The Subwoofer Recommendation by Pricepoint Thread. - Page 5

Mine does too but I have it blacked out with a darkening strip.

Movies look great when you turn your flat-panel backlight way way down, but the glowing equipment lights become a problem, so I have mine covered so that they are just barely visible.

Unfortunately, my Sony tv receiver won't display a transparent menu over an HDMI source

I'm at the point where I only see ID sellers. What's a retail store?

j/k as a couple months back, we bought our last T.V. from BB but everything else is ID or internet retailers. Our future purchases will be a pair of internet direct subwoofer manufactures and if we decide to, an ID Emotiva Amp.

Due to efficient delivery services and the internet, retail stores are becoming less and less germane to the home theater experience where twenty years ago, at the beginning of the home theater craze, the retail store was all the consumer had.

The internet gives the consumer true freedom of choice.
Edited by BeeMan458 - 9/6/12 at 10:55am

+1

Its not that B&M model/brands perform bad like Velodyne, Martin Logan, Paradigm, Bower Wilkins subwoofers, its that they are priced at such a huge premium compared to ID subwoofers. Looking at Velodynes site I couldn't believe the price they ask for their subwoofers. $1800 for a sealed 12" 16" cubed. It costs that much for a tiny remote and a bunch of EQs? To me and I could be wrong, but Velodyne seems to design their subwoofers around whether they can EQ the hell out of it rather than design it to have a flat response. I've seen several reviews that say the Velodynes sounded good but rolled off way to soon compared to the others in the shoot out like HSU and SVS.

I want a pair of Martin Logan, Depth i's but the price tag for two subs, seriously slows me down. ML doesn't have B-stock as all ML B-Stock is returned to be refinished back to "perfect." So the choices are, buy full retail or buy used or demo in black when I want dark cherry. This pushes me into ID sales as with Hsu I can get 15" Rosewood for about half of a Depth I or if I have to go with conventional subwoofer design, we have many, well reviewed, better priced choices that are much cheaper in pairs. ML isn't the only subwoofer on the market and I don't think they know this.

Are you talking the Hsu VTF-15H or the HSU ULS=15?

The ULS seems like a good fit for you in Rosewood finish. It is sealed, and smaller than the VTF-15H:
http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/uls-15Dual.html

Funk audio can also do custom finishes and would easily outperform the ML subs:
http://www.funkaudio.ca/18.0.html

Honestly why would you want a ML Depth i when you can get other better subs for a lot less. 3 x 8" drivers powered by 350 watts RMS? Hell no for $2k!

I've been giving the VTF-15H the hungry eye. Not wanting/needing a wireless feature is the why I took the ULS-15 unit off the radar and the reason for the ML, Depth i is, I like both the size and the 120 degree angle of dispersion to take advantage of walls, corners and having an emitter pointing towards the main listening position to maintain directionality of the >80Hz soundwaves vs the limitations a mono-directional emitter provides. Remember, I set the LPF at <120Hz and yes, I know, it's not in keeping with certain local conventions. Yes, I know, I set things up in non-conventional ways.


Can't say as I've looked into Funk Audio. Thanks for the thought.

On further investigation, yes, I have checked in on them but no prices posted and it seems they're selling only in January. That's not necessarily bad, just hard to get pricing information.

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Edited by BeeMan458 - 9/6/12 at 2:51pm

The prices are listed in the product pages, the 18.0 and 18.3 are the only products up right now but there are several more coming onto the site in the next couple weeks for introductory prices. The big sale for January is just for clearance/B stock, special deals.

Price no object, other than paradigms sub2, or the gotham from JL audio, or the other one from velodyn what about this one from KEF, i have not heard anyone with info on these or shoot out results.

http://www.kef.com/html/ca_en/showroom/hi-fi_series/reference_series/fact_sheet/subwoofer/209/index.html

looks nice specks are good but the price point wow for a subwoofer, any additionl info would be great..

Thanks for pointing out the prices for me. Daaaaaaaaaaaang! Now that's some price.

For what you are getting, that is a bargain. Look what a similar 18" sub from Velodyne or KEF will set you back. Compare Funk's $/db ratio to what you get from JL Audio or Paradigm, I doubt it would be close at all.

I'm sorry, respectively, at $3k and almost $4k for one subwoofer, my budget isn't big enough to consider anything that expensive, to be a bargain. And to some, I'm sure they are.

I appreciate the brevity of your thought but my idea of a bargain is a used, cherry wood Martin Logan, Depth i for $1,300.00. My idea of a bargain is a 5% discount on a pair of delivered, SVS PB-12NSD's. Like every other budget minded married guy, my idea of money management is next year, buying a used Martin Logan, Depth i and at some later time and date of my wife's approval, following up with a second one.

(Joking here. I never realized, looking at a pair of $1k - $2k each subs, was considered slumming it.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for anybody who has a budget sufficient to see a pair of these Funk subwoofers as a bargain. If I had enough money to see the Funk subwoofers as a bargain, I'd step up and throw down on a pair of separate 240v/30A circuits, (if need be, have the 200A service upgraded to a 300A service), install a pair of Paradigm Sub2's and be done with it but that's a personal opinion I can't afford to carry.

Now I feel like a charity case. Anybody got a pair of Paradigm Sub2's they don't want. I promise to take really good care of them.



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Edited by BeeMan458 - 9/11/12 at 9:21am

The Funk subs would still be a bargain. First of all, I doubt a used Depth sub would be covered by a warranty. The Funk subs will also have a performance advantage against a Depth, so for a $/db perspective, it may still be at an advantage. It may also be at an advantage against some PB12s from a $/db perspective, the PB12s are not output monsters, its true you could get four for the price of one Funk 18.0, but you might need at least four to equal the performance of one 18.0. I would rather have one perfect sub than a bunch of good but not great subs.

