Should You Get a Sub for Your Studio? 

All great reasons to get a sub! Yes, you can increase the potential clean output of the system by adding on more power while taxing each of the speakers less. Great addition, thanks.

Playback to clients is HUGE . Without a sub you miss the boat.

I have sometimes the same problem - and now I am listening my mixes on several types of speakers not only on studio monitors, but also on woox subowoofer phillips to get it right... I was overcompenansating for bass in the past. Maybe I will buy a sub soon to get it even more under the control.

so true, I cranked up the volume on a low sine I couldn't hear that well when mixing on my laptop. Sounded perfect, went to the car for a test and it overpowered my entire track. So frustrating lol. And ive come to notice now that my KRK5´s doesn't go below 50 hz, and when I looked at my sub bass line it was well below that with some notes in the 30-40hz range.

Yes

Yep, this is pretty much how I got here. My current track sounds amazing on my monitors but absolute dogshit on a normal sound system. I finally got around to getting a meter and sure enough lots of stuff happening right around 50hz. Just added the sub today and remixing

Even if your room is untreated, a sub can be useful. Imagine mixing a flute on a sub. You need some idea of what's going on. If you have frequencies in 40 to 60 hertz and you're mixing on 3.5" speakers you will never hear it, ever. Even if it's just for quickly referencing the low end in my opinion.

hey! I was planning on pairing a sub with my rokit 5 g4 as well... how was your experience before and after adding the sub

@@pritishgandhi6535 Nothing but improvements. Wouldn't go back. My one complaint is, even after calibrating the speakers using their app, I'm not sure the sub volume relative to the monitors is set correctly. The amount of bass I hear in my mixes varies between sound systems more than I'd like and I suspect it's to do with that setting. My acoustics are also less than ideal, especially for bass frequencies, as I'm forced into a corner desk, so it may be impossible to get that setting correct in my case.

Sweet! Good luck with it. When you’re up and rocking, let us know how it goes.

Sounds like you did the right thing and for the right reasons! So glad to hear it is working out for you. -Justin

That is a good reason to get a sub! There are some very good engineers out there who like to use an NS-10 with a sub that they can use or bypass. It’s either that, or have another monitoring option that goes deeper. I probably see even more of the latter, but either can work well if your room is in reasonably good shape. Seems like you’ve got it covered on both fronts. Keep doing what works and happy mixing!

@mary allen that's great. So you want to make sure that the music sounds good on all combinations. With the sub on. And with the sub off. You got to have the bass in that low mid-range through your smaller monitor speakers. It sounds good there and you click the sub on and it still sounds good then you're really On Target.

Yes you do. I thought the same for over 20 years years but at the end of the day its a technical impossibility for a 2 way speaker to accommodate the frequencies that a sub can handle. I was going back and forth with the idea of buying a sub until a friend kindly lent me one to put in my system. Despite being an entry level sub there was no denying it added another dimension to the midrange frequencies not just the lows. Palpably much more richness, depth and warmth. You simply cannot go back to a sub-less system with 2 ways speakers (even if they are top of the range) once you have tried a sub.

Thanks! We’re doing 2/week most weeks now. We may add a 3rd weekly in the new year with more of a Q&A format so stay tuned! If you want even more, check out SonicScoop.com where we post 4-5 times per week!

Will do! We have a ton out already, going back a decade! Have a look around at RU-vid.com/SonicScoopVideo

I am the party pooper

Glad you dug it! -Justin

@fu J it’s good! This video gives a very precise description of what to expect. I bought the JBL LSR310S. It has a built in crossover. I feed outputs from my Drawmer monitor controller to the sub, and the outputs from the sub feed my near fields. This allows the sub to do the heavy lifting on the low frequencies and the near fields provide the mid and hi frequencies. It’s great

@@mobutterbeats8646 yeah i'm thinking of ordering it too. Prob the B Stock for $310. I had the Monoprice 605999 10" for $200 but realized it's crossover does not actually work! Which is a shame, it has great output. But it just Low Passes to the Sub, doesn't High Pass to the monitors. Someone seriously dropped the ball at Monoprice on that one. I realize when mixing and mastering I need to A/B with the sub and without it, just mixing with the sub will not translate so well to 2.0 systems. It's also nice to have a sub for casual listening or recording DJ sets.

I hope we did!

I know this is old but he means the sub can produce lower frequencies say down to 20hz, where monitors alone only go down to 50hz. So a sub can play deeper and also take the bass workload off the main monitors making them sound better too.

