The subwoofer test: we listen to music where it is made

Now you’ll learn the full musical test of subwoofers. To test them we rented a music studio on purpose. The entire complex is a three professional rehearsal rooms, recording equipment and even a separate studio for drummers’ lessons – more than 100 square meters of free rock and roll atmosphere.

For testing we chose a large hall where such musicians as Chris Slade AC/DC, The Firm, Tom Jones , Joe Lynn Turner Rainbow, Deep Purple, Ingwie Malmsteen , bands Zemlyane, Beetles, Mirage, Lyapis Trubetskoy, Tarakany, and many others have rehearsed and recorded…

Two people did the testing. Our regular contributor Sergey Petrov, describes the technical part. To evaluate the sound, we invited a professional sound engineer – Anatoly Weitzenfeld.

Before taking this step, there was a lot of discussion “for” and “against”.

To “complete the picture” we will give the doubts and arguments that we, the editorial staff, expressed to each other.

– Subwoofers are used more often when watching movies than listening to music in “triphonics” , so why test them on musical material?

When listening to music, any acoustic system, including a subwoofer, can show what is difficult or impossible to hear on the film material. Nuances of sound bass, double bass, drums can better show the strengths and weaknesses of subwoofers.

– Subwoofers have different power and optimal sound can only be achieved in the appropriate area for each, as the subwoofer is strongly influenced by the acoustic properties of the room, and they are proportional to the size of the room. Accordingly, testing several different subs in the same place puts them in knowingly unequal conditions.

Of course, for optimal testing it is good to choose the appropriate area for each speaker system, as well as the amplifier and interconnect and speaker cables of the respective companies, but this approach makes the task of testing almost impossible.

All units were tested in a studio whose dimensions exceeded the “desirable area” for each, so all tested were in more or less equal conditions.

– Why to listen specially in a music studio?

It’s not a secret, that one of the main problems while buying is the fact that any loudspeaker sounds differently in the salon and at home. So, to hear exactly what the tested acoustics are capable of, nothing should get in the way. The studio room is acoustically treated, so the effects of standing waves and resonances are minimized as much as possible. We listen to music where it is made.

– What the sound engineer can hear that we can’t?

It’s no secret that we hear what our acoustics allow us and what our own idea of how, figuratively speaking, a particular phonogram should sound, dictates to us. .., exaggeratedly, we hear what we want to hear – sometimes even what is not there – and vice versa.

The sound engineer, on the other hand, hears what is actually in the phonogram.

– Maybe it would be better to take measurements and publish graphs?

It can be done, of course, but the measurements are in any case “tied” to the microphone, and microphones have such a little-known parameter as the radius of hum – it is the distance from which the microphone begins to perceive reflected and direct sounds equally. Beyond this radius, he perceives reflected sounds more than direct.

And this radius, even with directional “guns”, is at best 5-7 meters, and with conventional microphones – 1-2 meters. Therefore, even if you take data from a microphone mounted next to a subwoofer, there will be a lot of reflected sounds. The human ear is a more delicate instrument in this sense, it is controlled by the brain, separating out unnecessary information. Few people know that the first 2-3 minutes of the concert, the brain of the audience “tunes” ears, hearing under the hall.

Of course, no one is saying that it makes no sense to take charts, but they are more effective for a full-range speaker system than for a narrow-range one, which a subwoofer is.

How we tested

The main listening was in “triphonic”, the subwoofers were connected to the amplifier together with our editorial “Triangle” acoustics. For inquisitive readers we would like to say that we deliberately did not turn up the volume of the subwoofer, thus correcting its output power, considering the size of the studio room is quite big. It is the ratio of amplifier power to the diameter of the cymbal that plays the major role in sound pressure, not just the power put into the speaker.

If you overdo the volume knob, you can make the bass stand out from the overall picture – at best. At worst, you may get a hum.

When it was necessary to control the impressions, as for example with SVS PC 12 Plus, we listened acoustics with a receiver, which we also were not too lazy to bring to the studio. We have given first place to

REL T9, the second – Acoustic Energy Radiance Sub and the honourable third – SVS PC 12 Plus.

We give the floor to Anatoly Ivanovich Weizenfeld:

And.In.