Stereo Imaging

[voice of the theater]

Probably some appropriate discussion here:

Bob Hodas Acoustic Analysis : To Woof Or Not To Woof? A SUBstantial Question

(credit to Musician's Room: A Dream Stereo Realized, where the link came from)

Gearfreak--that Bob Hodas article you posted was excellent. I couldn't help but laugh when I read this part "Many of my studio clients are complaining that the Rap projects are destroying their main monitors. The Rappers like to turn up the speaker systems until the bass is making their pantlegs flap." Although if they were my monitors, I think I'd be crying, not laughing. I can see why he is a firm believer in stereo sub-woofers.

If it's a real sub in a normal room, I doubt you'd ever notice. Real sub meaning under ~60Hz.
Yes, you can locate sounds that low, but you'll have a lot of content already from the 19s to pin the sound where it needs to be. The sub will just add grunt.

Run it up at a higher frequency and you will start to blur things. But at what frequency will be very speaker and room dependent. My 2?

This makes sense to me as well--with all the low end you get out of the 19's (down to 30hz) http://www.lansingheritage.org/image...l-19/page2.jpg I can see that if you had only one sub (as opposed to stereo subs) dedicated to only the lowest of frequencies there should still be plenty of bass coming from the 19's to "pin the sound where it needs to be". Guess if I wanted to add a sub-woofer, I wouldn't necessarily need a pair of Altec coffee tables!

Thanks to everyone who replied--I learned a lot from this thread. I sometimes like to crank my 19's up to a good level but I don't play them "excessively loud" (whatever that is). In the room that I have them located with the EQ I'm using they're plenty clean and have plenty of low punch so I'm going to keep that system the way it is (just the two 19's and no other speakers in that room)--these speakers sound so good I'm almost afraid that any change I make to the system will be a downgrade as it's hard for me to imagine these things sounding any better. I'm usually a tinkerer by nature, and am always wondering how to make things sound better. But this may be the one case where I go by the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".....