Archaea's Kansas City Blind Subwoofer Shootout 2012 - Page 13

I'm definitely interested.

Along with my subs I also have access to dual Caps.

I would like to see a blind GTG that includes some of the better commercial subs like Paradigm Sub 2 or Velo DD 18+ competing against the Seaton and JTR subs.
Tim

Thanks Archaea and other for this GREAT effort and USEFUL thread... The AVS Forum community of AV enthusiast at its best!

Thank you guys for sharing!

Archaea i've been following this with great interest and has since inspire me start a socal gtg. I would appreciated if you can lend me some tips and some testing material.

Wow, I don't pay much attention to AVS or any forum for a few days, and come back to a blind test and 365 posts! Glad to see a thread not go overboard and start to get out of line here!

I could swear I mentioned somewhere how difficult it was to have to be the "blind" person in a test and how difficult it was to tell subs apart. I just wish Arch could have been one of the blind guys as I recall your comments about loving ported vs sealed.

This thread really points to why subs like the Submersive, once again, is as good as it is and as expensive as it is. It's one thing to throw a driver into a box based on a WinISD model, apply some inexpensive amp, and hope it's going to peform. It's a completely different thing to design a sub from the ground up, including box, driver, amp, protection circuitry, proper signal shaping, etc. and test it extensively before bringing it to market. It saves all the guess-work required for the end-user when it comes to outboard amplifiers, EQ, clipping issues, gain structure, etc.

... and guess what? It costs more.

Awesome work guys.

Ha..chicken!

Excellent stuff here.

I have to say I'm surprised by little here...from the pure perfromance/preference standpoint anyway.

First I can only imagine the elapsed time between the 3rd and 5th subs, forget the 1st and 7th. I'm sure I don't have to tell many here about the minds ability to recollect sound minutes apart, never mind compare and contrast it among a half dozen others over a considerable timeline.

Thus, can it really surprise anyone that predictions and results were all over the place?

BUT.

At the same time- after what all would agree was a pretty darn considerable number of sessions from a number of listeners- I'm also not surprised that two capable, northerly-priced SEALED units seemed to have finished pretty darn close at the top spot, even though there seemed to be a bit of hyperbole in the early portion of the thread that the "mixed" results would tend to have someone believe otherwise.

There were what (3) upper-priced ported subs and (2) sealed (the CHT and MFW's are much less expensive and a bit outgunned)?

And the (2) sealed finish 1st and 2nd?

Again, the varied predictions as to precisely what's what shouldn't be a shocker IMO, but neither should the fact that (2) higher-end, sealed units took first and second when all was said and done.

And btw, I (happily) chose a giant, ported sub for my living room.

James

Jeff left some drywall carnage in my house too.

Again- as I said- (3) upper priced ported (and a horn) models and (2) upper-priced sealed.

And again, I said I wasn't surprised that none of the attendees collared a "who's who" amongst 7 subs. No shocker there.

Sure they didn't blindly pick out the ferraris from the lamborghinis but they did (overall) choose two sealed models at #1 and #2.

There's really nothing to debate other than what some may or may not have anticipated in this exercise/GTG.

Very interesting though, for sure.

James

Mastermaybe,

You are wrong about one thing, you don't own a huge ported 18 inch sub! Trust me, that is tiny for a ported 18 sub. My F-20's, DTS-10's, and my DIY LLT's were huge subs! Only one had an 18 inch driver. The Caps are small in comparison. He'll, the Caps are smaller than my dual 18 sealed and about the same size as my sealed sonos!

Yeah I suppose there are much larger out there.

Sometimes I think it looks quite quaint... than I run into half a dozen "normal" subs in others living rooms, lol.

I'm sure it looks like a lunchbox to me and a coffin to my wife.

Jamed

My wife thinks HTIB subs are big, they don't count(wives). Yeah, it is funny looking at small subs now because I know they are not getting bass, well, anything low. I just installed 3 888's and dual Cap1000's at a friends house which replaced a single Sunfire jr sub! Thank goodness I replaced tower speakers up front or those Cap1000's would have stuck out. They are the bass stands(I spelled it like that on purpose) to the 888's and you can say I impressed him. He told me it did not sound balanced and something was off and I told him that he still had his crappy surrounds that is messing up his beautiful front stage! I have not heard from him since! Either he is happy or just afraid to talk to me about it. He was supposed to get a custom center 888, grills for the cap1000's, and maybe surrounds but he won't stop texting me BS if I bring it up. He is a spoiled millionaire!

WOW! What an undertaking.......

Thank you Archaea and everyone else who helped you pull this off. I have been reading the thread here and there (whenever I can fit it in my hectic schedule). I like many others here appreciate all the time and effort that was/is being spent on this shootout comparison. Very enlightening for sure!

I have a question (that I may have missed the answer to?), has there been any theory given as to why the sealed Cap had such a huge dip in FR between 20Hz and 40Hz? I realize it is just an average from the 12 positions, but that FR seems odd for a sub that did so well in the blind shootout.

Thanks again, really, really cool that you went to all this effort! Kudos!

Patrick

Too bad we don't have decay charts on all these subs with Audyssey turned off.

That would tell us a lot about how these subs perform natively.

It could be that for many of us listening that the frequency response was actually quite flat or even had a hump in this range. Some seats could have had a large dip in this range that influenced the scoring even more.

Without setting things up the same as the GTG, we will never really know.

Any of these subs will sound different in your home if you have slightly different equipment, room sizes, etc. but its a very good approximation on how they compare relative to each other.

Matter of fact, based on this shootout, I ordered a new sub yesterday.

Don't know whether to thank or curse the lot of you.

What did you get?

Did your ordered a CapS or Submersive?

My money is on the KLIPSCH-->

HH

because it set the standard for the GTG...

Submersive HP.

I currently have a SVS PB Ultra 13 and am looking forward to seeing how the two compare.

There's no comparison. You're gonna be very, VERY happy, methinks!

Yeah, very true! Even though the Cap S pretty well dominated the Movie scoring, there were 3 people that that did not score it very high compared to their highest rank (including you desertdome). I'm guessing with a dip between 20-40Hz for movies that it would be quite noticable. Then again, if the Submersive (which jedimastergrant and wlelandj scored higher) and/or the JTR OS were placed close to the Cap S during testing, you would think that they might have the same kind of drop in FR if it was room related. That said, maybe you three really liked what you heard from the SubM and OS outside of those frequency ranges too. Like you said, we will never really know, I just thought it was interesting.

Thanks again guys, it really has been great reading this thread and getting this type of perspective!

Best,
Patrick

BTW, in that post at 377 (reposted from the beginning), so that was the "average" of the FR at 12 different locations?

Probably somewhere at the beginning of the thread, but do you have a chart which shows the frequency response of each sub at the same LP, with the same level used for the sweep?

In a blind shootout, I'd never expect the sub with the flattest frequency response to win, actually.

Not sure what you mean by "highest spl" though, i.e., at what frequency? Or are you simply referring to playing a scene and checking the "max" SPL achieved?