Hello all - I am facing an interesting challenge with my home audio
setup in my current apartment. Essentially, I used to live in a small
apartment with low ceilings, and I found that the bass reproduction on
my speakers was more than adequate. When I planned my move to a
slightly larger apartment with extremely high ceilings, I was excited
by the possibility that the sound quality of my rig would dramatically
increase. Unfortuantely, what I found is that my bass reproduction
essentially disappeared.

My speaker's musicality remains consistently good, but bass simply
isn't happening. To make music with heavy bass tracks listenable (Tool,
Daft Punk, etc) I've been forced to tweak equalizer settings, which (as
I have read) is terrible for imaging and generally introduces noise
into the signal path. But the overall effect that I am getting does
seem to be somewhat better, particularly in terms of the "soundstage"
being reproduced. Any opinions on this sort of arrangement? Would you
fork over the $$$$ for a subwoofer in this instance? And is a subwoofer
really a better idea than sound equalization?

My equipment is a bit odd:

B&W 602S2 speakers
Goldmund SR Integrated Amp
Sony Minidisc player (serves as a DAC - really need to replace with
something better)
Xitel Miniport from PC used as CD transport and FLAC audio store

Thanks for any suggestions you may have!



--
Joe

dirac wrote:
Hello all - I am facing an interesting challenge with my home audio
setup in my current apartment. Essentially, I used to live in a small
apartment with low ceilings, and I found that the bass reproduction on
my speakers was more than adequate. When I planned my move to a
slightly larger apartment with extremely high ceilings, I was excited
by the possibility that the sound quality of my rig would dramatically
increase. Unfortuantely, what I found is that my bass reproduction
essentially disappeared.

My speaker's musicality remains consistently good, but bass simply
isn't happening. To make music with heavy bass tracks listenable (Tool,
Daft Punk, etc) I've been forced to tweak equalizer settings, which (as
I have read) is terrible for imaging and generally introduces noise
into the signal path. But the overall effect that I am getting does
seem to be somewhat better, particularly in terms of the "soundstage"
being reproduced. Any opinions on this sort of arrangement? Would you
fork over the $$$$ for a subwoofer in this instance?


Yes.

And is a subwoofer
really a better idea than sound equalization?


Much better





My equipment is a bit odd:

B&W 602S2 speakers
Goldmund SR Integrated Amp
Sony Minidisc player (serves as a DAC - really need to replace with
something better)
Xitel Miniport from PC used as CD transport and FLAC audio store

Thanks for any suggestions you may have!



A used Vandersteen 2W subwoofer. You can find them for about 600 bucks



Scott