Who are some of elite sub woofers?

tomic601 wrote: "for those of us with powered bass bass and EQ built into our mains, when adding a sub w EQ we get most IF not all the benefits of swarm..."

Are you describing a system with two fullrange equalized main speakers plus an equalized sub, which overlaps and augments (rather than replaces) the main speakers down low? If so, then yes that can definitely be competitive with a four-piece Swarm.

Warning: The following three paragraphs go into some technical stuff. If you don’t like technical stuff, please skip them.

A single equalized sub can give excellent results in the sweet spot, but often makes things worse outside the sweet spot. This is because the room-interaction peak-and-dip pattern is specific to that sub location and that listener location. Thus in other listening locations the peaks and dips will have moved around, such that in those locations the EQ could be boosting a peak and/or cutting a dip.

With a distributed multisub system, the multiple dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns sum at any given listening position, and therefore tend to smooth one another out. The only way they could fail to smooth one another out would be if they were identical, and that won’t happen unless the subs are all in the exact same location. If there is still a significant residual peak or dip, chances are it’s present throughout the room, and therefore is a good candidate for correction via EQ. In other words, a distributed multisub system actually makes EQ more effective (though less likely to be needed), because its benefits are more likely to extend throughout the room.

And "smooth" bass is "fast" bass, because it is the in-room peaks which decay more slowly than the rest of the bass spectrum and therefore sound "slow". Yes we can hear the difference in perceptual "speed" between different types of subs, but that goes back to which is creating the biggest in-room peaks, and it will be the sub that is loudest in that region.

Anyway imo you are WELL ahead of the game with three distributed, equalize-able bass sources. Earl Geddes, whose ideas I use (with his permission) in the Swarm, later moved to using three independently-equalized subs, with the equalization settings generated by his own proprietary algorithm from in-room measurements. I’m no Earl Geddes, so I’m still using his first-generation four-piece distributed multisub concept.

I wish I had sufficient economies of scale to do a $1500 budget-Swarm system... alas, not even close.  The labor cost on the boxes doesn't go down significantly as the box size decreases, and labor is my biggest cost. 

Duke

Awoof, one possibility since you already have a sub, is to add a few more.  In a distributed multi-sub setup, the subs need not be identical.   It is perfectly fine to have one or two that go significantly deeper than the others.  

If you go this route, let me suggest that any subs which will be closer to the listener than the main speakers have a steep lowpass filter, something like 24 dB per octave, to roll off their top ends.  You don't want them passing audible upper bass/lower midrange energy and giving away their locations. 

Also, a phase knob or switch can be nice to have.   I usually end up reversing the polarity of one of the four subs in a Swarm setup, as I find that this usually helps to further smooth things out.

Duke

bdp24 wrote: "I understand the subs in a swarm design all reproduce a combined left plus right (monaural) signal, even on material containing stereo bass (rare, but not unheard of). Is that correct?"

That’s normally true of the system I make. The amplifier I use is the Dayton Audio SA-1000, part number 300-811 at Parts Express, normally one to drive all four subs. So you can get that amp and four passive subs connected in series-parallel and that’s pretty much what I do.

"Is there any out-of-phase (left minus right), very low frequency, info lost when doing so?"

Could be.

Some of my customers opt for using two amplifiers, instead of a single amp to drive all four subs. This way they can send the left channel signal to the left-side-of-the-room subs, and the right channel signal to the right-side-of-the-room subs.

I think most of my customers who are using two amps use the variable phase controls to set the subs roughly 90 degrees apart, in "phase quadrature". This synthesizes partially out-of-phase conditions at the left and right side, increasing the sense of envelopment or immersion. Credit to David Griesinger for this technique. Then if you have a recording that you know has true stereo bass information, you’re just a phase-knob-twiddle away from hearing it fully.

Duke

Those Morels sure look like magnificent woofers.  I've never owned one, but have admired them greatly from afar.

Duke