BIC America F12 sub anyone ? - Page 89

It's virtually impossible to find a 'bad' subwoofer cable. The only cable properties that matter are resistance, capacitance, inductance and shielding. Resistance is not an issue with interconnects. Capacitance and inductance only affect high frequencies, and shielding only prevents high frequency noise, not issues with sub bass frequencies. Say what?

"Say what" was my thought too. I just thought I would throw out the idea of a cable.

So you define good as not being a bare wire?

I've managed to find a "bad" subwoofer cable before, Scosche RCA audio cable. Terrible really. Constant ~60Hz hum. Picked up a monoprice cable and the hum is gone. No noticeable knicks in the insulation and no ground loop issues (as changing the cable eliminated the hum).

Guys, I've had the F12 for a little over a year now, and have the upgrade itch.

Until I can convince myself to spend the cash for a new sub, I want to optimize my current one. With that said, I've only managed to get my F12 down to about ~26Hz at hardly noticeable levels. I still rolloff quickly at 30Hz, as 29Hz seems to be close to 3dB down. Making 26Hz barely audible but at loud enough volumes it creates a nice pressure.

What is the deepest usable bass you guys have managed to get out of your F12? What are some tips for getting a bit more out of mine?

Do you have EQ capability? How about corner loading?

I've got it placed in the best corner I have. One wall of the corner is drywall as the other is a sliding balcony door. Not very ideal but my apartment has a very strange layout.

I'm using Audyssey with my Denon 791.

I've tried it in several locations but this seems to be the best so far.

I did a test tone once, long ago, thought I could hear down to about 28hz but that may have been more air movement than actual tone. Unless you are very young, your ears can't hear down that low anyway. I'm no expert but think the lower range produced by the F12 may not be audible so much as the wave that we feel more than hear. I think you'll have a hard time getting more out of this sub than the sub is capable of, which I believe is 25-200hz.

I recently bought a HK AVR-3600. Very happy with the sound.

I've been reading the manual and it turns out that you can't configure the Subwoofer crossover directly on the receiver, you need to use the Subwoofer knob... does this mean I have to set the Receiver Type switch on my F12 to Pro-Logic Receiver? I read that if it's in Digital Receiver mode the Crossover knob won't work.

No need to use the crossover on your sub. Did you run EzSet/EQ on your receiver? After you do, if you need to adjust the speakers you can use the manual adjustments in on your receiver (pp. 40-41 of your manual). Those crossover settings enable high pass filters for the speakers and low pass filters for the subs. Whatever crossover you set for the speakers, the sub will automatically receive the correct audio signal.

I did run the EzSet/EQ on my receiver and then made a few changes. I mainly corrected the speaker distance and set the crossover for them manually. This is my setup:

L+R: Polk Audio TSI400 - According to PA specs, they go as low as 34Hz. It has three 5.25" drivers.
Center: Polk Audio CS10 - According to PA specs, it can go as low as 53Hz. It has two 5.25" drivers.
Surrounds: Polk Audio TSI100 - According to PA specs, they go as low as 53Hz. Single 5.25" driver.
Sub: BIC America F12. 12"

I set the crossover setting manually on my receiver for the speakers and set them all to 80Hz. Is this a "good" setting? should I go higher? lower?

I now know to set the BIC America to Digital Receiver so the receiver handles the crossover.

Lot of people like 80hz as the crossover because (a) above 80hz and the bass tends to be more localizable as coming from the subwoofer and (b) sending below 80hz to the sub takes a little stress off the receiver.

However, do whatever sounds best to you

It does sound pretty great with these settings now, so I'll leave it at 80Hz.

Thanks for the help, man. Appreciate it.

Just a comment, I have book shelf speakers front and sorround w/5.25 woofers that have a rated response starting at 80hz. I had the crossover set at 80 hz and it sounded rather good. But I continued to experiment with different setups trying to squeeze the best out of my modest system.

I learned the crossover point is not as hard a cutoff as I though, but more of a gradual overlap of the sub out and speaker outputs. What ended up sounding the best to me was to change the crossover point to 60 hz, and compensate the drop off of the 5.25" woofers response curve by bumping up the 80 hz slider on the receivers graphic equalizer +2dB. The boost brought the bookshelf speakers back where they were able to add nice definition to bass frequencies. The end result was (to me) a more well defined bass in my system. I think this setup brings back the "snap" and "slap' sounds that the Rickenbacker base is famous for. And kettle drums are amazing!

