27-Jun-2020, 21:11
I can't help with the hum since I never used a sub with my 140.
If you don't feel the need for bigger speakers then I wonder whether instead of a sub you would be better off doing some experimenting with speaker placement and the placing of your listening position. You may well be able to get a bit more "body" by either moving the speakers a bit closer to a wall to get a bit more reinforcement from the room and/or moving your listening position a bit forward or back. You may be sitting in a null zone for a room mode in which case moving the listening position can make a big difference. I was once listening to a pair of speakers in a dealer's showroom and playing a track with some deep bass. The bass was totally absent. I got up and started walking towards the CD player to change discs and about one or two steps forward of where the listening position was, the deep bass note came around again and it was impressively strong. The listening position had been placed in a null zone and a change of 30-60 cm or so in its position made the difference between good bass and virtually no bass on that track. It's well worth experimenting with both speaker placement and the positioning of your listening position. Mark the original locations so you can go back to them if you need to. If you have a carpeted floor I've found that velcro cable ties are really great for marking positions because the teeth of the velcro grab my carpet really well and, when I'm finished, they're easy to remove and don't mark the carpet.
Even at zero %, SAM is applying a phase correction to your speakers in the low bass. It's unlikely that a sub's driver is going to need exactly the same phase correction as your speakers and the sub is going to be more or less in or out of phase with your speakers depending on where you place it and what the difference in distance from the listening position is to sub and to speakers so SAM can make a difference. I'd compare having it turned on and turned off. You can do that in the balance and tone control menus - keep pressing the tone button on your remote to move through the different screens untll you get to the last one which is a list of on/off options. Each press of the button then moves you down an item in the list. Move down to SAM and a counter clockwise rotation of the volume control turns it off, a clockwise rotation will turn it back on. You can also program the remote in the Configurator so that a press of the middle button on the remote toggles SAM on and off. It is worth experimenting with turning it off.
I'm happy to have been of some assistance.
If you don't feel the need for bigger speakers then I wonder whether instead of a sub you would be better off doing some experimenting with speaker placement and the placing of your listening position. You may well be able to get a bit more "body" by either moving the speakers a bit closer to a wall to get a bit more reinforcement from the room and/or moving your listening position a bit forward or back. You may be sitting in a null zone for a room mode in which case moving the listening position can make a big difference. I was once listening to a pair of speakers in a dealer's showroom and playing a track with some deep bass. The bass was totally absent. I got up and started walking towards the CD player to change discs and about one or two steps forward of where the listening position was, the deep bass note came around again and it was impressively strong. The listening position had been placed in a null zone and a change of 30-60 cm or so in its position made the difference between good bass and virtually no bass on that track. It's well worth experimenting with both speaker placement and the positioning of your listening position. Mark the original locations so you can go back to them if you need to. If you have a carpeted floor I've found that velcro cable ties are really great for marking positions because the teeth of the velcro grab my carpet really well and, when I'm finished, they're easy to remove and don't mark the carpet.
Even at zero %, SAM is applying a phase correction to your speakers in the low bass. It's unlikely that a sub's driver is going to need exactly the same phase correction as your speakers and the sub is going to be more or less in or out of phase with your speakers depending on where you place it and what the difference in distance from the listening position is to sub and to speakers so SAM can make a difference. I'd compare having it turned on and turned off. You can do that in the balance and tone control menus - keep pressing the tone button on your remote to move through the different screens untll you get to the last one which is a list of on/off options. Each press of the button then moves you down an item in the list. Move down to SAM and a counter clockwise rotation of the volume control turns it off, a clockwise rotation will turn it back on. You can also program the remote in the Configurator so that a press of the middle button on the remote toggles SAM on and off. It is worth experimenting with turning it off.
I'm happy to have been of some assistance.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
