Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
You shouldn't be using sub woofers to mix unless you have a sound treated studio room with bass traps to avoid room nodes/nulls etc. You will get a way better more accurate result with headphones. To test this go here http://onlinetonegenerator.com/subwoofer.html you will notice that the volume varies up and down as the frequency varies. This is especially noticable from 50 to 20hz. Eventually the volume will drop when you start playing below the lowest frequency your speakers can handle.
Also, Yamaha specs: "Frequency range (-10dB) 22Hz - 160Hz"
Quoting a frequency range at MINUS TEN DECIBELS is a really disingenuous way to sell a subwoofer. Response range is generally measured to the point where the sub dips 3dB below reference (and sometimes -6, but that's pretty oily too), and given output halves for every 3dB down, minus 10dB is just taking the piss. That's about 6-7 times less sound output than -3, so even if you acoustically treated your room and got placement spot on, if you're mastering with sub-bass content you'd still end up mixing the deep octaves far too loud. It'd sound terrible on a truly flat full-range system, and make less-capable systems shit themselves mutely thrashing their woofers about unless they have some sort of protective high pass filter built in (which a lot of stuff doesn't). If they quoted the -3dB frequency range I bet this thing doesn't dip that much below 40Hz. An eight inch driver just doesn't have that sort of puff. Look at a sealed 10-12" for your application or you'll only hear the easy half of the sub-bass spectrum. SVS are super cheap for very impressive performance and you can just send it back if you don't like it (if you're in the US).
(And, they sell refurbs and cosmetically damaged stock too if you want to save even more...)
Also, a ported sub doesn't look like a studio monitor either, unless it's large enough that its tuning frequency is right down at the limit of hearing (which requires a big box indeed), because it's going to give very non-linear response otherwise. Not to mention port noise ("chuffing") which can become an issue at high output, and is non-existent on sealed subs. The larger driver area, longer throw, sealed, and far more powerful SVS units (SB1000 or SB2000, or even SB13-Ultra) are much better suited to the application of mastering than this tiny, underpowered, ported unit.
And none of what you said changes the fact that the frequency range specs are quoted in a very disingenuous way, so how can you trust any of the other manufacturer's specs or claims on the product when they're trying to be deceptive and misleading in even just one area? You have to assume there's similar behaviour in other areas you're not even noticing, especially if you're not sure what all the specs mean anyway.