Captivators and Submersive comparison in my room - Page 5

I would bet a Mitt $10K that he wouldn't ...

hey carp it seems like you were on the fence at first when comparing the single subM to the your dual caps then when you sat down and did some 1 to 1 listening comparisons, that sealed the deal for you. is that pretty accurate ?

Really looking forward to this! It would be interesting to see if each person there could identify the Submersive and Captivator in a blind test during select scenes. I have a Spanish DTS track of Master & Commander that might be a good scene to utilize for such a test.

All you guys have to do is calibrate them both to the same levels, whether flat or 5 dBs hot is up to you, after EQing each. This way you can pick out the one you prefer. They should play the same levels unless one compresses during peaks.

Will be really helpful if you can put up some personal ratings on the 2 sub based on few factors

- ultra low freq energy
- mid bass tightness / slam eg. Gun shots
- how well each pressurized the room
- level of details heard

At the same time, I also owned a mid bass specialist mbm. Is this still worth keeping if subm or cap already performing much better than mbm at mid bass region?

Many thanks.
Edited by ralfale - 6/23/12 at 10:51pm

I fully expect that the Captivators trounced all over the SubMersives... pretty much in all regards. Most especially because Jonathan has had the (needed) time to test several amps/configurations/etc. with his Captivators. This is where I believe, IMHO, that the SubMersives have always had the (unfair?) advantage over the Captivators. I think Sheldon should have had enough time with his SubMersives to make sure they shine as well, but the Captivators should now be at the top of their game due to Jonathan's experience with them.

Simply put, I think the Captivators SHOULD have significantly more clean output (at least 6db) than the SubMersives. If the Captivators aren't pushed too hard (amp clipping, etc.), and Jonathan is able to setup them up correctly in the time allotted, I don't see the SubMersives out-shining the Captivators even for music. I do foresee the Captivators making a huge, positive, impression for movies. I personally love the ported sound for movies (I miss my SVS PB-13 Ultras in that regard, and that regard only ).

I hope you guys had fun. It's a lot of work doing these comparisons!

guys don't get your expectations too high for any kind of definitive a/b.

we didn't do any calibration, we didn't do any FR comparsions, we didn't do anything except some very very casual level matching. SMS-1 was out of the loop, mic2200 EQ was not engaged at all for EQ.

we just ran both sub systems with naked response.

I asked if we wanted to level match everything and try to make identical frequency responses,when I got there at 2PM, but because my job had taken an extra two hours in the morning I'd shown up two hours later to the party with my captivators than expected ---the group consensus by that time was let's just watch some clips. Sadly, we don't even have a frequency response to compare. None the less I/we had a great time.

I quickly used my omnimic (with not smoothing) to setup the cap pro HPF, it showed the cap pros down about 6dB at around 27hz, and down about 5db around mid 40's hz in pretty narrow bands. -- likely due to placement though we didn't really see the typical 70hz rise in carp's room. Overall not too bad for just naked response --- and with 1/6 smoothing (some would say about what the ear actually hears) the graph looked pretty good. generally speaking it was about a +/- 3 or so between 20hz and 80hz. I didn't even save it though -- sorry. I also didn't see the submersives FR chart, because I missed the earlier timeperiod when that was preformed, but MrSmither ran REW on his laptop, and he said the response looked pretty flat except for a similar dip at mid 40hz after he reviewed my omnimic graph. Who knows how much the FRs varied in reality --- because they were both measured with different equipment, and different placements, and the subs weren't even in the same position --- so don't think of this as some sort of definitive A/B -- it ended up just being a chance to crank the subs to eleven and have some fun.


Hey counsil -- thanks for the vote of confidence, but great setup still takes time and of course the setup is room and source chain dependant. My Mic2200 and HPF settings I use in my house don't apply in carps house, -- different receiver, different everything. I'm fairly quick at setting up parametric EQs now with the MIC2200, but I just setup the HPF and we immediately started watching clips instead of messing with the two available PEQs on the mic2200. At any rate, neither sub had any external EQ advantage, though of course the submersive is EQ'ed in it's plate amp. I did find out I didn't have the HPF set quite right originally apparently and we got some distortion at one point on the caps when we were running the AVR at reference and the subs about 12dB hot. :P The caps made a moment of bad sounds on a Titan AE icefield clip (I think it was?) (not any kind of hard bottom or clank, but they found their limits). I upped the HPF a couple clicks on the mic2200 and it didn't happen again.

