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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => LAB Subwoofer Forum => Topic started by: Scott Carneval on February 01, 2015, 04:36:27 PM
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Ok, I know I'm comparing apples to fried chicken here, but hear me out. I have a client who is renovating a nightclub and we're doing the sound/lighting. We're using some leftover equipment wherever practical. He has 2 QSC GP218 subs and a RMX5050 amp to power them. These worked fine before, and were 'loud enough', but it wasn't 'knock your socks off' bass by any means. I have an opportunity to purchase 4 KF940's plus amplification for about $4k. On paper, these are much much better subs than the QSC's. I get it that they're huge and they're heavy, but we could make that part work.
One of my concerns, though, is that we can't stack them in a 2 over 2 cube as EAW suggests. There is a LED video wall going behind the subs, and if they are stacked 2 high it would block the wall. We would have to array them 1 high by 4 across.
Another concern of mine is that it is my experience and my understanding that, given equal output at say 50', horn loaded subs are quieter directly in front of the mouth vs a bass reflex design. I believe I will have a whole lot more sub than I need, so we could always turn them up louder to compensate, but I'm afraid we'll throw too much bass on the neighboring condominiums which are 1 block away. The front door of the club is an accordion door, meaning it will open up completely to the front patio, meaning there's basically no wall on the front of the building when the door is open. We may end up with a very poorly designed horn within a horn.
The room is 27.5' wide x 68' long with 11' ceilings. We will have an opportunity next week to demo the KF940's in our room, and the QSC's are already on site, so we can do a side-by-side comparison. I'm just wondering what I should expect.
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Is the club doing contemporary hip-hop? This stuff absolutely lives in the sub 40hz region, and can go right through walls and travel for blocks. I'm currently DJ in a room with just two 21" B&C subs. We have an apartment complex 1 1/2 blocks away, and used to get noise complaints all the time until I was forced to turn the subs down.
I honestly don't think you will be able to get away with them. But for your auditions bring the current #1 hip-hop download IDFWU (Big Sean) with it's room rattling low B's (30hz) and Headband (B.O.B.) with it's thunderous wobbly low C's (32hz). These are huge club hits right now and very typical of the genre.
Bring cleans if during the day unless you want everyone within hearing range to know what IDFWU stands for ;)
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It's an open-format club, so it will be a mix of Hip-Hop, EDM, Trap, Twerk, and a little bit of everything else. Definitely a lot of LF content and drawn out bass notes. One of the things that drew me to the 940 was the 22hz LF extension.
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Yeah that's what I am (and my room is) open format.
EDM sometimes ventures into low D. Trap and twerk are actually mostly above 40hz. Hip-hop is the one that really pushes the boundaries for club subs. Put some in and then head on over to that condominium.
The room itself will love those subs. There is no such thing as too much bass if you're mixing for highly intoxicated 22 year olds.
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Weren't the KF940 originally sold as 8 boxes being capable of stadium size events or was that the BH760?
Might be a tad much in a confined space but your plan will likely be enthusiastically embraced by shareholders in libbey glass works.
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I think I forgot to mention that 3 of the walls in the club are floor-to-ceiling mirrors. We're taking bets on how long until one shatters.
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We used to have KF940's. We tried em in a few small rooms. Even in a decent sized church. Ahem...how do I put this...
Find a friend who has a competition audio car that generates 130db sub. Roll the window down. Pull up a empty cargo van or u-haul truck next to the car. Get in the back of the van/truck. This is what it will sound like in a small room with KF940s!
Outdoors, they generate an enormous amount of low frequency energy. Put 6 or 8 a side and you can cover sub for 10,000 people. But indoors in a small room they don't hit your chest at 60 like double 18"s will. Indoors...well...you can split a sheetrock wall with 2 of em playing EDM at 20hz. But a kick drum won't sound like it has any impact.
Of course they weight 400lbs and are the size of a refrigerator...but.....
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Is the club doing contemporary hip-hop? This stuff absolutely lives in the sub 40hz region, and can go right through walls and travel for blocks. I'm currently DJ in a room with just two 21" B&C subs. We have an apartment complex 1 1/2 blocks away, and used to get noise complaints all the time until I was forced to turn the subs down.
I honestly don't think you will be able to get away with them. But for your auditions bring the current #1 hip-hop download IDFWU (Big Sean) with it's room rattling low B's (30hz) and Headband (B.O.B.) with it's thunderous wobbly low C's (32hz). These are huge club hits right now and very typical of the genre.
Bring cleans if during the day unless you want everyone within hearing range to know what IDFWU stands for ;)
I honestly think the lyrics to this "song" represent the decline of western civilization as we know it. Would like to hear with a Danley spud that goes below 20hz
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But they don't hit your chest at 60 like double 18"s will. Indoors...well...you can split a sheetrock wall with 2 of em playing EDM at 20hz. But a kick drum won't sound like it has any impact.
Was the 60-200Hz region reproduced by quality horn loaded speakers as well?
