30-Jan-2023, 02:11
Proper subwoofer set-up is a lot of learning and work. I spent many hundreds of hours learning and days setting up my two subs. Without measurement, it will be a lot of guessing.
It's a pain to upload pictures here unfortunately, so I won't but for demonstration purposes (to a Facebook group) I made measurements with the wrong phase set-up (90 and 180 degrees "wrong"). The result is not only less bass in a wide frequency range (40-70Hz) than with the proper set-up but actually less bass than without the subs and just the main speakers. The reason is cancellations. The more your turn the volume up, the worse it will be, as other frequencies will be louder but the cancellation will still be the same, so comparatively you will have even less bass. No equalization will help this, if anything, it will make it worse. Only proper alignment of the subs can help
There are also room modes (peaks and nulls) that can be somewhat reduced by the speaker and subwoofer placement, and changing the listening position. Often a foot is enough.
Luckily, the Devialet has all the options in the set-up for delay both for the subs and main speakers, as well as high-pass and low-pass filter options which I all use.
After years of learning and setting things up, measuring hundreds of times, I would say that it is a brave jump at the deep end to buy subs without understanding room acoustics and being able to measure things. Not of course if you ask subs manufacturers...
For now, you can watch some Youtube videos on how to set-up a sub without measurements. You may be able to improve things considerably still. The Devialet is one of those very few amps that have all these setting for a proper subwoofer integration, so you may want to learn a bit too to use this wonderful feature.
It's a pain to upload pictures here unfortunately, so I won't but for demonstration purposes (to a Facebook group) I made measurements with the wrong phase set-up (90 and 180 degrees "wrong"). The result is not only less bass in a wide frequency range (40-70Hz) than with the proper set-up but actually less bass than without the subs and just the main speakers. The reason is cancellations. The more your turn the volume up, the worse it will be, as other frequencies will be louder but the cancellation will still be the same, so comparatively you will have even less bass. No equalization will help this, if anything, it will make it worse. Only proper alignment of the subs can help
There are also room modes (peaks and nulls) that can be somewhat reduced by the speaker and subwoofer placement, and changing the listening position. Often a foot is enough.
Luckily, the Devialet has all the options in the set-up for delay both for the subs and main speakers, as well as high-pass and low-pass filter options which I all use.
After years of learning and setting things up, measuring hundreds of times, I would say that it is a brave jump at the deep end to buy subs without understanding room acoustics and being able to measure things. Not of course if you ask subs manufacturers...
For now, you can watch some Youtube videos on how to set-up a sub without measurements. You may be able to improve things considerably still. The Devialet is one of those very few amps that have all these setting for a proper subwoofer integration, so you may want to learn a bit too to use this wonderful feature.
Win10/HQPlayer / Roon - Uptone Audio Etherregen switch / SOtM-SMS-200 ultra with clock input - Mutec REF 10 clock for the switch and the streamer - Denafrips GAIA DCC - Devialet D800 - YG Acoustics Carmel - Dual Elac SUB-2090
power supplies: Uptone JS-2, SOtM SPS-500
