The insistance on subwoofers in this thread really puts my teeth on edge though. It is my understanding that most subs just don't blend well with the maggies. The bass they offer is so tight and precise that throwing some tub-thumper into the mix just seems like defeating the entire purpose of buying maggies to begin with.
Most crappy subs, yes. The servo-controlled subs sold by Paradigm, Velodyne, and Rythmik are all more than capable of blending seamlessly with Maggies. Check the Maggie forums and you will find a number of people who go this route.
I would like to eventually develop my system with stereo subs, but as it stands I have to say that they are not bass deficient in the slightest-- they just do not go that deep.
You don't really need stereo subs, but they are nice to have. The stereo x-sub option used by many is nice, but it only goes down to about 25-30 Hz.
It is amazing just how little deep bass there is in most music, so I hardly miss the frequencies that they just ignore.
My Rythmik gives me ruler flat bass from about 16-100Hz and blends nicely with my mains, which go all the way down to 27Hz on their own. You don't miss quality deep bass (which is in a lot of music) because you haven't heard it. Organs go down to 16Hz. Pianos go down to 27.5. Double Bass runs down to 41.2(ish). The fundamentals from those notes run lower. If your Maggie runs down to 50 at +/-3, you are missing a lot of music.
Bass management-- that seems almost a laughable concept (imho). Does the receiver send the "bad bass" to bed without its supper?
Read up on the benefits of bi-amping. The benefit of active crossovers (the outlaw uses an analog crossover - nicer than digital) is that it relieves the amp of work it doesn't have to do and makes your Maggies sound
better. Even though your maggies only go down to 50 doesn't mean that your amp isn't trying to play them full range. about half of the energy in music runs from 350 Hz and down. The energy spent on trying to play 20-50 Hz (Over an octave) in your maggies saps current from the demands of the upper octaves and distorts the music that it
can make. By redirecting energy from the lower drivers to a separate amp, you are being much more efficient and accurate.
Next, the maggies are not made to play deep bass well. Just like any multi-way speaker, you are taking advantage of the strengths of each driver in turn. The maggies use a crossover to separate signals between is drivers for a reason. The crossover in your MMG is sending high frequencies to the high frequency driver to prevent it from trying to reproduce low frequencies and distorting (it would destroy itself). The low frequency driver is handling
everything below that, even the notes below 50 it cannot handle.
The active crossover not only prevents you from trying to make the low-frequency driver from doing what it is not made to do, it is allowing you to take advantage of a driver that can. The amplifier on a subwoofer is not made to play high frequencies - but it is made to play low ones.
Last, you can take advantage of the separate sub to optimize your bass response. The optimum position for stereo separation and imaging with your mains is not necessarily the best for bass response. You can move around the sub for a overall sound far superior to the mains by themselves, even if they were full range. You simply have more options.
The REL sub brochure offers some novel advice. If your crossover point seems to high or low, adjust it. If your bass seems too loud or too soft, simply turn the sub volume up or down.
Louder and softer do not always correspond to
better. As you get better at positioning a sub, this becomes very apparent. Also, the sub is adding more power to the system, not making it louder. A good analogy is a car. Just because one car has 350 HP and another 150 (all other things being equal), that doesn't make one that much faster. The real difference is that the higher horsepower accelerates faster and has more control. It drives better, too.
"Computerized controls" don't really do much more than that, they just remove the problem of actually listening to your system and tweaking it.
There is nothing "computerized" about the outlaw bass controls, like mentioned above.
I'm not buying hardware to avoid listening to it, myself.
Actually, you are. If you use a non-full range speaker, you are missing the low end by definition.
