of course, it's going to sound horrible.

My sub mixes actually tend to have more low end than my non-sub mixes because, when I have more confidence in the low end, I'm not as shy about keeping the low end.

Wayne

[mhschmieder]

I have my Rokit 10s on an acoustical foam platform, and generally attenuate by -12 dB for most source material relative to the Rokit 6's (which are set to 0 dB gain). For modern pop music I have to turn the sub down at least by -24 dB in order to not muddy up the low end vs. merely adding presence. My crossover is set to 80 Hz. Anything higher than that muddies things up with ANY source material.

There is nothing I can do about the inadequacies of my space, as I rent and am a half block from the BART tracks (which are overhead vs. underground in my area) and the Interstate highway. The room is oblong by a ratio of 1:3, with tall windows along most of the two outer walls, and the refrigerator/kitchen adjacent to the room with no door to close. An absolute acoustical nightmare, but I will say that plugging things into a MonsterPower 3500 has made a huge difference and has helped more than anything else I have done.