On Rel subs: Which are most musical?

All subwoofer's are the spawn of the devil. Beautiful when subjugated, but nightmares otherwise.

A smaller sub with higher f3 (-3 dB point) will tend to be easier to integrate with the room so many listeners think they are faster somehow, or more musical.  Well, no, they just get along with the room better with less effort. They don't try as hard to ring the room modes in the depths.

If you want to get a larger sub that can do 20 Hz with low distortion and high output WELL, you'll need to consider bass traps as part of your solution, and have some sort of great EQ and a way to properly measure the main and sub woofer responses.

I guess my main message is: Subwoofers are not anything like your main speakers.  They almost never are just drop, plug and play. The bigger, the more difficult, but more rewarding.

Best,


Erik

@murphythecat

In which case a miniDSP unit would provide a better crossover. Certainly more flexibility. :)

If the sub doesn't come with an EQ capability built in it's pretty much mandatory in most homes.

Best,

Erik

@murphythecat

You can put the mini DSP just in the sub, and when you are facing narrow EQ peaks of 20x power, it’s far better than not. Properly set up, it’s heavenly, and I don’t think anyone would be able to tell that there’s another step in the loop, except by the musicality, dynamic range and seamless integration. :D :D The purist alternative of course is to do this purely with bass traps and acoustic tuning, which I've only ever seen done at a Magico demo room. EQ should follow after room acoustics though, they enable the rest.

It’s no different at all than using a sub with a built in digital EQ.

Um, Neutrik IS the XLR connector they ship with, so not sure where you got that idea. I’m looking at mine now.

Best,

Erik

Sorry @murphythecat I misread something. :)  Neutrik makes a lot of connectors, and in this case the confusion was that I was talking about XLR and you were talking about speaker connectors.

Best,

Erik