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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Macondo’s lowest channel.
Post Subject: How good ULF needs to be?Posted by Romy the Cat on: 11/7/2011
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This is very interesting question. I do not know a lot of people with whom I might collaborate it as very few run ULF channels. Most of time people run just bass channels. It is my experience that whenever audio people talk or think about the lowest bass then they are talking in reality about 40-60Hz. The ULF in sub 25Hz is not well known. It is not the most of the acoustic systems are not able to handle it but rather about that fact the if it is not ULF then the sub 25Hz is not being delivered properly in listening position.

Anyhow, I looking at the debate about ULF that took place at this site: big driver, small drivers, open baffle, ULF DSET and etc, etc, etc I am asking myself question: how  good ULF need to be? The question is simple but the answer is not. If I shut down Macondo and run only ULF channels at FULL power then I have some kind of sound that not truly sound at all. It is 3 and 4 order at 20Hz – there is so little significant information in there! Sure the impact of the ULF is very meaningful but I wonder if in place of my ULF would be 10 times worse sections but still in proper configuration then would they do the job?

A local audio guy just replaced his woofer towers with some kind of pair of JL Audio Fathom F 113 active subwoofers and he reports that he like the result better. Since he use 50Hz horn I presume that he crosses somewhere at 35-40Hz region. I was not a big fan of his former lower bass but I did not associate it with his hardware but rather with setup factors. I did not hear his new bass solution but he put his Fathoms in time-align position – only this got to make difference to my ears.  The point I am trying to make is that we all know that those little fart-machine do not work for bass as audio people know it, means 40-60Hz. However, can those fart machines be more interesting at 20hz?

I keep thinking about it not because I am frustrated with my ULF. My ULF channels perform very well and I am perfectly comfortable with their sound. I am not comfortable with the amount of efforts it takes to accomplish it and I wonder if considering my very 20Hz crossover point I can go away with much less demanding solution. I for sure will not settle with less interesting sound from my ULF but the biggest question is if the fart-machine ULF at 20Hz will be less interesting. I do not have an answer to this question.

In the end I do not mind to try. If some of your have a pair or very good fart-machines then I would like to too offer my listening room and my current setup for an experiment to study how well fart-machines can do in ULF setting. So, bring them in and let see how at all work. I would be in particularly interested in older model of a British REL Reference series…

Who knows….
Romy the Cat

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