Home audio and home theater folks, lend me thine ear......

I'm trying to figure out how to solve a few problems at once with our current living room setup. Neither of us like the current entertainment console, I want a larger TV, and I've killed 3 Polk subs in the last 6 years with loud movies and music.

Are there any good options to replace to my older Polk towers, with tower speakers that have built-in subs? It would give me much needed wall space for what we want to do.

Should I do a wireless sub behind us instead? But that basically puts it in our bar at the back of living room. We also have very tall ceilings in this part of this house. 

Sorry, kind of stream on consciousness there, just hoping for some ideas. 

Might help to have a picture/floorplan of the room. 

mtn said:

Might help to have a picture/floorplan of the room. 

Good idea, let me do that now. 

Typically, the towers with built-in subs are pretty weak until you get into real $$$$, and by then you'd be better off with multiple subwoofers.  With a dedicated subwoofer, you can move it around and usually play with phase to still get the proper sound at your listening area.  What model are your current Polk towers?  What are you using for signal/power? 

In reply to sobe_death :

They are OLD 65T models, a tweeter with two 6.5" midrange, they are probably around 8 years old. But I have them bi-amped off my of my Onkyo TR-NX777 and they still do pretty well. The sub I've kept killing (and keep buying because they are fairly cheap with good performance, I just push the crap out of my equipment) is PSW12 IIRC. It's a heavy thing that thumps, but I seem to kill them with all the loud movies and heavy metal. 

But I'd like to just pony up for some big boy stuff I don't keep killing. 

mtn said:

Might help to have a picture/floorplan of the room. 

The pic of the TV is taken from the bar, you can just see it in the lower right corner. Then I turned around and took a step toward to the couch to take a pic of the bar. The last one is to give you an idea of the volume of the space, that's a 55" TV, so 15' or so ceilings. 

(Sorry the house is a bit messy, I need to do a load of dishes and general picking up)

And yes, I did just notice that our smoke detector has somehow fallen down. Dang it. 

A better sub placed in a better spot seems like the path forward.  Is there a nice corner you could place it in to get some corner loading advantage?  

I don't have strong opinions on a sub; Velodyne and JL Audio are the two brands I would probably look at first, or possibly Dayton Audio's higher end models.  I have a lower end Dayton that I like just fine but I don't think it's good for high output and probably not as "musical" as your Polk.

Sounds like you need a couple of these...

Is there space to put a wired sub in what I think is a corner right by that spark plug? Or is that in the walkway of the bar area? 

Speaker wire would go under the carpet, unless you have a basement in which case it could go under the floor. 

You want subs placed at least 8' from your ear, and (to an extent) more is better.

A range of frequencies that can be produced by a sub are going to be more suited to longer distances... not necessarily because of a wavelength issue but because of standing waves and reflection.  

Ever sing in the shower and all of a sudden you hit a note and it feels like the walls just pressed up against your ears?  Standing wave... a frequency at which the wavelength is equal to the distance between the sound, the wall, and your ear.  It repeats on octaves and other overtones on multiples of whole and half numbers.

So, you want there to be the least amount of possibility that the distance between the sub and ear, and the sub and walls would be equidistant.  That is to say, don't put it under your recliner.  Keep it near a corner for room gain, but not the corner you're in or you risk standing wave gain.  The net result will be that you ear will hear peaks and lows throughout the frequencies it produces.

This, by the way is the process by which a soprano can shatter a wine glass with their voice.  Once you get the right frequency, the vibrations of the glass are matched to the circumference and the energy/vibrations keep meeting and crashing into each other in the same spots 180 degrees from each other.  Bingo.  Broken glass.

I'll be honest... I have two C-note speakers for mains, a Definitive Technologies sub (8" with passive radiator and 300w... it is berkeleying genius) and two Definitive Technologies satellites for surrounds.  The DT satellites sucked as mains, hence the C-notes which are wonderful.

Don't skimp on the center channel.  I did the monster Polk one with like six 4" drivers and a silk tweeter.

The whole thing sounds so amazing in my little room.  I mean killer sound.  I love it.

I love the C-notes so much I ordered another pair for my studio monitors.  They don't shine below 60Hz, but they do wonders with flat response everywhere else.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Unfortunately there isn't, because I know how much that can help build the volume for the bass when it's in the right place. 

In reply to travellering :
Whew, love the idea! Not sure about almost $3k just on two subs!

In reply to mtn:

I'd have to eliminate the stools for the bar seating area. Right next to the awesome spark plug lamp is a floor vent for the HVAC. The spot for a sub (that isn't right up front) that seems to make the most sense, is right behind us where our albums sit. But then where I do put the albums? There are some real some gems there, original pressings of Bostons first album, Dark Side of The Moon, etc. 

