Official SVS Ultra 13 thread - Page 275

lol no problem. I'd love to be in Barbados this time of year. How's the weather Kimwyn?

I'm not leaving the pics up long...

http://www.blu-ray.com/community/gal...&uploaded=true

OMG.........now that is freaking ridiculous. You must be deaf by now.....

The weather is not too good at all, we actually just had a storm pass and we had quite some destruction.

Sorry to hear that.

And yes my hearing is fading and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

SB13-Plus shows shipping mid-December 2010 and the SB12-NSD in a couple of weeks. Where did you see mid-2011?

-Bub

My mistake. That's the new SB12-Plus delayed to mid 2011.

Still, read their news and you can see delay after delay. Not to mention there are still no in-wall speakers/subs that were shown at CES 2010.

Sorry. This conversation should be taking place in the SVS Sealed Sub thread.

I had a sound specialist come over recently and take some response frequency measurements from around the room and found that, due to the dimension of the room, there were deep bass holes right at the listening position where the volume at certain frequencies fell almost to zero. We found the best location to minimize this, but there's still a range of frequencies (I apologies - I don't recall specifically from what Hz to what Hz) that don't make it to the seating position.

The sound specialist told me that I could either (a) move my seating back by 1 foot or (b) add an additional subwoofer. I won't bore you with the reasons, but (a) won't work, so I'm looking to get another subwoofer for the room. The PB-13 Ultra is in the back of the room, so I think the sound waves from the sub hit the front wall and cancel out other sound waves right as they meet at the listening position. The purpose of the 2nd sub would be to sit in the front of the room and offset the cancellation. I think I would need to put it in phase, but I'm not 100% sure. Could be out of phase.

Long winded intro to my real question, which is: what sub should I get? The PB-13U in the back of the room works great for the majority of my bass needs, so I don't think I'd need something as powerful. That said, I really don't want to distort the PB-13U by pairing it with a cheap sub that farts out bass. Not sure if timbre matching applies to subwoofers? I also used up all of my WAF points by getting the first PB-13U, so I'm not sure she'll be ok with getting a 2nd one.

Apologies if this is the wrong thread for this question.

Nulls can also be overcome by moving the sub.

I did move the sub. The location where it is now is the best I could fine. I still have a null. Not as bad as the nulls when the sub was at the front of the room, but still there.

Check with the sound guy to find out which frequencies are missing.

Impressive!!

How come you have some of the port bungs halfway out? Is that the way you normally insert them?

I actually don't have them in at all now. I was testing out the various tuning selections at the time.

And thank you!

Good suggestion. I've sent an e-mail. I hope he still has the results on his hard drive. He did this analysis last summer.

While I wait for this info, anyone have any suggestions as to what sub I should be looking for? Or does it really hinge on which frequencies are missing?

Try to earn some more WAF points and buy another Ultra.

I was in a very similar situation and wanted to compliment my Ultra with some smaller, probably sealed, sub. I'm glad I did not.

I bought another Ultra, and in the process of fine-tuning the system I figured out that two subs canceled each other at certain frequencies when they were in different tuning modes, e.g. one in 20Hz mode and another one in 15Hz mode. That happened because they had different phase shifts (group delays) in different modes. For the best result I had to put them both in the same mode.

Every sub model has its own group delay, and if you want to achieve the best possible sound from your system try to use the subs with the identical group delays, i.e. the same model.

You can compromise and run two subs with different group delays, but in this case, most likely, you would have to sacrifice some frequencies due to the sound cancellation.

OMG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what a setup ! ! ! ! ! man !!!!! those would kill a weak heart in ease! ! !
lol d_m1010, have mercy on your ears and heart

+10 yup!

thank you ransac for the info.

lol thanks. I keep wanting to turn the damn things up and they are already +22-23 dbs or so combined!

I'm soon to be a proud owner of dual PC13-Ultras and I'm looking for opinions.

My main question revolves around which tuning to use.

