I would say yes, IMHO. 10" woofer still don't tell you enough.
Close but no cigar. 12's a step closer.
If you can't hear it you can't deal with it accurately.
You CAN make educated guesses.
Jim P. yes, you can do drastic cuts below 80 hz.
But it is much better to hear how much you are cutting,
rather than an arbitrary setting you are using blindly.
Usually stand rumble and recording debres
have some upper frequency signatures too,
so you get an idea that something is also down below.
But bass drums, floor toms and bass guitars,
and more so upright bass, typany, even synthetic ones,
all need to be heard clearly IMHO.
There are many usefull frequencies down to 40-50 hz,
that are still quite valid musically.
But below 30 hz or so in popular recordings
it becomes rumble.
In classical a 16hz note from a
Bossendorfer piano is wonderfull to behold,
But without a sub woofer... it will just be lost.
I like the bigger KRK's and with the sub they are very nice indeed.
My acoustic designer friend put in a 5.1 surround KRK system in
at UBISOFT's mixing room for their game sound tracks.
I heard several of my mixes on this system,
and some favorite cd's of mine.
Both with and without subwoofer.
If you have a perfectly tuned cabinet
with double 15" woofers,
inline with super finely matched midrange driver
and mounted in a great room,
it is possible to get down to 20 hz .
But these speakers will buy you a new car...
a nice one EACH.
An example :
http://www.reyaudio.com/large-e.html
I want these babies for my new room.
But I may have Empad make me something similar, custom.
They are here in Thailand, and Eddie was head of design for Meyer Sound for decades.
We have one of their PA systems.
But I will still keep my Genelec 5.1 surround system.
It has a 400w 15" subwoofer.
For practical applications using typical woofer cabinet sizes,
a subwoofer is the way to go.
I have 2 Infinity Reference 1 MKII bookself speakers I got in Paris,
and a Sansui passive subwoofer I found in a pawnshop.
I was using them in a bedroom to write and did a few sessions,
until I built my small Nimes studio.
Once I found the place for the sub in each room I got quite acceptable mixes.
The Infinities are two way with only a 6" woofer.
But adding the sub gave me something useful.
The mixes from that period don't sound half
bad on the big system and in cars and boom boxes.
I have had them 10 years now, andI still use
the Infinity's as a small speaker reference today.
If you can get down approaching 35hz at reassonable volumes,
then at least you have a clue what's happening in useful frequencies.
You will likely be doing radical eq shelves
at some point down there.
I often stack 2 eq plug-ins on my final mix downs
to get really chopped below 30hz.
But one usually gets it's start frequency
and amount of cut modified,
and often another parametric used to re-lift
some of the above the point cut off to keep
it flat till it drops hard.
You need not sell the farm to get a useful subwoofer.
The best ones are matched to the speakers, from the same maker; typically.
What enables me to Get Low And KNOW
is the sub woofer.<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 14 December 2006 at 08:37 AM.]</p></FONT>
