Posted by Dave Rat on October 27, 2003 at 17:17:15:
In Reply to: Sub woofer or mid / high cabinet delay posted by Rodney on October 27, 2003 at 13:19:01:
: I'm running a system with ev t18 subs, and a pair of dual 15 inch cabinets with a horn. This system is bi-amped. I have always thought that the bass signal travelled slower so I set my mid / high end up with about a 14 ms delay to allow the sub frequencies to catch up. I was told by a professional sound company that my way was wrong, and that I should be delaying teh subs, not the mid / high cabinets. Can you tell me which way it should be?
Well, both ways are incorrect. You should not be delaying either of them, unless they are physically located fairly far apart from each other.
Sound from both the Mid/High cabs and Subs all travel at the same speed.
Now if the Subs were much closer to the listening area than the Mid/Highs then you may want to delay the subs to have the sound 'wait' till the sound from the mid/highs travels to where the subs are. The problem is that often delaying things creates as many issues as it solves. Often there are listening areas that are close to subs and other places closer to the mid/highs. In that case, delaying would only help some areas and hurt others.
Typically, I avoid delaying things unless:
1) There is a physical distance between cabinets that reproduce the same or overlapping frequency ranges and they cover the same listening area as well. The Physical distance must be such that one set of speakers is 'farther than the other set from the listening area.
or
2) There are components in the same enclosure that are physically closer to the listener from other components and testing has shown that delaying them offers an improvement in the sound.
Dave Rat