I guess what I'm saying is it pays to play!

Regarding the sub cable posts, FWIW, the cable in my system is the "Belkin 15 feet PureAV Subwoofer Audio Cable" and there is no hum or other unwanted noise. Its $6.42 on Amazon, and with a Prime account, there is no shipping charge and 2-3 day delivery. IMHO, Belkin makes good cables in the computer sector, so I thought they would make a good AV cable. I'm very satisfied, although a 90* connector on one end would have been a plus.




http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001XGR1C/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00

Here's mine:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003FVYXY0

Also no hum or unwanted noise.

Ohhh, nice shielding on that cable! Just goes to show you don't need to spend a lot to get a quality cable.

Perhaps something like this ? http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10429&cs_id=1042904&p_id=7233&seq=1&format=2

Monoprice has excellent cables of all types HDMI, RCA, speaker wire, etc.

Has anyone here taken the driver and amp from an F12 and put them into a custom built box? I'm looking at options for going DIY but I don't want to spend much money. Wondering if anyone here has tried using the Bic driver/amp for DIY.

If you don't already have the BIC F12, have you talked with the DIY audio forum here on AVS? There are probably better options for the money.

I've already got the Bic F12. It's been pounding away in my corner for over a year now. I ask because building a new box for the F12 would cost me around $45, whereas building the sub I really want to build would cost nearly 10 times that.

Just seeing if anyone has any experience with this before I potentially waste $45.

Definitely ask the guys on the DIY audio forum. They can probably help

Will do. Thanks.

i was thinking about selling the f12 and getting the klipsch rw12 on sale but the hassle of selling and shipping a big sub is just not worth it. im going to order another f12 for dual setup which should rock.

i have a denon 1712 which does not eq two subs. it has audyssey but i just have no idea how to go about this other than i have to buy a splitter cable.

lets say i am aiming for audyssey to set both subs at 0 db. do i audyssey each sub separately for 0, once the gain on the subs are dialed in for 0

i, connect both subs with splitter . run audyssey again all the way through? i hope its this easy to run a dual setup. i dont want to have to go buy an spl meter and have to download and learn some new software for this.

Should the backplate be a little warm when your not using it? It's not hot, I can keep my hand on it. I just notice it was slightly warm when I went to turn it on. it was off in standby mode for more then 18 hours

Does this sub sound "boomy" at all? Would you compare it to any of the higher priced models like psb, svs, or hsu?

I recently built an 18" sub that easily rivals and beats out the subs you listed. Easily beats out subs at least twice the cost.

My Bic f12 was great for what it was. It's good on it's own, but the low price brings it to being a great sub for the money.

Musically it was adequate whereas with movies it would really shine. It could get a little boomy at times, but it wasn't the worst I ever heard. The frequency response between 40Hz to 70Hz was the strongest, whereas the lower frequencies down to 30 were weaker. This creates the illusion of "boominess" in my opinion.

With regards to accuracy, it was a bit slow. Slow and deeper bass(30 to 40Hz) in music always sounded best. The f12 had trouble with faster songs as it was pretty laggy and tended to distort easily.

It shouldn't really be warm on it's own. Perhaps on standby it's using more power than it should. Maybe you have a slight hum and don't realize it. I touch my plate and it's cold to the touch.

You should see how warm it gets after some heavy listening. If it is still just warm to the touch after that, then I think you're fine.

This is a good budget sub. If you want something better I would suggest the RW-12D, which you can find on sale for $299.99 on newegg. PSB, SVS and HSU are overall a better sub.

The BIC F12 is a $200 12" budget sub. And while a good value at that price point (one of the best), it does not compete with the 12" subs from SVS or HSU since they, too, are equally good or better values. PSB will be over priced. Traditional speaker company subwoofers generally do not compete in price/performance with Internet sub retailers like HSU, SVS, and Outlaw Audio, unless you get them for about half or more off MSRP.

I have had it on for a little of an hour and a half and it's still just warm, a little warmer then before but still just warm.