By the way, I would still rather have a Funk sub over a Paradigm Sub 2, the Sub 2 has some issues. A sealed sub like the Sub 2 that draws that much energy is bound to have heat problems. What's worse is that all those drivers are just more moving parts that can break. The Sub 2 reminds me of some Italian supercar that works awesome on the track for a moment but needs to be constantly fixed. The Funk subs looks like it will have the same massive performance without all the potential reliability issues.

Then my suggestion would be, mail them to us and while performing their magic in our living room, we'll figure out how to keep those Italian sports car like speakers running. Don't fret, we have central air and we'll be sure to keep them comfortable.

Out of curiosity, everything bad you said about the Sub2's was conjecture based issues as opposed to fact based commentary. Do you have any information showing that the Sub2 suffers from any of these listed maladies; heat problems, moving part or driver issues, warranty breaking issues, actual reliability issues?

I'm not trying to pin you. Please don't think I am. You stated they have issues and then followed up your comment that it was in your opinion. If there's bad news on the Sub2, I'd love to read the news. And FWIW, there's nothing wrong with assumptions or conjecture as one can't get out of bed in the morning without the assumption that they'll make it back to the same bed, that night due to conjecture.

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Edited by BeeMan458 - 9/11/12 at 4:05pm

There won't be enough Sub 2's out in the wild to know any kind of general issues that they will have. I expect that Paradigm would take care of them quickly either way, to preserve their reputation. So I am guessing based on the sub's design and specs.

First of all, 4.5 kilowatt RMS amplifier in that small of a sealed enclosure? Your central air conditioning won't make a dent on the kind of cooling that will need. For most speakers, well over 90 percent of the energy dumped into them dissipates as heat. Do you know how much heat four kilowatts will generate in a cabinet the size of the Sub 2? Hint: a lot. Hopefully they have thermal sensors which can trigger a shutdown if they go past some critical limit. Then there is the matter of how heat affects the driver's linearity. Thermal compression will take a toll on the driver's responsiveness from decreasing the driver's sensitivity by increasing its resistance. Unless the Sub 2 has some sort of of correction mechanism in place for this, it will adversely affect the sound.

Also it is a well-known principle of engineering that the more moving parts a thing has, the likelier it is to break down. From this we can surmise that, everything else being equal, a subwoofer with six drivers is far less reliable than one with a single driver. While the Sub 2 driver's are not equal to Funk's drivers, I think you can safely assume that the Sub 2 would averagely break down before a Funk sub. If one driver goes down, the whole unit goes down. This is compounded by the kind of heat that will inevitably be involved in the Sub 2's operation.

The Sub 2 pulls off a neat trick by packing a huge amount of output from a relatively small unit, but a major drawback is the design they choose to use is inherently less reliable. To me, the Funk Audio sub's are a simpler and much more elegant solution. Likewise I always found the Paradigm Sub 15 a more compelling offering from Paradigm than the Sub 2.

Yeah some of those subwoofers are crazy priced for similar or less performance than the typical top of the line ID subwoofer like the Funk subs, Caps or Submersive. Just look how expensive the RBH SX 1212 is $5k for a dual 12 subwoofer. Although Gene from AH did say that it has more output than any subwoofer I could come up with including dual Caps, dual SubMersives, dual Ultras, ect... From his comments none of those can stand up to the RBH

I think that beyond $2-3k the point of dimishing returns kicks in fairly fast, performance wise.

look for info on thesub2 in the sub2 tread if thee are issues peopl will say them there, i have not heard of any so far

If you were running sine tones at full power for extended periods it could be a problem (in fact it looks like Ricci did trip a limiter which caused it shut down twice in his long term compression sweeps), but under anything resembling normal usage, you would only see a small fraction of that power being used 99.9% of the time.

Go to the AH forum and go to subwoofers find RBH 1212R thread.

I mentioned in previous post that I don't feel like the RBH 1212R is a serious contender in the $5000 range and that there are better choices like, Dual Caps, dual subm, dual ultras, quad PB12 plus ect... He said that the RBH is in another league than those subwoofers.

He banned me from the site so can't post a link. He also didn't like the fact that I mentioned that it looks very similar to the EMP 1010 subwoofer, he felt I was misleading people by saying so.

Just visited the Audioholics site for that thread myself. Are Gene and Irv always such advertiser wads?

And I'm glad. The wife was beginning to ask questions.

(Sorry, never lived that life, couldn't resist.)

Yes

You can openly trash any brand/company and he doesn't care or chime in. The second you say anything about RBH or EMP he jumps in real quick. He's and unprofessional shilll whose out to make money. Love his comments about use keyboard commandos, I guess he forgot he's the one that got busted for creating a fake user name to trash companys that backed out of sending in advertising dollars

That RBH is only a single 6" port. So I doubt it has much extension compared to JTRs, Cap, ect...

I would say a pair of SVS PB12 Plus stacked would handily outperform the 1212R.

The size of the port is irrelevent with regards to extension. A 6" port provides plenty of breathing for 2 12s. The limitation is likely to be the output that 2 12s can provide. I seriously doubt it can come near a Captivator in output.

Yes, well, he lost me when he gave the Sherbourn 300x7 amp the product of the year award without testing it and when questioned about that; he replied that as an engineer he knows how to read schematics and as a result knows the Sherbourn is the product of the year. He is now touting Sherbourn receivers like they are still made by the old Ron Fone company when in fact Sherbourn is now part of Jade Designs and Emotiva.

Golly, as soon as you begin to understand that they will draw but a fraction of that figure 99% of the time the more you can begin to understand that assuaging that it will have or does have "heat issues" through normal (or even most abnormal) use is ridiculous.

sheesh.

James
Edited by mastermaybe - 9/12/12 at 10:52am