Any issues having front speakers having their own subwoofer connected through front speakers, in a 5.1 setup with 2 subs?

[eddie500]

Just would like your thoughts on this. I just setup my 5.1 Edifier 1280T with creative X4 soundcard.

I unhappily discovered that, only a few games support 5.1 surround and youtube, windows, and many games only support stereo.

The issue is, when playing stereo in windows, it only uses the front left and front right speaker and does not use the .1 subwoofer.

Would it be a big deal to connect a 2nd sub to my front Edifier 1280T speaker sub out. This would have just the front channels having their own subwoofer.
Then when I play 5.1 games, I will still leave this subwoofer connected. So there will be 2 subs in my system, the .1 sub and the sub for the front channels.

Yes I know there will be two subs, but what is the big deal here? Or will it really screw up 5.1 games sounding properly?

I just don't see any other way to easily do this without manually going in with software or unplugging the front channel sub when playing 5.1 games.

 

[toast0]

Would it be a big deal to connect a 2nd sub to my front Edifier 1280T speaker sub out.

Does the 1280T have a sub out? I don't see one in the manual?

Otherwise, I don't think it would be a big deal to have one sub for low frequency audio in the front and another for low frequency audio that's mixed as a separate channel.

When you're using a 5.1 mix, there shouldn't be much low frequency on the front channels, so I suspect your front sub will be bored, but whatever.

Low frequency is less directional, but I'd put your front sub in front of you, just in case.

 

[Zepher]

Does your software look like this?

If you change it to 2.0/2.1 Stereo
Play some bass heavy music and go to this screen and just move the sub up and down and see if anything changes on your setup.
It doesn't do anything on my setup since I have 2.1 but my sub runs between my speakers and is not on it's own channel like yours would be.
.

this is my setup,


The computer plugs into the subwoofer with stereo XLR's and then XLR cables to the speakers.
There is a foot pedal for the sub to disconnect the sub and send full range to the speakers if you don't want the sub active.

 

[pendragon1]

Just would like your thoughts on this. I just setup my 5.1 Edifier 1280T with creative X4 soundcard.

I unhappily discovered that, only a few games support 5.1 surround and youtube, windows, and many games only support stereo.

The issue is, when playing stereo in windows, it only uses the front left and front right speaker and does not use the .1 subwoofer.

Would it be a big deal to connect a 2nd sub to my front Edifier 1280T speaker sub out. This would have just the front channels having their own subwoofer.
Then when I play 5.1 games, I will still leave this subwoofer connected. So there will be 2 subs in my system, the .1 sub and the sub for the front channels.

Yes I know there will be two subs, but what is the big deal here? Or will it really screw up 5.1 games sounding properly?

I just don't see any other way to easily do this without manually going in with software or unplugging the front channel sub when playing 5.1 games.

this should work fine.

 

[eddie500]

Does your software look like this?

View attachment 649941

If you change it to 2.0/2.1 Stereo
Play some bass heavy music and go to this screen and just move the sub up and down and see if anything changes on your setup.
It doesn't do anything on my setup since I have 2.1 but my sub runs between my speakers and is not on it's own channel like yours would be.
.
View attachment 649940

this is my setup,
View attachment 649944 View attachment 649943

The computer plugs into the subwoofer with stereo XLR's and then XLR cables to the speakers.
There is a foot pedal for the sub to disconnect the sub and send full range to the speakers if you don't want the sub active.

Thanks, after reading your post and thinking a setting couldn't fix this at first, I started to think more about what you mentioned here. Your creative app is a bit different then mine.

I found an option called bass redirect while looking for that sub mixer bar, and this actually fixed the issue. It redirects bass to that .1 channel and also works in windows for stuff like youtube.

Thanks.

 

[AnalogOzerik]

Hmm, from a physics-of-sound perspective, two subs might fight each other. If just one is being used at a time, no biggie, but if they're both being used, there may be "bass nodes" where the bass is overpowering and sloppy, which can be partially fixed by putting the subs right next to each other *unless* they're out-of-phase from each other, and if that happens, powering both subs will actually be quieter than just playing one. Some subs have a phase switch on that will fix that problem.

If you're in the club or at a show and see bass bins on either side of the stage, just know that whomever set up the PA weren't huge fans of bass like *some* people