Subwoofer Necessary?

  I am currently using a pair of M-audio BX8a monitors in a small 12x12 bedroom studio. I am using ARC with my system. Concerning acoustics and placement, my monitors are spaced about 6' apart in a triangle formation with my ears in the middle, on a pretty large recording desk that takes up almost half of the space.I have a full length window on one side of the space but I have placed acoustic absorption material in front of it to absorb some of the sound bouncing from it. There is one other window in the middle of the back of the desk but it is covered by a shade that probably absorbs some of the sound energy,or at least redirects it. Off center behind me is a closet with lots of absorptive properties and various other things in the space.

 I came across a subwoofer a friend had given me awhile back that is primarily designed for a home theatre system. It has a built in amp and an adjustment knob on the back to select what frequency threshold you want the Subwoofer to have. I had thought about putting this in the studio to help me mix low frequencies. It has an 8"woofer.

 If I decide to use it. I would need to put it on the floor to my right and it would fire into the wall on the left,or I could alternately position it under the desk at my feet and have it fire into the closet at the rear of the room.

 I noticed that the ARC system is trying to take bass out of my space,but because the graphic representation of arcs eq is not very detailed it's difficult to see what frequencies it is dealing with.

 Would you recommend putting a subwoofer into these conditions? Would it help? Or can I rest confident that the existing setup is ok without one?

 

 I think you are correct Guitarhacker.  Back when I was seriously considering room treatments in addition to what I already had, I was told that the corners of the room are where bass sets up and can resonate,so in order to eliminate the resonance I should treat my corners with a thick sound absorptive material. It seems to be a common problem with smaller square and rectangular rooms than with asymmetrical rooms.

 ARC really is addressing these problems IMO for the most part although the correction curve isn't perfect in my case and there are a few bumps I'm aware of.  FWIW I seldom mix anything with a super low bass in it so maybe the extra added sub-woofer isn't necessary.

 Most home and car systems seem to accentuate things too far one way or the other. Either they kill you with hyper bass or they are shallow due to cheap small drivers.

  I could see an advantage to having most of your mid/high material in the mains and having the bass in the woofer. This would thin down the immediate mix closest to your ears,if there were some way I could do that . In my case I am also thinking that because of my desk design the mains are too far away and a shorter throw might improve the picture some. Guess I'm just curious what others here are doing in regards to the sub freqs.

  Are you leaving the sub woofer off right now? Or using it with ARC?

I'll have to look into that.... it might take a while to get this thing set up and balanced for this funky room. 


And all along I was thinking this was a pretty good sounding room..... sheeeeesh....

Herb - anything cube shaped (for example an 8'x8'x8' room) is the worst condition for a listening room.  the best shapes for listening will be ratios of
1:1.14:1.39
1:1.26:1.59
1:1.28:1.54

and others...see this calculator:  http://www.audioholics.com/education/acoustics-principles/calculating-room-modes-with-modecalc

also, most home studios have recording and mixing rooms as the same room, this is not the typical thing for a real studio.  the listening/mixing room is separate from the recording room.  the recording room should have a few "good" reflections in it and listening rooms should be "dead."  (anachoic chamber would be best!).

Clifford - I had thought about that as well - just importing reference CDs into sonar for use with ARC.

My room is 15'wide by 16' long..... but... probably 14 long since there are built in shelves on one end..the studio end. 

Carpeted and acoustic ceiling tile.  

I will set ARC up again perhaps tomorrow. The first several times I sat in the chair and held the mic..... bith of those are not supposed to be done.... so I'll set up again. 

If all else fails.... I have a second condenser mic that according to the manual is usable to record with.  So While I'm still setting on the fence trying to decide if this was a good purchase or a waste ....I'll give it another go and then mix something new from scratch with it to decide. Following the directions. 

bass traps can only help with ARC, ARC does not make them "obsolete"

I have bass traps as well as ARC (technically they don't trap a lot of BASS, they trap more low-mids than anything else)