Looking for a new Subwoofer


I am looking to replace my Definitive Technology Supercube 6000 with a new subwoofer to augment my Fyne F-702 speakers. My listening room is about 13 x 22 ft with 8’ ceilings and an 8’ opening to the dining room to the left of the listening area. I try to avoid major products made in mainland China—in spite of their at times very good quality, and I have narrowed the brands down to Paradigm, Vandersteen, and JL Audio, specifically, a single Paradigm XR11 or dual Defiance X12s, the Vandersteen Sub Three with “required” crossover, and the JL Audio Fathom f110v2.  My budget is about $4K, with the XR11 and Fathom right at that price, the dual X12s at about $3K, and the Vandersteen with required crossover at about $5300 (including two crossovers, as they are sold in pairs).  I may be able to audition the Paradigms and the Vandersteen; a friend has told me the room correction software with the JL Audio sub is way behind that of the Paradigms.  In light of the excellent advice I have received in this forum, I wonder if folks out there have had an experience with these subwoofers and what they might recommend.  Many thanks.

mike4597

Showing 1 response by audiokinesis

@quickjack1234 wrote:

"multiple subwoofer... benefits include:

► more even bass distribution across the seating area

► better seat to seat consistency for more effective EQ

► more output and LF coupling factor for deep extended bass response"

Agreed, and ime another benefit is significantly smoother in-room bass response. "Smooth" bass is "fast" bass because it is the in-room peaks which take longer to decay into inaudibility. Rooms effects are far greater than the variations between different high quality subwoofers one might choose between, so addressing the room interaction issue is addressing the thing that matters by far the most, from a sound quality standpoint.

@quickjack1234 again:

"Multi-Subwoofer Set Up & Calibration...

•Place your subs wisely-in home theater rooms, nothing is more important for achieving good bass than proper placement of your subwoofers and listening seats"

Agreed, and I’d like to suggest a distributed multi-sub placement strategy.

I suggest deliberately asymmetrical positioning such that each sub is interacting with the room in a significantly different way, and the sum of their multiple dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be smoother bass throughout the room. The following is one possible placement strategy, drawing from Earl Geddes’ thoughts on the subject:

Place one sub in a corner; place the second and third subs along each of the two walls opposite that corner; and if there is a fourth sub, place it not too close to any of the others, and not symmetrically with respect to any of the others. Bonus points if you are able to elevate one of the subs closer to the ceiling than to the floor, as this distributes the bass sources in all three dimensions.

Two subs intelligently distributed are smoother than one; three subs intelligently distributed are smoother than two; and so forth.

Duke

dealer/manufacturer