Adding Subwoofer To Studio Monitors

[brandondrury]

Hey dudes,

I've decided that I need a subwoofer for my studio monitors. I'm low on cash, however, so I don't have $2k to spend on a sub.

I've gotten my room acoustics as cleaned up as it is going to get, but I need to hear more low end. I'm not hearing the relationship between the kick drum and the bass guitar the way I want to.

Have you guys had any luck with subs?

Also, are you running your studio monitors in high pass or just leaving them full range?

Brandon

[Andrew07]

For a powered sub the people I know like the Mackie subwoofer which runs about $1000. I'm running my HR824's on their regular settings and the NS10's don't have any adjustment knobs. Get a sub dude trust me it's one of those things that has the potential to completely improve your mixes

[brandondrury]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

I'm always kick drum and bass heavy after my first mix..EVERY TIME! I refuse to compensate in my brain, because once I start doing that, I call my monitors liars. You can't trust a liar for anything, so it spirals on down.

I'll need to do some research to find out what is out there.

Since every room has fucked up low end, I wonder if I really need a robo-quality sub or if I could get by with something else.

I've got a Klipsche sub in my home theater rig that I may try first and then go from there. I really don't give a shit if I don't have a sub for movies anyway, but the sub is great for finding low end problems. Of course, if I can solve the problem by mixing with the sub, than I don't need the reference.

a sub dude trust me it's one of those things that has the potential to completely improve your mixes

These days, my only big problems I face every single time are getting the low end right and knocking the sibilance off the vocals. I think you are right about the sub. I can come up with a standard for finding the sibilance problems too. hmmm


Brandon

[Andrew07]

If you got a pair of active monitors hook up that tv sub dude! I'm using this with my NS-10's. It's got a nice little on/off button on the front that I can push with my toe too

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1051806317490

[brandondrury]

Oh wow! Your happy with a $200 sub! That's awesome.

Hell, maybe that's all I need. Maybe I'll try out that exact model.

Brandon

[snoopy]

be careful.......be very careful!!!!! Monitoring sub-bass in any environment is super tricky......and having a cheap sloppy sub system WILL fuck things up and screw with your brain when mastering!!!!!!!!!!!

I may be the world most anal sub-bass guy.....from big power to enclosure construction, to power (yes I said that), to the crossover relationship with your mains........sometimes it's better with no sub than a crappy sub.....

The main reason I have not been here so much the last few months is the tuning of this car......and the sub-bass is right......SQ vehicle.....(oh and it is Fender themed...more on that later)

.......what ever you do, what ever the budget, think before you leap!

[Andrew07]

I wouldn't say my cheap sub-setup is something that should be used for super critical mastering applications (if I need something professionally mastered I"ll send it to a professional mastering house. If the band can't afford that, then they don't really care about a kick ass job, so I'll do it myself). After comparing the sub volume to my car through repeated burned cd's, and listening to a bunch of mainstream stuff through it, its there to simply give me an idea of what's going on with the low end. It's like listening through computer desktop speakers- it doesn't sound great for super critical applications like mastering, but it gives you different perspectives on the mix. I will say room acoustics come before a sub, though, but as long as your room has a couple bass traps and is fairly even throughout you should be OK. But what the hell do I know

[brandondrury]

The main reason I have not been here so much the last few months is the tuning of this car

Damn, that trophy is taller than you are!!! Awesome!


I'm trying to find the balance between quality, price, my own room acoustics, and how to use a sub to improve my mixes.

At the moment, I'd say that my room is acoustically maxed out. I've got 33 bass traps, probably 10 unopened bags of Rockwool, and probably 40 sheets of Rockwool that have been wrapped in fabric.

I spent 2 weekends finding the most accurate place to listen.

So, without new construction (which will eventually happen some year), this is about as good as it's going to get.

Even with all this crap, I'm not hearing the bass guitar like I should. As I told the mastering engineer dude last week, when I hear the bass guitar, I put it to where it sounds about 3dB to soft on purpose and it still comes out sounding too loud in the mix on other systems.

So, I need to figure out how I want to approach this. If I could improve my mixing environment with a shitty sub, then I would do it. As Snoopy suggested, I could make the problem worse.

I guess I could try the $200 method and see what happens and then go from there. It'll take me about 10 minutes to find out how the sound is translating.

Brandon

[snoopy]

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word mastering.....general mixing and monitoring is what I was really getting at......

I mix without a sub......because I don't the right environment where I mix. I have to "hear" the lower octaves by using upper harmonics of the original note. It is something I have learned to do over time....just like everything else, time and learning.

[AfaraWayland]

I've thought about adding a sub before too.

My biggest concern is finding a sub that will

1. intergrate into my current system (Alesis Monitor II - old 3 ways)

2. incorporates some sort of quality bass management

3. allows for intuitive adjustment (i.e. calibrating and such)

As for the whole nearfield-sub thing, if I wanted to use a "full range" speaker such as the Monitor II's, yet had a sub with no full range/band range crossover, how would I go about using that sub?

I want to say that I would need an external cross-over...is this right?

Or do 2.1 systems use bass management at all?