Ableton Forum

Hi all, I'm getting ready to buy a subwoofer to go with my monitors and was hoping to get some opinions on what the best option would be in my case.

As of now I'm using 2 Adam A7X monitors. There are definitely "bass heavy" elements in my mix and feel like adding a Subwoofer to the equation would both give a better perspective on sound as well as take some of the workload off the Adam A7X's.

Obviously, my first thought was to invest into an Adam Sub7 or Adam Sub8 so my monitors would be from the same manufacturer as the sub - additionally ADAM sells the sub7/sub8 as a "companion" the A series.

So here are my questions:

1. Would it be a horrible idea to buy a more cost efficient Subwoofer (such as a JBL LSR woofer)? I ask because there are several other manufacturers out there making Subwoofers with similar specs as the Adam Sub7 and Sub8 at half the cost.

2. Assuming I went with an Adam Subwoofer - is it worth the extra money to get the Sub 8 as opposed to the Sub 7 (I think it's only a $150 difference.

Thanks in advance for any input. In the end I'd like to refrain from compromising sound quality but at the same time I don't feel the need to but an Adam brand subwoofer just because of the name. I really enjoy the A7X's and feel that they're worth the money, but I'm not quite sure that something dedicated only to the sub/low end would show that much variance between manufacturers.

Thanks again for any help with this.

cmon somebody's gotta know their sound here!

Domo - my experience is the 98 out of 100 times; adding a sub to your studio only creates more problems than it solves. You have a terrific set of monitors right now that are perfectly capable of doing the job they were designed to do - reproducing your recording accurately. It's human nature to want to improve what's already pretty darn good but way too easy to add too much boom to what's already phat on the low-end

Subs are so much fun, don't get me wrong - which is why I have 2 of them in my home theater/listening room. Just understand that they "excite" way too many peaks & valleys in a smaller room to mix honestly with

When I first started mixing with monitors all my mixes where bass heavy. This was not my monitors fault but my ears and how I perceived the mix. What I did was the burn a cd and listen to it on as many different devices, car stereo, HiFi system, even crappy TV speakers, ipod ,what ever...
Then I would go back to mix and drop bass levels and repeat over and over until it sounded good on the other systems. It also still sounded good on monitors. The thing with monitors is you have to train your ear. After a while you will learn how a thumping bass should sound on your monitors. Most if not all consumer audio playback products boost the bass and highs even with a flat eq.
Adding a sub will only confuse you further until you train your ear to how your monitors respond.
Oh it doesn't take too long to learn just listen to every rough mix on other systems you soon get the right mix.
And people are not going to hear your tracks on your monitors.

Domokun wrote:Hi all, I'm getting ready to buy a subwoofer to go with my monitors and was hoping to get some opinions on what the best option would be in my case.

how big is your room, and does it have acoustic treatment?

as mentioned above, most rooms, and especially smaller ones, have bad modal problems in the bass frequencies. the sound waves bouncing around the room interact and can cause massive jumps and dips in volume at particular frequencies.

you can do a quick and dirty test of this by using the test tone in the Live preferences --- play a range of tones and move your head around your room, the worst problem frequencies should be easy to hear. you can also get a rough guide to the worst frequencies by plugging your room dimensions into one of the room mode calculators on the interwebs.

for a thorough analysis, you can use the free Room EQ Wizard app, which you can download from the Home Theatre Shack.

the thing is, for critical listening, a sub in a room with bad bass response will tend to make the problems worse. in that case, you are better off spending money on acoustic treatment instead of a sub.