The Crown XLS-5000 only tickled the clip lights a couple of times with the 20hz tune we used on the caps, and at the point people heard the distortion the clip lights weren't on at neither the mic2200, nor the crown amp --- so we had found the cap driver limits. I was watching the amp lights and mic2200 signal lights very closely to ensure we backed off when any clipping occurred. The omnimic showed 'peak' of 129dB on this clip at carps' main listening position - which is quite a ways away from the subs. I can't remember what max spl for the night was --- maybe carp remembers.

That said we had a great time, and one some things the submersives did better, and on some things the caps did better. I still walked away with confidence that I like my caps better, and carp may still like his submersives better. It's subjective. We like what we like.

I don't have a moments hesitiation in saying I loved the uzzi shots and most of the machine gun fire better on the submersives. But man, the explosions on the captivators are way more visceral --- like give you chills and non stop forced smiles visceral. like 2x's more incredible IMO. Heck during the battlefield earth final alien ship destruction sequence -- I think I had goosbumps, chills and forced grin of stupidity for about four minutes straight while we were listening at reference with the subs 10dB hot. The caps do get louder than the submersives. That said -- the submersives were no slouch and they actually got a LOT louder than I expected when compared to the caps at full bore. It wasn't a SPL blowout in favor of the caps.

Both are great sub systems and I'm very elated with what I own and still have the subs I most prefer of anything I've yet heard - but would be very satisfied with either set of subs. The volume levels we listened at were pure insanity.

Carps room is phenominal. He should be the poster child for a reasonably budget oriented system that is just killer. I love the ED cinema 12s. LOVE them! His projector picture is larger than life and the pictures do it no justice whatsoever. It's fantastic!


The Pulse scene with the throbbing pulse baseline is my new favorite demo clip. Incredible!

If we had more time I would have liked to try a 15hz tune on the caps, though the 20hz tune sounded great, and I didn't think it was missing much of anything noticably deep at those volumes. In fact, Alex (pennynike1) commented that he though the captivators were the deeper sounding sub. Carp said the captivators have a throatier sound. I personally think it's a meaner, more aggressive sound! In your face sound. At any rate --- six hours FLIES by when you are having fun! We had some great ribs at a local barbeque shop as well in a short break for dinner.

By the way. At the end of the night, Luke Kamp, and Pennynike1, and I went to see Brave at the new AMC Dolby Atmos theater in town. It's the new Dolby concept theater. There are only 16 in the US, and 22 in the world. A Dolby team was actually on hand to introduce the technology, and gave a little speech before the movie. There are 50 something surround speakers - on the ceilings, walls, everywhere.

Carps room was significantly better with the ED cinema12s, and either the Submersive or Captivator pair. - Significantly! I couldn't help feeling dissapointed we didn't have the bluray at his house instead. It was plenty loud at the Atmos, and very clear, but the bass is soooo weak in comparison. I don't think there was much of anything below 30-35hz, and it's quite noticable when you've just experienced your body shaking for the previous six hours and you feel NONE of that in the theater. Level matched subs to mains is lamesauce.
Edited by Archaea - 6/24/12 at 12:37am

Yea,

I did just about knock myself out. Good thing your projector mount is hardy!

Yes the pulse scene was significantly better on the caps. Like 2x's better at minimum. But the uzzi shots from the underworld scenes were amazing on the submersives --- way better. I wonder what frequency the uzzi shots were at.

Your impression of which sounds better when approaching limits is not my opinion in the least. I never liked sealed subs sound when driven past their limits and into compression. They sound burdened and muddy and muffeled without ever really making a easily identifiable holy crud "bad sound". With ported you get a clear identifiable bad sound, when the driver loses control, but it sounds darn good right up to that point. That's my ears' feedback anyway. I'll stick with ported, and I'll take that darn blind test challenge, because like MrSmithers said -- these subs sound incredibly different to me. ESPECIALLY as sealed approaches it's limit. I've now heard the caps and submersives face off directly in the same room at the same time at least four times, and heard them seperately on dozens of occassions for submersives, and --- well --- I own the caps sooo of course I know their sound. They've always seemingly had the same characteristics. I fully acknowledge I might be humbled, but man I'd like to give it a shot!

