Sub or no sub?

[Early B.]

Just wondering if those of you with 2-channel systems use a subwoofer. Right now I don't have one and my Lsi7's sound great, but wanted to get some opinions on it. I listen mainly to jazz and female vocals.

[tryrrthg]

I have one but since my recent move to a smaller room I haven't been using it. My mains are hitting low 30's without a sub and seem to be doing most music justice... I like having the sub because it gives extra weight, slam and presence to the music but my room is just too small and I need some equalization to get it to sound acceptable.

In the future I'd like to build a sealed sub to use for music using Adire's Tumult or DPL12 woofers.

[Dr. Spec]

Sub.

I measured the FR of my RT800i's the other day and they died at 50 Hz. I'm sure the LSi7's aren't any better.

I'm running the 7's on small with an 80 Hz xo and they seem to perform well being relieved of deeper bass duties.

Since the LSi7 internal xo is 2.4 kHz, you really don't wan't that midrange cone moving very far attempting to produce bass sounds. Excessive cone movement will modulate those delicate midrange frequencies (the Doppler effect), causing a noticeable loss of detail and focus. This phenomenon is called Intermodulation Distortion (IMD for short).

The LSi7's and the PB2-Ultra seem to gel very well so far - mid bass (100-50) is lean and detailed, and of course the real deep stuff is there too.

Was playing Shawn Mullins on the 7's and the Ultra last night and he uses a full range voice mic (instead of the high pass filtered jobs typical these days), and every now and then there is an infrasonic "whump" when he pronounces words that start with the letter "p" - pretty cool.