Fastest, cleanest, most accurate bass you've ever heard from a 10", 12", or 15" sub?

Well, I'm glad I was able to get this thread going again. I, too, have been looking at the Rhythmiks with the idea of going the DIY route and building my own cabinets since the company offers that option.

Defdum&blind, do you recall the model you heard? Do you own Rhythmiks?

 

Yes. I have a pair of 12" units A370PEQ that serve as the sub woofers for a three way speaker system. The builder of my speakers uses Rhythmiks in his speaker line.

 

The Quad ESL is one of the most difficult speakers to mate to a sub, due both to its dipole distribution characteristics and it's general low frequency behaviour. Most attempts either end up with a hole in the middle of the upper bass or sound like two separate systems. The only really successful combination I've ever heard was the Gradient SW 57, which was specifically designed for the Quads. Although this item has been discontinued it's worth seeking out second hand or you could try its replacement the SW-S.

 

Another happy Rythmic owner. I sprung for the sealed down firing 15" with PEQ because of the size of my room. The thing never gets above an idle. My volume knob is only a couple clicks up from the lowest setting. Used REW to fine tune the setup, crossover, phase, volume, and PEQ.

Funny, when I asked them about the differences between the front firing and down firing they asked what floor I had. They tend to recommend the front firing for wood floors. Luckily, mine is on concrete so nothing to shake lose.

Another good point is that they have lots of connection options to match your setup. I wanted R/L XLR's from the pre-amp plus an LFE. Confirmed that the L/R + LFE do sum. So I use full range R/L for music with no external crossover or digitizing in the signal path and add the LFE channel for movies.

 

I started with a single SVS SB1000 then got two, then upgraded to two SB2000 never gonna look back now!!! Awesome subs for the money!!!

 

If you don't mind using an external crossover, the Thiel subs are incredible.

 

I have Acoustat 2+2 speakers which are also difficult to mate with a sub properly. I have been thinking about building a 15" folded horn sub like the TubaHT.

http://www.billfitzmaurice.com/THT.html

 

I have a REL T7 for home theatre setup and REL R328 for 2 channel music setup. Highly recommended. The R series has been recently replaced by the S series.

 

Rel, especially the old Rels-Strata, Storm. Stadium, I,II,II .
JL audio always punchy and wonderfull, but other than the Rels which I had much experience with, I love, KEFs, the out of production Martin Logans, Krell Resolution-what a beast of construction, WoW. For the money I love Definitive Technology Super cubes and many other DefTech subs when they were going crazy during the home theatre craze. Take care, John M.

 

Real bass played on a real tube bass amp as nothing "FASTEST". It has a DEEP tone and sound that "fastest" speakers can replicate

It's pretty much asking "bass speed" on a hammond organ.

 

Well, poo. I was torn between SVS and Rhythmic, and I was leaning a little more toward the Rhythmic, because they are the only company that I've seen that is RIGHT about the myriad elements that combine to make a sub. I just checked their website.... out of stock.

Guess I can wait.

 

I have Quad 2805s and I have just added a REL S3 sub woofer to the system. I also have Townsend super tweeters. I am delighted with the addition. I can also say that these subs when they were on demo were the only bit of kit my family have said what is that and you must keep them. Any other proposed upgrades have never had this reaction before. My wife and young adult children all noticed immediately and were immediate fans of the sub. Massive Attack has never sounded better!!!

 

The lowest note on an electric bass is around 40 Hz, any respectable woofer can do that. The lowest note on a regular pipe organ is 16 Hz, the Atlantic City Music Hall organ is 8 Hz. Only one woofer in the world can do that, the Eminent TRW-17. 110 dB at 5 Hz. Seriously. And it ONLY costs around $22,000. Gee, maybe I need a pair....

 

Here's a possible solution:

http://www.quad-musik.de/html/subround.html

 

Those actually look pretty 'period' to the 57 too.
I think the poster Caracallac had it right when he talked about the difficulty of mating a woofer to the Quad, particularly the 57, which has greater limitations (but to my ears, has the best midrange) of all the various Quads, old and newer. If I recall, the late, great HP from The Absolute Sound fame mated Quads (Crosby 63's if memory serves) to Magnepan bass panels stripped from a larger Magneplanar, many years ago. Also Charlie King will custom build a Quad (63) to be a bass driver only, to complement and enhance a standard pair. Not exactly plug and play, and you'll probably need an active crossover, second amp, etc. Still not sure how any of these solutions would be on a 57. How much are those little round woofers? If you do get those, can you update the board on your findings? (I still have both pairs of my old Quads awaiting resto).

 

REL models are often recommended as good mates to Quads. I've not heard them. With my JanZen electrostatic hybrids, I'm using a pair of JL Audio Fathom F112 that I've had for a long time. I find them quite musical. The main issue with all subs, IMO, is mating them to your system well. I think that an electronic (line-level) crossover, either analog or DSP-based, is a good way. A home trial of any sub would be a must, to see if you can get the blend right.

 

Thank you for telling it like it is. I've always had the sense that this would be the issue and have definitely heard this problem in other systems. That's why I've never owned a subwoofer before. But then I start dreaming about what could potentially be possible. Maybe I would be better off pursuing a second pair of Quads (stacked) rather than going through extensive subwoofer trials.

 

Having successfully integrated subs in my car (no, it's not a Cheech mobile) and home there are some best practices for getting it right and making it sound seamless.
Ideally you would want a powerful DSP with active crossovers such that you can low pass filter the subwoofer and high pass filter the full range speakers, often with a slight underlap, fairly steep crossover slopes and inverted phase on the sub. Example, crossover on the sub 63Hz, filtered 24db per octave (a steep drop-off). Crossover the full range speakers at 80Hz, 24db and adjust levels on the sub appropriately. This avoids the pitfalls of each speaker playing like frequencies and has just the right amount of blending.
Barring a DSP (which is not readily available in the home hifi marketplace) the best integration usually involves bookshelf speakers with response that falls rapidly below 80 Hz or so. A speaker like this simply does not play in the range of the sub and will allow easy adjustment of the subwoofer crossover without having the overlap Steve was referring to. The key here is to use a sealed enclosure subwoofer because a ported enclosure tends to peak at one frequency and sounds anything but natural. Basically a one note wonder.
You still have to experiment with placement, level, sub crossover frequency and phase, but that can all be done through the subwoofer amplifier controls.
I like subs because I listen to lots progressive rock and you can't really hear those deep bass pedal notes without one.

 

For my HT set up I'm deciding between an HSU and a Rythmik - both 15inch - tough choice.

 

In a ported design, the port is 360 degrees out of phase with the cone, so the port output is always going to be one cycle behind the woofer. That's why a ported box has a less articulate response. The sealed is always going to be more musically accurate.

 

I understand what you are saying and why you are saying it. But your response is only part of the story. Where main speakers typically need to be for proper imaging is the wrong place for a flat bass response once you measure it properly and consider what the room response is. The nulls and peaks, caused by SBIR and room modes are staggering.

I am not saying your wrong, but multiple subs placed properly yields the smoothest bass response. I am merely pointing out that relying on the mains only for your entire bass response has cons. I agree that subs have cons as well. But I didnt want it to seem to be the case that non-sub systems are always better or that systems with subs are always worse.

 

It sort of depends on what ticks you off most about speakers, because all setups have issues, which you can overlook or not. Our host is bugged by the unnatural bass issues you can get with subs (caused no doubt by phase issues, placement issues, mass issues, response humps caused by bad mating, or issues caused by the EQ needed to mate most subs with the mains).

Me, I have to have a sub, because speakers large enough to reproduce the bass I want sound hopelessly fake to me, even most of the crazy expensive ones. Large speakers have issues of their own (including cabinet resonances, the low-frequency drivers causing the high-frequency drivers to vibrate, messing up the treble, sound bouncing off the large surface area of the speaker's front, and sound coming from an unnaturally large area). Having run a sub/sat combo for around 15 years now, big speakers just drive me NUTS.

Only "large speaker" exception I've found are Magnepans, which have their own issues, but I could live with those if my room was big enough for them (which it ain't).