Contributor I

2 One’s and a sub or 2 Fives?

17 replies
8593 views

Apologies if this has been asked before but I’m curious as to what people think.

I’m thinking of getting a few speakers for the living room. I often sit at the piano and like to play along to what I’m listening to so I need a setup that won’t be drowned out by my (questionable) playing. My aim is to create a stereo pair and then position them each side of the piano.

The conundrum I have is whether to go for 2 Ones and a Sub, which I assume (hope) will give me better separation of highs from lows OR 2 Fives without a separate Sub.

I listen to a really wide variety of music including classical and Jazz so the mids and trebles are just as important to me as the thumbing bass.

Thoughts?

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N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Buy and try on the home trial; return it if you don’t like it.

C

Clemdog

Avid Contributor I

Of course that’s an option but I’d think someone on this forum has some first hand experience with this?

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Yes, but not in your room with its specificacoustics, and not with your ears.

buzz

Grand Maestro

Clemdog,

Only you know what sounds “best” (to you).

Many people will feel that there is improved clarity in the midrange in addition to more bass.

If you listen to pop and jazz with strong bass lines, I think that you will enjoy SUB. If you listen mostly to chamber music, SUB might not do much for you.

K

Kumar

Id be willing to cough up the $$ to add one if it’d make a audible difference.

Audible difference for sure, but not as much as when the Sub is added to a One pair, because the latter is less bass capable than the Five to start with. And whether the difference will be value enough for the extra $ gets to be very subjective.

D

dan8558

Prominent Collaborator I

I wouldn’t add a Sub to a pair of Fives. I have a Play 5 Gen 2 which I believe is very similar to the Five. I did some measurements with Room EQ Wizard of the audio performance of a Play 1 pair with a Sub and a single Play 5. I found that the Play 5s go nearly as deep as the One pair plus Sub. Before Trueplay the Play 5 extended as deep into the bass (about 25 Hz) as the Play 1 pair with Sub, but it also had a bit of a bump between 100 and 200 Hz. Trueplay tamed the bump, but also reduced the bass below 35 Hz. If you do try the Sub with the Fives, listen to music with deep bass both before and after running Trueplay. Of course, the amount of low bass you hear will depend on where you sit in the room and the room characteristics.

K

Kumar

I wouldn’t add a Sub to a pair of Fives.

IMO, it may still make sense at the two extremes of the volume slider. At low level music listening the Sub may do much more to keep music from sounding thin, than just engaging the loudness control. And at the other high sound level end, distortion prevention strategies may have the 5 speaker bass not keep up with the rest of the sound spectrum, and the Sub will prevent that from being the case.

Of course there is the benefit of mid range clean up at all sound levels, but whether that is value for the price of the Sub is the personal assessment to be made.

One point - the assessment of the Sub when added to the 5 pair ought to be made after Trueplay tuning is done because in most cases that dials down what the Sub does to a natural level which may not be much more than what the 5 pair does anyway. Of course, some may prefer the bloated bass that will usually be heard with Trueplay off and for such preferences, the Sub will still yield more of that than a 5 pair will.

But a one pair + Sub comfortably ticks all the boxes, including the one for value for money.

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