Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?

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chadh


My speakers are the Omega Super 3 XRS, using the original Fostex drivers.  Within the next week (I hope), I'll have the ability to crossover (actively) to a Swarm of Audiokinesis sub-woofers.  The crossover frequency will be set to 100Hz, using 4th order L-R filters.  No more low-frequency, heavy lifting for my little 4.5" Fostex drivers, and no chance of the vocal range emerging from my distributed bass system.

With the crossover frequency set at this level, do you think it is a good idea, a bad idea or totally irrelevant to plug up the ports on the Omegas?

I guess the most sensible thing to do is to test it out and see for myself.  Any suggestions on what to use for port-plugging?  In pictures, it always looks like people use those styrofoam balls one can get at craft shops.  But maybe those pictures are deceptive.  I bet I could find a big pile of orphaned socks, though...

Chad

sts9fan

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #1 on: 14 Jan 2010, 05:58 pm »
I think it depends on the slope you are going to use for the swarm.  The sealed will have a more gradual rolloff.  Also I have read that multipule port resonance  frequencies can interfere with eachother. 

chadh

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #2 on: 14 Jan 2010, 06:05 pm »


Both high pass and low pass filters are steep:  24dB/octave.

Chad

macrojack

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Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #3 on: 14 Jan 2010, 06:23 pm »
I'm not qualified to advise you as to whether or not plugging the ports will provide a benefit, but if you find it does, you can buy plumber's stops for the ports. These are sold by diameter. The are meant to plug the open end of a pipe so they are very secure once tightened into place. Mine are 4" in diameter and cost under $10 each. Smaller ones are cheaper. It's pretty easy to put them in and take them out for comparison purposes.

This product probably has a name but I don't know what they are called.

chadh

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #4 on: 14 Jan 2010, 06:33 pm »

Thanks for the tip, Macrojack.

Chad

sts9fan

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #5 on: 14 Jan 2010, 07:17 pm »
I would GUESS that you would want to plug them.  Won't the port still resonate with the electronic crossover?  Basicly it would be conflicting.  You will still have it's acostical properties which you are trying to replace with the electronics.  Plus you do not need the extension the port gives you.  Again I am taking out my @$$ so take it with a grain of salt.

chadh

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #6 on: 14 Jan 2010, 08:27 pm »
I would GUESS that you would want to plug them.  Won't the port still resonate with the electronic crossover?  Basicly it would be conflicting.  You will still have it's acostical properties which you are trying to replace with the electronics.  Plus you do not need the extension the port gives you.  Again I am taking out my @$$ so take it with a grain of salt.

Don't worry. Your @$$ makes sense to me, for what that's worth.  Thanks for the input.

Chad

jk@home

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Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #7 on: 15 Jan 2010, 12:25 pm »
The plumbing plugs are called "test plugs", but I imagine you could just try at first stuffing the ports with some socks.


Duke

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Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #8 on: 16 Jan 2010, 01:55 am »
If the Omegas will be rolling off a 24 dB per octave at 100 Hz, that's plenty steep and the only question is "which sounds best".   So once you have the Swarm hooked up, try it both ways.  In some cases the midrange will sound more open and less boxy with a port than without. 

Unported, the Omegas may inherently roll off at about 12 dB per octave starting fairly high up.   That can work against you, as their net rolloff would then be 12 + 24 = 36 dB per octave, possibly resulting in a narrow dip in the crossover region.  Then again, there is a possibility that asymmetrical rolloffs would sound better under certain circumstances.

With the port in place, the inherent rolloff probably doesn't start until we get about an octave below the crossover frequency, and that's far enough away that I don't think it would raise any issues.

So my short answer is to try it both ways, but my guess is that both the transition between Omegas and Swarm, as well as the midrange from the Omegas, will be a little bit better with the ports unplugged.

You can also experiment with reversing the polarity of one or two of the Swarm modules.  For a while I used an X-polarity configuration, with the left-front and right-rear module in normal polarity and the other two in reverse polarity.  This sounded very spacious, but ultimately traded off bottom-octave impact.  So now sometimes I reverse the polarity on just one sub, and sometimes not on any of them; depends on whether it's a small room (with lots of room gain) or a large one (with relatively little room gain).

chadh

Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #9 on: 16 Jan 2010, 04:39 am »

Thanks for the insights, Duke.

Chad

Duke

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Re: Actively crossing to subs: should I plug my ports or not?
« Reply #10 on: 16 Jan 2010, 05:29 am »
In my first-generation Swarm system, which is what you have, I think I built in a little bit too gentle of a rolloff from 100 Hz down to 25 Hz.  It should have been slightly steeper.  Wiring one of the subs in reverse polarity will steepen the rolloff a bit because they sum in semi-random phase in the upper bass region but closer to in-phase in the lower bass region, so wiring one out-of-phase will result in more cancellation of bass energy in the low bass region than in the upper bass region. 

Note that because the room's effect swamps the first-arrival sound, the cancellation won't be as much as your intuition tells you.  In fact, you can wire the left side subs in one polarity and the right side in the other, and the decrease in bass level compared to having them all in-phase will probably average less than 3 dB.  I stumbled on this configuration by mistake, and it gives a pretty neat sense of envelopment.

Duke