Subwoofer Crossovers

[Matt F]

Originally posted by merlin
I was reading an old Soundstage article....

Here's a summary:

"If the crossover point is nominally 80Hz, the subs have to have excellent performance up to 160Hz while the main speakers have to be flat or nearly flat to 40Hz."

That seems very strange to me for the following reason:

If you look at one of the leading sub/sat manufacturers - M&K (Miller & Kreisel) who's gear is to be found in many a recording studio - you will find that practically all of their monitors are designed to be used with subwoofers and have a +/-2dB roll off of 80Hz - they certainly don't go anywhere near 40Hz and yet they are widely acknowledged to be the business (certainly the 'pro' range) and are fairly easy to integrate with a subwoofer either using a processor's bass management or using one of M&K's bass management units.

I used to use a pair of their smallest pro monitors and (using my Tag to bass manage) easily achieved seemless integration - I was using a quality (ultra low distortion) sub though.

Matt.

 

[merlin]

Matt,

two things to remember I feel are that the M&K satellites are all sealed boxes so will have a smooth 12db per octave rolloff below say 80hz, and they are primarily aimed at 5.1 mastering where the sub is used in a mono configuration.

It may well be that for stereo music with stereo sub feeds, that the satellites would perform better crossed over higher up.

It is often forgotten that the 80hz thing came about with mono subs and THX specs.