If I want the deepest AND loudest LFE can I set one sub at 10hz and a second at 15hz (or 20hz) and get the best of both worlds?

Anyone tried this?

Or should both subs always be set the same?

thanks in advance for any help.

Set both the same. You don't want one falling off at 15 and only one trying to get to 10. I would set both to 15. Even Ed Mullen believes they are under ported for 10Hz and you can get port noise if played at spirited levels. If you don't push hard, try both at 10.

thanks for the advice. that is what I figured (setting both to 15hz).

because I plan on pushing them for all they're worth!
can't wait to watch Cloverfield, Black Hawk Down, War of the Worlds, and Iron Man cave-scene over and over and over and over and over again!

It won't hurt to try them at all tunings. Then you'll know what suits you best. There are advantages and disadvantages to each setting. In native tune, you won't get as deep, but you'll get more mid bass slam. That's where all the audible, gut punch sound is. 15 Hz is the compromise setting with good mid bass and deep bass results. 10 Hz will shake the foundation of your house. Sealed will get some better articulation and deep bass but at a higher roll off. Give each one some time for you to get a good sampling. Have fun.

again, great advice. I can't wait to play around with them and try to kill my neighbors with LFE. if only the PC13's with the sledge amps would arrive in NZ sooner than January!

does anyone run their ultra in sealed mode with all 3 foam caps installed? i can't describe it, but i find it sounds weird. its hard to describe. i know this is not ideal for this sub, but any thoughts on this?

while I'm at it, another question. I really only have space for my PC13U's in the front of my HT near my front speakers. is this a reasonable place to have my subs?
my room is 14x16 with sloping ceiling averaging 10ft in height. it is not a perfectly rectangular room and has double doors than can be closed in the back and the front left side (therefore my subs can't go in either place).

if I'm using dual sub eq on the denon 4311 I should be able to get flat frequency response from 15hz to 120hz? yes? I hope?

attached is a photo of my front soundstage

tallnick,

On a totally unrelated issue, your plasma appears unusually high. Most prefer to have their display such that the center of the screen is eye level when seated.

As for subwoofer positioning, the aim is to get as flat a response as possible at the listening position. Most of us use REW software to find these response curves. Another way is to do something of a modified crawl test where we put the sub where you would normally sit and then walk around the room (I prefer the front of the room) to find where the bass sounds the best. Best not necessarily being the loudest but rather the flatest with no frequency over weighted. Just eyeballing it, I'd probably get the sub out of the corner as corner loading does test to make a sub one note est....but without measurements, you can't be sure.

Even with identical subs with the same tuning, did you find that you were getting any cancellations due to sub positioning?

I run mine in the sealed configuration. (All three ports plugged) It's a music only setup in a fairly small room. No complaints about the sound. When I had it in my HT room, I left it ported after a lot of experimentation. Whether to plug or not plug depends on a lot of factors. I'm happy this sub is so versatile and sounds great in a multitude of situations.

A little cooperativing thinking requested.

I use to run my sub 5 dbs hot (PB Ultra 13 in 10hz tune)then lowered it to 3dbs hot. At times, some of the channels on Dish would have so much bass that it was hard to listen to for long periods. So I turned the sub level down to pretty much flat.

Fact of the matter is that the bass sounds even more accurate than before. Even though I like the bass cranked up a little, more times than not, its overkill for other things.

Have any of you gone from running your sub hot to running it fairly flat and found that you gained in overall sound quality?

yes i did. i had it also set at +5dB and now im at around +3 and it sounds a lot better. i hate it at 0db though (what audyssey recommends) as i find it very non-thrilling. but +3db is perfect for my setup right now.

I tried all four modes in a very big room.

The sealed sounded weird and I didn't like it at all.

In 10Hz and 15Hz modes I had port noise. However, I liked the sound in the 15Hz mode and, probably, would still be using it if there were not for the port noise.

So I settled on the 20Hz mode - it is definitely the punchiest one and there is no port noise at all. In this mode my subs are flat down to 15Hz.