Wow, so much information in one post. Most of it makes sense but I have to admit that one thing has me a tad confused.
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Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:
No, one is not working harder, at least not now, because they're both getting the same electrical signal. |
That part makes sense to me. It's a Y-cable from the receiver, identical EQ settings, identical amp gains, identical from end to end so they're both working just as hard as each other. That puts my mind at rest over that issue. Now if only there was a way not to work my 110'' window (the one right next to the corner loaded sub) so hard.
Quote:
Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:
Now, if you do that, then the "red" sub will be working harder, because you'll have boosted its electrical signal (via EQ) to make up for what the other is getting for "free" from the room. |
Hmm... again this makes sense, but at the same time it's slightly confusing. If I were to make both subs flat it would simply be by reducing the effect of my filters on the red sub. So where green might need a 12dB cut at a particular frequency, red might only need 6dB. I would not be raising the overall level (amp gain) of the red sub to match the green, but would leave it the 2-3 dB down that it's not getting from being in a corner. On the one hand I can see that by reducing the cut of the filter the electrical signal was in effect "boosted" thus it's working a bit harder, but only on certain frequencies, and certainly still nowhere near as hard as it would be working without any EQ.
I guess my brain is having trouble wrapping around this question. Is it better to:
1.) Have an identical signal to both subs even if one is clearly dominant (4-8dB higher across most of the spectrum) and the other is only shoring up where the first is weak. *or*
2.) Have two individually flat subs that are within 2-3 dB of each other for the majority of the spectrum.
The red sub is still going to be lower than the green except where the green is weak, but the separation in strength would be much less, if that makes sense. But with the combined SPL mostly following the upper envelope, would it even matter?
Quote:
Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:
Well, you did mention that you realized 6 dB in overall gain, so it looks like you've indeed bought yourself some extra headroom. |
I have to say my main intent here was to relax the load on my original sub while preserving my desired output level. Any gain in output or low end extension was just a bonus. From what I can tell it looks like I realized about 4dB across the board when using the two subs together. I'm judging this from a few different spots. In the 15-18Hz area for example you'll see the individual subs are both pretty flat at about 71dB, but combined it's more like 76dB or a 5B gain. Also at 60Hz where the individual subs intersect around 78 dB, the combined graph shows about 82dB. Surprisingly even the highest of the green peaks (89dB @ 43 Hz) rises 3-4dB when combined with the red sub which was a whole 9dB lower at that frequency. Long story short, I'd say I did pretty well gaining the headroom I wanted.
Quote:
Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:
See that little "save" icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the graph? Click on that to save the chart as a jpg. |
That just epitomizes how much more I could potentially learn about REW. Thank you though for the pointer, and for all of the advice above.
- Marc