That's why I come to you guys, always have good/intriguing ideas. 

Not beating a dead horse, just mentioning that what I did takes up a minimum of space, sounds great, and the whole thing was not that expensive.

Pair of C-notes: $100 plus 5 cents worth of solder and gorilla glue, $3 for truck bedliner coating
Yamaha receiver:  $275
DT Sub:  $275
Polk center:  $250
DT surrounds:  Used $50

So that's under $1000 for a setup that honestly rivals anything I've heard short of a line array at Disney World.  If I were doing it today, 

2 pair of C-notes for main and surround:  $200
C-note center (wasn't a thing when I bought my polk):  $100
Used receiver:  $100
Same DT Sub:  $275.

That's $675 for something that I think should sound darn close

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

My bi-amped towers and Polk center (you can see it under the TV) sound pretty good. Just trying to see if I can figure out a way to get a larger TV and such there. The right tower can't really go any farther because we have to be able to open the door to the backyard. 

Budget?  
Emotiva Airmotive line. 

I'm selling all my Magnepan speakers.....

full 5-channel setup. AND a pair of 3.3s 

DrBoost said:

I'm selling all my Magnepan speakers.....

full 5-channel setup. AND a pair of 3.3s 

Details?

If you're looking for better sound, I would ditch the towers.  Sure, you can get some Polk, Klipsch, or Dayton towers that sound great, but they will take up a considerable footprint.  For the same reason most audiophiles upgrade to component speakers with separate tweeters for their car, you can really make things pop if you can properly place the mids and highs for your ear and properly place the non-directional sub frequencies out of the way.

Looks like a sub will fit on the left side of the hearth.  Could put it under the vinyl shelf.  Point the driver (or port) toward the kitchen.  Not ideal, but you could put a shelf above the bedroom door (under the dangling smoke detector) at about 10' off the floor and put a sub there.  Very visually intrusive, but you could put a fake plant beside it on the shelf.  Just make sure the shelf has a good lip on it.  Otherwise, people might die.

The whole point is, you WANT bass to take advantage of room gain by being near a corner.  You don't want mids and highs in a corner, you more or less want them on the thirds of the room.  Keeping the bass separate from the mids/highs provides two advantages; easier to tailor the sound, and visually keeps the massive subwoofer component from being a featured part of your home entertainment center.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Unfortunately, just like next to the spark plug lamp, the otherside of the fire place also has a vent right under the window. So no place to put one there either. 

So you guys can see why I'm having an issue with a good compromise that will keep SQ and SPL up, while giving us more room for a better/different console and TV.

DrBoost said:

I'm selling all my Magnepan speakers.....

full 5-channel setup. AND a pair of 3.3s 

I probably don't want to drop the thousands it would cost for the speakers and shipping. But would you tell us why you're wanting to sell them?

I'll offer my last two cents.

Hang the TV, hang two proper bookshelf units on either side of it, big boomer under the vinyl shelf, bench under the TV to hold components.  Use built-in mic to EQ the room, enjoy.

I have also done built-ins before.  Not in-wall speakers, but legit towers that I cut the drywall and recessed them to limit their presence.  As long as you leave a few inches proud of the drywall, you're not altering the soundstage that the waveguides are trying to form, but you have to be cautious that - if it's ported - it's front ported.

Along the same lines, what if a person were to build an MDF cabinet that is 14" wide, 5" deep, and as tall as you need for volume and stuff a driver in it.  An in-wall sub?  Never done it, but it might work.

You could also incorporate it into the entertainment center somehow.  Build a sub box that looks like an end table kinda thing.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

I'm with you, I've considered some custom options, but again with all the issues, not sure how much I want to spend on that for a house we may not live in, in a few years.

We know they are closing our local office, so we don't have to stay in OKC.

OK, you like loud.  How loud, exactly?

You're killing subs, probably from over-excursion.

To make deep base, you need to move a lot of air.  I made a matched pair of subs to go with my high-end Dunlavy speakers.  These subs had a inch of linear excursion (xmax) and the pair could make 105dB at 20Hz.  No amount of power or DSP processing gets around the need to move a lot of air to get SPL for subs.

If you want loud and deep you can't have it in a small package.  Physics says so.

Ask yourself again, how loud do you need and size the sub(s) from there.

In reply to Honsch :

I don't have an exact db reading, but loud. As an example, I used to do SPL competitions in high school. I had an '88 300ZX with 2 15s in a wall directly behind the front seats. When we "hit" the car, we used to have someone lay across the Ttops because they would visibly flex and two more on each side pushing the windows in since both doors were frameless windows........I think that car was in the 148db range in the late 90s. 

So, not that loud, but I love to feel bass on top of just hearing it.