It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 7:04 am


Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

Speakers, amplifiers, headphones, multi-channel audio, reverb units, mixers, wiring, ...
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

1961TC4ME

Member

  • Posts: 3144
  • Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm
  • Location: Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostWed Feb 17, 2021 1:01 pm

Hi all,

Thought I'd share the results of what you'd think would be a fairly insignificant re-arrangement of how I have my subs set up, but how this change resulted in a fairly noticeable improvement in the overall sound.

First, just a quick breakdown of my set-up: I have a total of 10 channels, 6- R/L in front of me, 2- R/L off to each side of me, and 2- R/L to the rear of me used for surround sets which is mostly what I have. As I've written in the past here, what channels I send ranks to is based mostly on what family the pipes belong to, so I try to pair them up with each other to the same channels with some variables based on the pipe length and experimentation as to what channel the given rank(s) sounds best. For channels 1/2 (large tower speakers) I generally send the flue pipes 4', 8' and lower including the 4', 8' and lower from the pedal including any bombarde, to channels 3/4 (smaller tower speakers) I send most any length of reeds only with the exception of a bombarde rank which again goes to 1/2 for added oomph. :D 5/6 (bookshelf size speakers) usually gets 2' or higher including mixtures. Channels 7/8 (bookshelf size speakers) off to the sides of me is a mix of all including the surround signal (to add more space to the side speakers), and of course the rear 9/10 (bookshelf size speakers) receives the surround portion of the signal only.

I have 2 subs, one a smaller 10" and the other with a 15" driver which for the past year or so I've chained together with both receiving the same 'mix of all' signal from 7/8 which seemed given my arrangement to make the most sense. I've been a proponent of sending the subs a mix of all and it has worked well, but I decided to try a different arrangement with the subs just to see what would happen. Well, apparently the subs working independently of each other seems to work better, at least in my case. What I did was connect the larger 15" sub independently to 1/2 and the smaller 10" sub to 3/4. So, in this case anything 2' and above is not sent to the subs, and neither sub is any longer receiving a mix of all signal.

Results? Overall the separation of the subs and dividing them up for duty on 1/2 and 3/4 cleaned up the sound, removed some perceived muddiness and added clarity. The bass response is much smoother, more realistic, and overall much more adjustable where I can go from crazy too much bass to realistic levels of bass and there is NO boom to the bass now either unless I again go crazy with either the crossovers or the volume knobs. It also gave a bit of additional but nice oomph to the 8' reeds. Goes to show you even after you think it's as good as it can sound a minor change can make a pretty big difference. I think I'll stick with this arrangement. :D

Marc
Offline
User avatar

magnaton

Member

  • Posts: 682
  • Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2015 6:28 pm
  • Location: Austin, TX

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostWed Feb 17, 2021 7:55 pm

Hey Marc:

Always happy to read one of you posting, from one HW audio geek to another. :-) I'm curious, in your previous design you had a mixdown of all channels to 7/8 which included both subwoofers. Since you claim to have only 10 channels, I assume you are using the subs input and output terminals to carry the signal on to the book shelf speakers? I'm going on memory that all your speakers are passive. I assume you continue to incorporate the sub's in/out terminals for the new design.

I'm glad you posted this as I was thinking of doing something similar. However for me it would be to add an additional sub to support the surround channels! I'm currently still dividing my 22 channels by organ division (yea, I know we discussed in the past, still staling to try your current design). I assign the pedal division to my large, 3-way tower speakers which has a nice active sub attached via the amp's LFO port. For 16' flues in the manuals (ie. Swell Bourdon) I use the bass-split feature to send the lower split point, carefully chosen I might add, from the studio monitors to the towers. The surround ranks from all organ divisions to the surround speakers as you'd expect. These are passive 8" studio monitors. When I first got this setup, I happened to notice on a midi playback that the 8" drivers on the surround channels were really getting a work out, almost too much! The culprit was the pedal division set at a normal volume level. So in the sample set's control panel, I backed off the volume of the pedal's surround division quite a bit. There is plenty of bass with the towers and active sub. After reading your post and recently acquiring a 2nd active sub, I wonder if there would be anything to gain on having a dedicated surround sound sub? Has anyone tried this? Please share.

Regards,

Danny B.

P.S. Since the HW 5 release, I've noticed a lack of interest in audio related threads. I guess with the new HW engine improvements and CV reverb now standard, folks are happy with the sound and are playing/practicing more rather than experimenting with audio ;-)
Offline
User avatar

Jan Loosman

Member

  • Posts: 380
  • Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:33 pm
  • Location: The Hague, Netherlands

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostThu Feb 18, 2021 9:45 am

Hello Marc.

In my setup i use a stereo subwoofer setting for the front channels (two rel q200 subs) and also one Jamo 210 sub for the rears.
Crossovers are set in Reaper 24db HP for front channels and 24 LP for the two Rel subs (not using onboard crossover) and also the same filtering for the rear/ rear sub.
Using active crossovers gives you more flexibility and using 24 db filters front and sub gives a phase coherent crossover.
Cossovers are set to 80 HZ.
Also sonarworks roomcorrection is used to correct roomnodes.
Al resulting in a very tight transparant lower end.

