If you lifted your 8x10 up to ear level
Prejudice here. That unit is taller than me. I am not your arcetypical bass players that you make false assumption of and jumps to conclusions...
Note that venue acoustics change quite a bit from being empty to being full of people
Yes, but so it does when they are placed closer to the stage, and for the musicians on the stage too. Wherever you're placed inside the venue.
o even if you've got a pretty good sound system you're fighting a losing battle against reflections, standing waves, etc.... the low frequencies themselves are not actually the problem,
And yet, those instruments who are acoustically capable of providing sub 20 Hz are placed in the absolute worst acoustical environment with the most loud reflections and reverb... a church... go figure.
All of the building is used as a space. I have seen no FOH engineer at those gigs, but I heard the low end better far back in the church than near the organ. This is mostly due to that not that many churches have bass traps or isolation, on the contrary, as much concrete as possible to create reverb! Not too many hockey arenas or venues are of that too if even one. What defines the dimensions of a room are the wall spacing and floor-to-ceiling height. Sound waves generated within a room either pass through the room boundaries, bounce off them, or are absorbed.
In fact, all three of these often apply. I e, when a sound wave strikes a wall some of its energy may be reflected, some may be absorbed, and some may pass through to the outside. When low frequencies are attenuated in a room
, the cause is always canceling reflections. All that is needed to allow low frequency waves to sound properly and with a uniform frequency response is to remove or at least reduce the reflections. However, modes are not necessary for a wave to exist. As proof, any low frequency can be produced outdoors - and of course there are no room modes outdoors! Best environment to test any low bass response! Or low frequency, and there you have to stand a bit back, still!
Imagine you set up a high quality loudspeaker outdoors, play some low frequency tones, and then measure the frequency response five feet in front of the speaker. In this case the measured frequency response outdoors will be exactly as flat as the loudspeaker. Now wall in a small area, say 10x10x10 feet, using very thin paper, and measure the response again. The low frequencies are still present in this "room" because the thin paper is transparent at low frequencies and they pass right through. Now, make the walls progressively heavier using thick paper, then thin wood, then thicker wood, then sheet rock, and finally brick or cement.
With each increase in wall density, reflections will cause cancellations within the room at ever-lower frequencies as the walls become massive enough to reflect the waves.
Thus, it is
reflections that causes acoustic interferences, standing waves, and resonances, and those are what reduce the level of low frequencies that are produced in a room. When the reflections are reduced by applying bass traps, the frequency response within the room improves. And if
all reflections were able to be removed, the response would be exactly as flat as if the walls did not exist at all. I have yet to see or hear any room, venue, concert hall, capable of this and that's mainly the reason you have the churches as capable of producing those low notes, now still, we are ONLY talking about sine wave fundamentals, and of a specific kind, below human hearing, the sub 20 Hz frequencies. Churches are used as an extra amplifying pipe... so to speak. In order for the OP to get anywhere with his sub 20 Hz notes, you have to dampen up pretty well, as well as keeping the physical thing from vibrating and shaking at louder levels than the actual fundamental. You won't be able to be in the room yourself while playing. Due to all stuffing.
Headphones have absolutely no walls or acoustics, all frequencies and waves doesn't BOUNCE anywhere, they go straight in to your ear drum and doesn't bounce back anywhere, because there's no wall or diaphragm to bounce on and at the other end is not you eardrum, it's the headphone speaker diaphragm. Regarding producing low end, really below 20 Hz, this is not comparable to open air, since in a miniaturized electrostatic earphone system, which takes advantage of the fact that the earphone is sealed within the ear cavity. There is a relatively small volume of air between the earphone and the ear canal. This natural bit of physics allows the headphones to reproduce low frequencies efficiently. But since the sub 20 Hz are more felt than heard, since the human hearing stops (or starts) at 20 Hz, there's nothing to "feel" with headphones on, there's nothing to shake your bones. And no audio format supports sub 20 Hz anyway, so it's going to be reproducible only in a live environment and outdoors. In a field, maybe soccer field, football stadia, and open air concerts...
So since it all applies to SUB 20 Hz it doesn't matter at all if you stand with your ear as close as possible to that 8x10 or anything else that's capable of producing it, since you won't hear it anyway, and no human can HEAR WITH THEIR EAR AND EARDRUMS that low (below 20 hz no matter the loudness). If you should FEEL the sub 20 Hz notes, you have to stand a bit back. If everything, including the stage floor (or bass board as described above) shakes and vibrates, well then then you just feel it, and that 's what counts. You will feel nauseaus within seconds and even feel a bit sick, and at unease. And as you self proclaimed that it has no musical value on its own (soloed), it contradicts with others who said that such a low note should be produced at beat breaks, and pauses inside music when it's left all alone. And in the end, no matter how you isolate it, it just flutters and pulsating like the fishing boat sound above and wreaks havoc and knocks all other frequencies off in the air too, since it will knock them out of both phase and pitch... they have to be too strong in order to get heard.
Remember, we're ONLY talking about fundamentals, clean and loud, and below 20 hz. As fast as we're speaking anything above it, and together with first and second harmonic, and not a pure sine wave, I am all game with you. I am still saying that a rotary subwoofer (together with its enclosure) is the only way to go, if you will have levels, that can compete with the rest. Even then they will throw the rest of the frequencies askew, as it can be heard in the above video with the 128' pipe kicking in.
