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Do you put subwoofers in your arcade cabinets?
matsadona:
There are several modern games that has a subwoofer as standard, so it isn’t really that odd to have one in a MAME cabinet.
My personal opinion is that it adds some extra punch in explosions etc, even though not 100% accurate in older classics.
And if your cabinet doubles as a jukebox, then it should be mandatory.
I did like many others, installing a prebuilt 2.1 system. So the subwoofer is put in bottom of my cabinet, with the rubber feet isolating some of the vibrations. And so far I haven’t seen any issues with the hard drive, even though there should be a potential risk with that in theory.
drventure:
--- Quote from: matsadona on June 08, 2012, 03:32:18 am ---And if your cabinet doubles as a jukebox, then it should be mandatory.
--- End quote ---
+1
And I think a lot of the games sound a lot better with one. It's not strictly authentic, true, but, if you think about it, most original cabs were "heard" amidst the din of an arcade with 50 other cabinets competing for your attention, so authentic is a pretty relative term ;)
ChrisK:
I've got a small one from a Logitech 5.1 PC speaker set I had sitting around in my cab, but its volume is cranked down real low. It shouldn't really even be called a subwoofer, to be honest. I doubt it can put out much lower than 45hz.
I don't think I'd put a real 12"+ sub in my cab. I don't really need to shake the room with arcade games. I'll leave the real sub outside the cab for music in the room.
boardjunkie:
I don't have one in mine as of now, and have no plans to install one. With 2 5" full range drivers located just behind the marquee, I get plenty of low end without it sounding exaggerated.
Cynicaster:
The way I looked at it was that I couldn’t afford NOT to have a sub, considering:
- The easiest speaker solution for a PC-based MAME cabinet is to use a set of powered “PC speakers”
- “PC speakers” that include a sub (2.1 configuration) are not expensive at all
- An upright cabinet has plenty of room to accommodate the sub
- The sub makes music sound better
Bottom line, you might regret excluding a sub, but I don’t see how you could possibly go wrong by including one.
I agree the sub doesn’t get much of a workout from the games themselves, especially the older ones, but you hear it kick in sometimes. Big boss explosions in DoDonPachi sound cool. The “thrust” sound in Asteroids is wicked through a sub, as is that weird background noise in Qix.
I like to listen to music on my cabinet while I play games, even though I have my HT receiver with a nice set of Paradigms in the same room, hooked up to the same music library. For some reason, the tunes coming out of the speakers right in front of my face, mixed in with the game sounds, is a very intimate/immersive way to experience it all, so I wouldn’t do it any other way.
At first I did have a bit of a rattling sound in my cabinet from the bass, but I isolated it to the access panel and eliminated it by putting little pads on the underside of the door. Problem solved.