BTW -- for those not there, we couldn't blind test tonight because 1) we didn't do any real EQ setup, and 2) we had a rather annoying loud ground loop hum on the Captivators for some reason that we couldn't figure out how to get rid of and we had no cheater plugs to implement. It would have been very obvious which was which because the ground hum was there, and the bluray player loading noises, and weird little feedback noises were coming through the speakers when the captivators were playing. I'm not sure why. I get none of that at home. Ground loop hum is hard to resolve sometimes.
Edited by Archaea - 6/24/12 at 1:12am

Now I'm wondering how much diff btw cap and cap s.

CARP
Try that scene in program 2 and see if it
makes a difference, If you get a chance.
Thanks
WVchris

Obviously late posting, turns out I needed more sleep than usual after getting beat to hell for 7 hours!

First, thanks to carp for hosting and to Mrs. carp for being cool enough to let us disrupt or drive her from her home for an entire Saturday. As always I love carp's room both in terms of equipment placement, PQ, and AQ. If I ended up with an exact replica of carp's room once my house shopping process is complete I'd be an exceptionally happy person.

I own a SubMersive so everything should be read with that in mind. It's on the third floor of an apartment and although the neighbors are pretty cool about it there's still a level above which I'm not willing to go, certainly not close to where we were yesterday. This was my first time hearing the ported Caps.

As was mentioned, everything we did was pretty casual. We started listening to clips on the SubMersives as soon as people got there. I had done some measurements with REW and a CSL calibrated Dayton EMM-6 mic but my assumption was that we'd do more aggressive measurements/EQ'ing when Archaea arrived with his Caps, we'd measure/EQ both and then do whatever comparisons we were gonna do. However, a previous commitment ran late and then we had to rewire carp's entire house (not really but Archaea did have to put in an outlet for his Crown amp). We than had some cabling stuff to work through and a ground loop hum which we tried to solve for a bit. We then decided that at near-reference with bass 15dB hot a little ~75dB ground hum probably wasn't going to matter anymore. By this time it was late enough that people just wanted to hear some bass, so we didn't do much beyond level matching and getting the HPF in place for the Caps. The measurements were fairly similar. Both had a hump centered close to 20Hz. The Caps had a dip right after the peak. Both were down at around 43Hz. Anyways, all of that is just for context.

I realized after I left that I didn't hear the Caps with any music which I'd really like to do since I think that's probably the most universally agreed upon (from my reading of the various GTG threads) strength of the SubMs relative to the Caps. I do love the SubM sound for music, I've never heard them sound bad and they sound great even at lower/more "reasonable" volume levels.

I do feel like the SubM's were tighter on a lot of the movie scenes I watched. Specifically pure gunshots nearly always sounded better on the SubM's. This included clips from Underworld: Awakening and Battle: Los Angeles. We didn't watch the Book of Eli clip or the opening scene from MI: Ghost Protocol but I suspect the same would've been true. The other thing that I felt the SubMs were always better at was that sort of "flutter sweep" short-medium duration sine sweep that is present sometimes. There are a couple scenes from Battle: Los Angeles where this is present and I think the Titan:AE clip had one. Pure explosions the Caps were dominant. Carp called it throaty, people also refer to it as visceral, aggressive, in-your-face, whatever it is the Caps have more of it. The Pulse scene was the most aggressive example of this, I actually had to get up and open the two doors at the back of carp's room because they made a rattle that was loud enough to be bothersome (even with bass into the ~120's) even if they were pulled completely shut. The Caps sounded to me like they had a bit more output but both subs sound great past a point where any normal human might listen for any duration of time.

I'd be super happy to own either of these subs, I really don't think you can go wrong. I think ideally, as I said at the meet, we can just build a system that sends visceral explosions to the Caps, musical bass and gunshots to the SubMersives and then I'll be a happy guy. I'm really interested to hear a Cap S2 and see what/if any qualities that shares with each sub (since I believe the driver is a modified version of what's in the ported cap but it's a sealed sub). If I had to pick for movies I absolutely don't know which I'd pick, it'd be interesting to rate them blind and see where the chips fell. Like Archaea, I really feel like I could pick them out from each other in a blind test, the sound characteristic and the way they handle each scene seems distinct enough to do so. However, based on the results of the blind GTG it looks like there's a good chance I'd be eating my words, so who knows!

I left before you guys did the pulse scene with the caps! Well, just keep that in mind as you read my impressions. I wish my Orbit Shifter could have made it in time. Jeff shipped it on Friday so we just missed. Maybe we will have round three at my place.