That probably deserves a video all its own! Thanks for the question. We haven't quite covered that in depth here or on SonicScoop.com just yet, believe it or not. Here's the basics: You'll need an SPL meter. You can download one for your phone if you don't have one. An RTA (real time frequency analyzer) can be helpful as well. Then, you'll want to calibrate your speakers and subs to 1. Choose a crossover point. 2. Calibrate your speakers and sub to a common reference level. 3. Make sure they are phase aligned. For #1, One common recommendation is to choose a frequency that is an octave and a half above the lowest frequency your main speakers can reproduce. So, if your main speakers go all the way down to 40Hz you might set your crossover to 60Hz. If your speakers go down to only 60Hz you might pick 90Hz and so on. For #2, you'll want to pick a specific SPL reference level, just slightly lower than your primary listening level. A lot of people will pick anywhere from 75dB to 85dB. Let's say you're aiming for 80dB for this example. First, play some pink noise through just your main monitors and adjust their trim knob until you get a reading of 80dB. Then, play some pink noise through just your sub. Shoot for that same reference level: 80dB. (Or whatever level you picked.) You can "cheat" this a little bit. Some people will go a little louder or quieter on the sub. But idea is that at the end, you should be able to pull up an RTA (real time frequency analyzer) and see a pretty pure looking pink or white noise graph coming back at you in the end, with no bass boost or rolloff. But before you can do that you have to make sure your speakers and sub are in phase. That brings us to #3: To get the speakers and sub in phase, the easiest thing is to play a sine wave at or around the crossover point of the system. Then, move and rotate the subwoofer around until that test tone becomes the *quietest* you can get. Once you get it as quiet and out of phase as you can, flip the polarity switch on your sub to bring all that low end back into phase. Done! Hope that helps! -Justin

Completely disagree with some points in here u can actually sort some of your nulls with a sub with a higher cross over , obviously your room has to treated but 90 percent rooms have nulls because of floor reflection. Carl Tatz phantom focus system has been huge eye opener for me if you follow his technique u can solve lot of low end issues in your room with a sub 😊

Sure, going with a higher crossover point can work too. There are a lot of variables, and this topic probably warrants a full length article or video at some point. There are many approaches, each with their own benefits and tradeoffs. That’s one common, simple and effective one above, but others can work too.

Justin Colletti yes absolutely, all depends on your room

I have sonarworks for when my studio is done. Im considering Focal SM9’s but they are a huge lot more expensive as a HS8S

Yes, the HS7s are fairly bright. That works for some people but not for others. I’ve got a video about that coming soon. The big problem with working on speakers where reference tracks don’t sound good to you is that you’ll have to make your own mixes sound bad to you as well to get them to sound great in the real world. That’s not a fun or inspiring way to work! I can relate. An EQ system like Sonarworks can help quite a bit, but it’s better to start with a set of speakers you really like working on and then apply EQ to those. But there could be other factors as well: You could have your speakers placed or your room untreated to the degree where there are some deep low frequency nulls in your listening position, making your speakers sound even brighter sand more bass light still. This isn’t to say that a sub can’t help. It can add lower frequencies that are too deep for your current speakers to put out. But the HS7s are supposed to be fairly useful down to 40 Hz already (or so they claim-I haven’t measured them), so it may not be the first place to start. I always recommend starting with the 3 most important things first: speaker selection, room treatment/placement and EQ. Once you get all 3 of those happening to a place where you’re really liking what you’re getting, then adding a sub is potentially the icing on the cake, allowing your system to go deeper down and allowing your main woofer to push midrange more effectively. But ask yourself: “Am I hoping a sub will act like a low frequency EQ for my room?” If the answer is “yes”, go back to the drawing board and work in those three things first: Speaker selection, room treatment/placement and EQ. It sounds like you have the last one pretty well covered, so I’d look at the first two before looking at a sub. I just put out a couple good videos on room treatment and placement here, and have a good one on speaker selection coming soon too: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Yf8bLcnshJs.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0Zbj-dch_3g.html Hope that helps!

@@JustinColletti thank you very much for taking the time to respond very helpful

well it depends on your room situation

Necessary? No. Beneficial? It depends on your current speakers and if your room is treated well enough to actually make good use of the sub. Hope that helps! -Justin

Check the freq curve on your monitors specs sheet. Sometimes they say that they reach 30hz but it's at -10db so it's almost unaudible and you'll have problems when mixing low end.

@@luckyknot oh. It says it goes upto 45hz approximately on around 60db (I am not sure about the loudness. They didnt mention it.) So I should get a sub-woofer. By the way, I am talking about the krk classic 5. Thank you for replying.

@@sivaprasadashok8275 your monitors low-end audible response is around 56hz (-3db), then it drops dramatically until 46hz (-10db), so you won't have a good sub reference. Check if KrK has a compatible subwoofers with your model then u'll be able to work with 20-50hz. But if u are in a small room, I don't know if that's a good idea... u'll need many bass traps, absorbers and this won't guarantee u anything... if u have more space, go for it.

@@luckyknot It does have a sub woofer which I can buy separately but considering the amount of money i need to spend on acoustics, i am planning to get headphones instead of studio monitors (DT-990 pro). What do you say? I already spent like 1500 dollars on my PC.

@@sivaprasadashok8275 yep it's a good idea but I wouldn't recommend mixing all time or the whole song with headphones for long-term ear health reasons. I for example use AKG Pro K712 to check if my low-end is more or less in good shape (i do not have sub either but i'm planning to get one soon). So definitely having good monitoring headphones will help you. Note: rockwool at 60-70 density for room treatment is cheap, check DiY videos and you'll save up a lot of money. It won't help much with lowest sub freqs but you can tame those going to 100hz.