Pros and cons of aux fed subs.

[twostone]

Seems like a growing trend with folks running aux fed subs now a days and just curious what the pros and cons  other than more control of your lows being isolated and grouped to a post fade aux send vs parallel processing with send lows to a sub group and re-tweaking the lows in the subgroup to blend in the subgroup.

 

 

 

[Tomm Williams]

Many, many discussions of this. One of those topics that evokes pretty strong opinions

[Pro Sound Guy]

And so it begins again.

[modulusman]

 I run aux subs about half the time. I do it with my EAW NT rig because the subs output sucks  compare to the tops. By using an aux I can get them loud enough.

[lutherdingle]

I will say that what I've been reading lately tells me that a lot of folks run their tops full range and simply use their subs as an effect, which surprised me, as up until recently the repeated wisdom was that you always high-pass your tops when doing aux-fed subs. 

In this discussion some well-respected pros say pretty much the same thing: full-range systems using subs as an effect.

With my new FBT Vertus system, the tops are supposed to be high-passed for the sub, which is supposed to low-passed at 180 Hz. This means if I try aux-fed with this system, the tops will sound awfully thin unless I put a little of just about everything into the subs.

With my trap boxes, I either high-pass them at 80 Hz or just let them run full-range and use the subs for added low end. (They go down to 65 Hz.) Sounds fine that way.

[Audiopile]

 

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twostone wrote:

 

 

Seems like a growing trend with folks running aux fed subs now a days

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... uh... like since the early '70's.

That's been around for a really long time Tommy.  I dunno about the "growing trend" thing... but it's been pretty common among "some" for about 4 decades... basically since the advent of subs.  The "some" group might be widening though.

[agedhorse]

I have found that maybe 10%-20% of the touring engineers for the genres that I do ask for aux fed subs, the rest don't care or prefer full range output on L/R fader.

 

For the aux fed subs folks, 100% require the tops be crossed over at ~the same freq/slope as the subs. This is generally not negotiable. I don't know a single engineer that would be happy with the tops full range.

[Rob_H]

You may want to review this thread....lots of great input was shared by the more experienced folks here. Reading that other thread you posted a link to, it looks like people were responding about using additional subs for specific effects in shows rather than using an aux fed sub arrangement. Since I initially asked about it in the thread below I have been running this setup and am very happy with it, but I am also running a 24.4.2 so have no issues with the # of aux available. Won't be a practical solution for everyone though depending on their gear and not something I would recommend if you have different people running your rig who aren't familiar with aux fed subs.

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/t5/Live-Sound-Production/Aux-Sub-Controlling/td-p/34829630

[sants]

What if you are running multiple subs? May beca dumb idea but would it work with 2 subs taking the full mix and then aux-ing say kick and bass into the other two?

[dboomer]

It would dilute the gains.  You would lose some of the potential gains that you would get by eliminating footfall up the mic stands on the vocals for instance.