Best €2500 sub purely for music?


I recently was lucky enough to try a demo between a two rel 9tx and one s510, and I though the s510 was vastly superior. My only hesitation for being one was that the EU pricing of rels are kinda steep, and maybe im not someone best suited to use them? To explain, I use a minidsp shd preamp to control my entire system. With that I always use a high-pass filter with a extremely sharp roll off of -48db. Anything above 60hz is given to the speakers. I found this to sound night and day better than trying to cross any speaker with their natural cutoff. This is antithetical to how rel designs their subs. Lastly, it only has phase adjustments of 0 and 180. Its for these reasons why im asking you if there are any alternatives to the s510 you recommend between €2k and €3k IN EUROPE (so no svs or rhythmic or any other US brand of any sort) that might be more appropriate for a purely hifi application?

My speakers are German physiks hrs-130's. They're omnidirectional, but what is important here is they a sealed design that is extremely precise and fast, but its not enough SPL for synthetic music. The lesser rel's arnt as fast as it, so I ask for something equivalent to the s series. I only want one, and my room is 30m^2. I will be using the full Dirac calibration of the shd to integrate it, so subs with on-board dsp is completely irrelevant, and I'd rather not spend on a feature that's useless to me. What other options are available here? 

endymion_joshi-godrez

Showing 10 responses by endymion_joshi-godrez

Thats still a US company. I cannot pay the outrageous duty tax for those things. It needs to be a European or British company. US products here are 50% more expensive than they should be and are uncompetitive for those prices. 

People have completely ignored that I live in Europe. I guess Americans weren’t taught to read too well. Rythmik doesn’t exist here. Why wasn’t that clear to you in my post?

Did someone seriously just get upset at me because I didn't consider that a product exists in a regoin because it has existed at one point on the used market? That is spectacular.

As biamping, no tower no matter the size is going to give you the bass authority that a sub will carrying the frequencies below 60hz. At least one that is a technically capable. It has absolutely nothing to do with power.

Velodyne looks like to be one of the only other options in Europe that makes something like the s series. All other subs of this peice range are enormous, and are completely inappropriate for my needs. Thank you. (PS John Hunter himself calls the subwoofers, all the technicians I’ve talked to called rels subwoofers and the marketing on their website called their products subs. The company itself disagrees with that distinction). My only concern is 1. Nemo propaganda, who is someone I trust for subwoofer recommendations, had a horrible experience with their entry level model. It wasn’t broken, it was just terribly braced and designed. 2 A lot of music/HT subs still play like HT subs, which is a presentation I dont like. They exaggerate bass. JL audio, SVS, and the mass majority of subs do this. Rel and rythmik do not. If you have experience one of the sub brands from both sides, could you inform me what side velodynes usally sit on?

I dont think many of you have heard a sub like a s510. We are talking about a subwoofer that retails for $2700 in the US, yet has less bass extention than a svs sb2000. There is a very good reason why it cost over 4 times more, which is why I was asking from people that do not use subwoofera for HT. A HT sub is simply not what I want, both because SPL was never an issue from the smaller rels I had, and the HT subs like the XTZ recommended to me have a bass presentation I dont like. They exaggerate bass, the mass majority of sub makers including kef, svs, JL and so on do that. I don’t want a sub like that. Rels dont, and apparently neither do rythmiks sealed subs. I want alternatives like that in the plus €2000 range. 

The rockports are WAY bigger and more expensive than my speakers, they need something like a no.25 or 32, and you will hear a noticeable improvement than without even a single. I think you're right, one thing abouts rels they seemly never break. There are still ebay auctions of rel stadium in working condition, thats around 30 years of use. I’ve yet to see anyone show me that they block one, while velodyne, JL, and B&W subs seem to have a tone of issues in the long term.

Damn, my heel, Mr hilde coming in cluch the facts, too bad he still can’t read. On a serious note, the main point of a sub is so you can high-pass problematic frequenies at the positioning of your speakers in the room. It could well be the best positioning for other frequencies has a bass node. Doing what rel suggests by just blending the two full range is objectively inferior in evey single provable way and from a subjective standpoint, sounds significantly worse from all the Rels I’ve had previously. Get a SHD or anything else that can blend the two flawlessly like JL crossover unit (though, I don’t think you can set it to have anything more than 24db drop off which would still mean its audible at 80hz (-8db) with a 60hz crossover. Thats not acceptable for music).

Fair game, it auto corrected me because I use both the German and English keyboard. I didnt see both of them were still wrong. You can't be emotionally compromised because of a intermet forum. That remark should of had no impact on you whatsoever, because it was true. 

"if there are any alternatives to the s510 you recommend between €2k and €3k IN EUROPE (so no svs or rhythmic or any other US brand of any sort) that might be more appropriate for a purely hifi application?"

But yes, that spelling mistake was pretty bad all things considered.