I had heard both at the blind GTG and my thoughts are pretty much the same except this time I knew which sub I was listening to. I agree with much of what has already been posted. The underworld elevator scene was really interesting in that the gunfire on the subm was tighter but also quite a bit louder and shook your chair in rapid succession. Very cool stuff. I really loved it. But then the crash of the elevator was just crushing with the caps. They each did a few things that the other did not. Too hard to pick a winner. It is just personal preference.

I felt like there was more overall volume with the caps and the air being pushed from the caps ports was pretty cool if you were sitting in the right place. Wish we could have listened to some music on the caps. I would not worry about the sound the caps made on the AE scene. We were listening at insane levels. I would never listen that loud and I had to intermittently plug my ears with both subs and a few people wore ear plugs. Yes, it was LOUD!

If I were buying just one sub it would be the cap bc of the headroom. If I was buying duals in a small room and placed ideally and EQ'd it would be the SubM. So what I am saying is that the sound quality (while there are differences) would not be the deciding factor for me. The application would determine which sub and every room is different.

Congrats on this successful GTG! Quite an interesting read.

Did you try listening/comparing subMs and caps under a reasonable level and
without running them hotter than the other speakers?

I ran my 2 subM HPs mostly in a modest level, and level-matching them with other speakers.
So I'd like to know if one runs the subs (subMs vs Caps) under more tamed circumstances, would the audible signatures
between 2 subs diminish?

We did not do that while I was there and I doubt they did after I left. It sounds like things went even crazier with the Pulse scene when I left. I did hear the Pulse scene with the SubM and thought it was impressive enough. Now I wonder just how wild it can get.

For much of the SubM demo we were running close to 15 db hot! This was at PennyNike's request. He is a little bit insane and did not seem to think it was too much:)

I agree it would be interesting to find out if the sound signature can be determined at a reasonable listening level. I don't think I would run them that hot even for demo purposes. We will see once I get my Orbit Shifter dialed in but I am guessing 10 hot is plenty to impress people with and then closer to 5-8 most of the time. I am interested to find out what I actually prefer.

Thanks jedimastergrant.
Looking forward to see more reports and future round3 at your place.. subM+ Cap+ Orbit shifter blind testing.. nice!
Personally I won't run my subs more than 5dBs hotter without being distracted esp. during music playback.
The subMs I own really don't draw any unwanted attention to them.

Maybe I missed the reference in an earlier post, but can you specifiy what movie "the Pulse scene" is from?

Thanks.

Sounds like you guys had a blast. In your opinions, how much better/different are the 2 subs you guys listened to compared to the PB-13 Ultra?

The Sound of Music ...

I'm plum tuckered out and alex is still craving more! He's a machine! After the all day demos yesterday first thing this morning he's wanting to hook the caps back up and have another go. . So we hooked the caps back up and played the pulse scene a few more times at reference with the subs 10 db hot. I've found and reached my limits.. My ears hurt. Its like sensory overload.


We are now at lukes and demoing his setup and then we immediately are heading to randy bessingers house.

I've left lukes demo room and am taking a short break.

Almost nothing that was done could be defined as reasonable. I had the same question as well, at what volume level (both absolute volume and in terms of how much hotter the subs are than the speakers) COULD the sonic signatures be identified. It seems like the differences would start to blend as you drop the volume but I'm not sure at what point that would happen. The other extreme is that a person couldn't identify them in a blind test at any volume level. This assuming said person had heard both subs to begin with. Looking at the blind GTG thread it looks like they were running -10MV with the subs 6dB hot I believe is what Archaea said. That's a bit different since it was a very long day with a lot more subs in the mix so I think it might lend some clues but I think it's quite different from an A-B or ABX type of test.

Ha Ha! I have not seen the whole movie but from the scene we watched it is more like "The Sound of Extremely Disturbed Psychopathic Death Music"!

I think the movie is actually called Pulse and there is more than one movie with that name. This is a recent horror movie.

It has waves of very intense "pulsing" bass with some freaky higher frequencies thrown in. I wish I could have heard the caps play the scene. I was impressed enough with the SubM in that scene.

I believe they're referring to the 2006 horror movie with Kristen Bell


The scene is a few minutes after the one-hour mark and looks something like this . . .



which sounds amazing with very capable subs so I can only imagine what it must have sounded like with a pair of Caps and SubM.