Regards Jan
Offline

1961TC4ME

Member

  • Posts: 3144
  • Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm
  • Location: Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostThu Feb 18, 2021 11:31 am

Hello Danny and Jan,

Well, first off reading both of your replies certainly makes it clear that even between just the 3 of us we're doing things VERY differently and each have our own approach. As for using split bass patterns, using other programs for control or sound shaping and so on (some I agree likely help), I've gone with what we could maybe call a more 'straight up' approach if that's a good way of putting it. Of the components I've selected I have a task in mind for each and what range of the overall sound I expect it to cover. From there I decide what's routed where and what gets what based on each components expected capability. Yes, I do have a total of 10 discrete channels from my sound card so I've gone the route of incorporating a total of five - 2 channel amps vs. active speakers. So, other than 2 active subs the rest of my system is entirely passive, speakers consisting or 2 larger towers up front, 2 smaller towers up front and 2 bookshelf sized speakers up front. I then have 2 bookshelf speakers off to my right and left shoulders mounted up near the ceiling for that vertical height thing, and a pair of bookshelf speakers to the rear. There's careful volume balancing of all creating a 'surrounding 3D soundscape' but with the majority of the sound coming from in front of me.

As for channels 7/8, as I described, they were receiving a mix down of all which is routed to the side speakers 7/8. I was connecting both subs to that amps AUX OUT, so one sub received this signal to it's INPUT and then I used that subs OUT to go to the second smaller sub INPUT. As I described, this way of connecting the subs has worked pretty well (at least I thought it did), it was certainly acceptable, but I have now determined that perhaps either connecting them in the chain fashion to the same output caused a loss in clarity and overall control, OR it's simply best that each sub not receive the same signal. I will say that I think adding a sub to the rear surround or adding the rear surround signal to a sub might be the detractor and it could be because of the minor delay between the front and rear signals. Whatever the case, by separating them for different duties has improved the sound and I now have the larger sub connected to the amp OUT on 1/2 and the second smaller sub connected to the amp OUT on 3/4.

As for crossover adjustment and sub volume. I've found it best to use the HW recorder / player, make a decent MIDI recording and play it while I make the final crossover and volume adjustments to the subs, whatever settings I come up with is what sounds the most balanced and best to me.

And, yes good to revive the Amplification section of this forum! It's been pretty quiet here as of late. Probably not a result so much from the sound improvement of v5 and 6, but probably more so because many of the bases have been covered over the years here, we've all learned a lot and the questions and the sharing of something new just don't come up as often as they used to, but if I do stumble into something I'm happy to share. Try that rank routing option I've spoken of many times in the past here, I think you'll like what you hear! :wink:

Marc
Offline
User avatar

Jan Loosman

Member

  • Posts: 380
  • Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:33 pm
  • Location: The Hague, Netherlands

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostThu Feb 18, 2021 11:58 am

Hi Marc

This is my setup. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=19100
But now with added side speakers.
I use bassplitt as crossover function and one off the Hauptwerk algoritmes for the 4 front speakers.
Just as your setup i use passive speakers.
But reading your reply i think i will do some experimentation routing similar ranks to same speaker pairs

Jan
Offline

1961TC4ME

Member

  • Posts: 3144
  • Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm
  • Location: Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostThu Feb 18, 2021 2:13 pm

Hi Jan,

How many channels are you working with altogether?

I mention above that I decide which ranks go where but I should expand a little on this. It's mostly based on 2 things, which ranks play nice with each other on the same channels, and then pairing them up with which speakers would do best. As I mentioned, I generally put the flues together, reeds separately and mixtures separately. With 6 channels up front this give me the ability to do that. If I had room (and the extra channels) for one more pair of speakers up front it opens up the possibilities of pairing like sounding ranks and separation of non like sounding ranks between channels / speakers even further. If that were the case for me then I'd likely do one pair 8' flue and lower on the flues, 4' to 2' flues on the second pair, reeds on the next pair and high pitch like mixtures, etc. on the final pair, but the way I'm doing it with 6 channels up front works out well. This all was the result of some extensive experimenting some years ago when I had tried several different routing arrangements including divisional routing between speaker groups. When I tried this 'like sounding' or 'same family' routing scheme I was pretty shocked with the difference it produced. I recall at the time others trying it as well and also hearing a noticeable improvement in sound.

Marc

Marc
Offline
User avatar

Jan Loosman

Member

  • Posts: 380
  • Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:33 pm
  • Location: The Hague, Netherlands

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostFri Feb 26, 2021 11:24 am

Hello Marc

I think my setup is a rather mixed bag.
I have actually 10 front speakers consisting off one bass midrange speaker pair and four pair off little Bmr (Cambridge minx min12) speakers. Further two rears and recently added two side speakers.
As for now i route via basssplit all the notes roughly under 400hz (invluding harmonics) through the bass midrange speaker and the rest above 400 hz through the little cambridge speakers.
With these four speakers i use the location algoritms.
I think i will experiment with the routing you suggested, routing same sort off ranks through the same channels.

Jan
Offline

1961TC4ME

Member

  • Posts: 3144
  • Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm
  • Location: Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota

Re: Sub re-arrangement sound improvement

PostFri Feb 26, 2021 12:12 pm

Jan Loosman wrote:I think i will experiment with the routing you suggested, routing same sort off ranks through the same channels.

Jan


Hello Jan,

Yes, give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

Marc

Return to Amplification

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests