Originally Posted by
Todd Lee 
True to my word, I'm posting an update now that my BIL has his sub. (even though everybody seems to have skipped right over my post)
We hooked it up tonight. He had an 8" yamaha sub that came with a 5.1 speaker set for $100. Although his sub sucked, I was nervous today to hear if he liked the F12 or not. He bought it sight unseen, based off of my recommendation, which I also made sight unseen.
I have an SVS PB12-nsd, and he wanted a sub that he could "feel in his chest", like my sub. I knew that was going to be a tall order for him, his max budget was $300, and I knew that if he could spend less, he would be thrilled. Ergo my recommendatin for the $200 BIC.
We spent a few minutes calibrating his system with my radio shack spl meter, and AVIA disk. We didn't do a ton of fine tuning, I had a limited amount of time to spend with him tonight.
We set the receiver crossover at 80 Hz, all speakers to small, and dialed the gain on the sub to around the 10'oclock position.
We ran the sub a little hot, with his onkyo 506 (i think) sub gain at 0.
First impressions were decent, he enjoyed the upgrade from the 8" yamaha, I was relieved. The sub gets down to around 30 hz, then drops off to pretty much nothing. It also has a bit of a null around 71-72 hz, but picks up nice and strong right at 70hz. I'm sure this is caused by his room which is rather large. it's a big family room in his basement, with attached office and a doorless stairway that leads up to his main floor. (kitchen/dining room, living room, etc..) So, basically, the entire house would have to be pressurized.
I don't have the equipment or know how to use REW, or graph this out or anything. I plopped in one of my kids favorite demo 'scenes' to get a quick feel for the sub. It's the THX intro with the mechanical plants. With my SVS, the mushroom's are insane, I think that's what stood out for my BIL. With the F12, unfortunately the mushrooms were none existant. He did like the Horn shaped plant near the end of the THX intro. It blares loud and low for an exstended amount of time. That brought a smile to his face! (and I wiped the sweat from my brow too)
To make a long story short,
too late, the F12 doesn't touch the PB12nsd, but we knew it wouldn't. It did do quite well for the $200 that it cost. We didn't try any music, but I'm sure we will soon. Music takes a back seat for him, so I didn't worry about that too much.
There is one disappointing thing about the sub, the grill rattles when the sub digs deep. We noticed it immediately, and played around until we could figure out where it was coming from. Once the grill was pulled off, the buzz disappeared. He is going to get some type of felt or something to stick on the wood surface, the buzz comes from the wood grill laying on the wood sub box.
Edit: The rattling isn't coming from where we thought it was. The grill fabric isn't glued on to the back of the grill in a small area. The noise is the cloth vibrating back and forth, flapping in the wind, if you will. He is going to call BIC, see what they recommend doing. If nothing, then he'll try glueing it himself.
Hope that info helps.
I should mention, we didn't do the sub crawl, or experiment with location at all. We may down the road, but for the time being, he's ok with it where it is, just below his screen, to the right of his center speaker and equipment. I'll get a picture soon, and post it here later on. (if anybody cares)
I wish there was more out there about the PL-200. Finding good information is tough, almost like no one is buying it (I hope that isn't a sign of something other than tough competition).