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I honestly think the lyrics to this "song" represent the decline of western civilization as we know it. Would like to hear with a Danley spud that goes below 20hz
Well yeah. But they don't call this stuff songs anymore. They call 'em tracks ;)
Scott Carneval I hope you report back on how it goes. Containing sub-40 info is becoming more and more of an issues to those of us who deal with hip-hop (and to a lesser extent EDM). I've got stories, but I'll leave them for another time.
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Its all part of a DARPA mind control scheme anyway. Throw on an average dubstep track in a room full or marijuana enthusiasts. Its almost like watching zombies reanimate like on The Walking Dead.
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Its all part of a DARPA mind control scheme anyway. Throw on an average dubstep track in a room full or marijuana enthusiasts. Its almost like watching zombies reanimate like on The Walking Dead.
It's more fun with folks on MDMA (ecstasy). Until they dehydrate.
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Find a friend who has a competition audio car that generates 130db sub. Roll the window down. Pull up a empty cargo van or u-haul truck next to the car. Get in the back of the van/truck. This is what it will sound like in a small room with KF940s!
Outdoors, they generate an enormous amount of low frequency energy. Put 6 or 8 a side and you can cover sub for 10,000 people. But they don't hit your chest at 60 like double 18"s will. Indoors...well...you can split a sheetrock wall with 2 of em playing EDM at 20hz. But a kick drum won't sound like it has any impact.
I somehow get the feeling you did something wrong using the KF940. Incorrect or missing time alignment or maybe non suitable crossover setting to the tops come to mind. Properly set up they hit much much harder than any vented direct radiating double-18 ever could, especially in the 60-80Hz range.
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I somehow get the feeling you did something wrong using the KF940. Incorrect or missing time alignment or maybe non suitable crossover setting to the tops come to mind. Properly set up they hit much much harder than any vented direct radiating double-18 ever could, especially in the 60-80Hz range.
Outside...yeh...they do. All my posting was about indoor use. Outdoors you do get punch! Indoors..well...just sharing my experience. Remember that a horn load sub radiates differently in the near field. Have you tried 2 or 4 KF940's in a smaller/medium sized room before? I remember a church that wasn't very deep...maybe 60'? It was wide...maybe 100'? It's been a long time ago, so I don't remember much! Anyways, I think we had 2 KF940's a side, with probably 1600 watts a box. I vagely remember getting sick from the low frequency, but the punch just didn't seem to be there. Now, we used 6 or 8 KF940's a side on our big shows...8, 10, 15 thousand people. Sounded pretty great for that application. We've used BSS, XTA, and Lake for our processing and I'm a bit familiar with crossovers, timing and phase issues and I took quite a bit of time with Smaart doing system tuning (phase, xover, eq, etc). But...that was the big shows...for all I know we might have just set and plugged in those smaller shows....so you might be right that we were not running optimium settings.
Keep in mind these generated a LOT of moving air! Indoors I was looking for a certain type of sound (punch) and I just didn't like what I heard. I say give them a try, couldn't hurt! Maybe you would like the sound. I did like the sound outdoors, it was just in smaller rooms that I didn't really "feel" the kick drum. If you played a 20hz note on the keys, you would get dizzy the output was so precise and enormous. But hitting the kick? Nope...didn't ever sound good to me. I've had just a pair of double 18's in small rooms that I thought sounded much better. Overall possible output below say 80hz...oh the 940's win by a big margin. Just the "type" of moving air didn't quite set right with me at kick fundamental frequencies? It's really hard to describe....
We eventually got rid of a truckfull of them and switched to JBL double 18"s. Honestly, I liked the punch better with those...but I really missed the low stuff...like tracks or keys through the KF940s. No matter how many 940 boxes we had outdoors...always sounded very "hi fi" to me! Plus, they didn't have that cone distortion (especially around kick frequencies) that many 18"'s did...drove me nuts when we switched but I eventually got used to it.
Anyways, we did several indoor shows with the 940's and I just never got the punch I was looking for. Tried all kinds of stuff. If you look through the PSW posts from years ago, you can find details on the stuff I tried and checked. Keep in mind none of the indoor shows were very big. For outdoors, as I recall, when stacked in blocks of 4...it seemed like it took some distance for those KF940's to really punch. You could stand in front of a block and it wouldn't blow out your ears...but you could feel the kick drum like 4 miles away!
Really amazing output for 12" 800w speakers in a 13 foot horn....quite efficient they were....but at 400lbs and refrigerator sized...well, just say I had my fill of stacking them! I say give em a try! I'm a big believer in experimentation...if you like em..great! If not...on to the next!
PS: If you put 4 of these in a small room and play EDM...the cops *will* be there! Don't ask me how I know! ;-)
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Yes, I get what you wrote. I have used KF940, BH760 and LA400 several times in smaller rooms and work with similar hornloaded subs nearly every day in small to medium sized rooms. I created setups for all of them with all sorts of tops. It's sure as h#ll not as easy as with direct radiating subwoofers. With the KF940 you'd have to delay a direct radiating top about 13ms alone for the horn length, and additional delay for the highpass for the KF940 is required. That's something you have to realise to get it right. But if you do it correctly, they will slam even harder indoors than outdoors. I have customers demanding the hornloaded subs even for smaller gigs, for say 100 to 150 people.