@james633 , With either the Anthem STR or Trinnov Amethyst all you have to do to completely integrate the subs is put the subs wherever you want them, set up the microphone at your listening position, tell the unit what crossover you want and tap the button. The units will ping each speaker in succession, calculate correction curves, crossovers and delays and plug them in automatically. Takes a quiet house and 15 minutes. This is a whole lot more like plug and play than crawling around the room trying to figure out what the right position for your subwoofers is. You will never be able to achieve this level of performance manually. I tried for 20 years and even though I thought I had it figured out the first cut I played after hooking up my old TacT 2.2x (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) totally blew me away.
decathalon1991, You have a fine system. I believe you are using the CR 1 crossover? While greatly superior to the low pass filter found in the vast majority of commercial subwoofers it is not near state of the art. I am also intimately familiar with the Fathom f113 and JL's drivers. I considered using them at one time, specifically the 13W7. I decided not to use it because it overs no advantage over Dayton's Ultimax drivers in home installations and I am not inclined to pay extra for cosmetics. The system I am currently working on uses 8 12" drivers. At any rate digital bass management is far superior to anything you can do in the analog world. Distortion levels are orders of magnitude lower and you can delay the signal to various speakers as needed to time aligning the whole affair. It is close to impossible to do this by analog means. You have a fine system. Please, look into the Trinnov Amethyst preamplifier. It will push your system to a whole new level. Trinnov is a French company that makes commercial systems for theaters and studios. They currently make the best audio and theater processors and that is not IMHO. I have no interest in Trinnov other than I plan to replace my aging 2.2X with an Amethyst in the near future. I probably will not use it's phono stage but everything else is top notch.
As for the efficiency of subwoofers, this is a real wild card. It depends on where you put them and how much correction they require. The beauty of digital correction is that you can get away with a much smaller enclosure as long as you have the power to do it. Adding a port or passive radiator does not necessarily make a sub more efficient. The sub will go lower before rolling off but when it rolls off it does so twice as fast making it more difficult to correct if you just happen to want to go lower. With correction like you have in your Fathom it is best to use a sealed enclosure. If done right you can push it lower with less power and avoid issues like port noise and passive radiators bottoming out. Take a strobe to any passive radiator and watch what it does!
The only commercially made subwoofers I would buy are made by Magico. They are using what is called a balanced force design. This involves putting two drivers at opposite ends of a symmetrical enclosure. The drivers operate in phase so their reactive energy cancels out and the enclosure remains stationary instead of shaking. Turn the volume up and put your hand on your subwoofer. Any vibration or shaking you feel equals distortion, a lot of distortion. Countering this requires a very stiff, heavy enclosure with a balanced force layout. This is also the main advantage of a down firing subwoofer. The driver is trapped between the floor and the weight of the enclosure. The main problem with this is how stiff the floor is.
decathalon1991, You have a fine system. I believe you are using the CR 1 crossover? While greatly superior to the low pass filter found in the vast majority of commercial subwoofers it is not near state of the art. I am also intimately familiar with the Fathom f113 and JL's drivers. I considered using them at one time, specifically the 13W7. I decided not to use it because it overs no advantage over Dayton's Ultimax drivers in home installations and I am not inclined to pay extra for cosmetics. The system I am currently working on uses 8 12" drivers. At any rate digital bass management is far superior to anything you can do in the analog world. Distortion levels are orders of magnitude lower and you can delay the signal to various speakers as needed to time aligning the whole affair. It is close to impossible to do this by analog means. You have a fine system. Please, look into the Trinnov Amethyst preamplifier. It will push your system to a whole new level. Trinnov is a French company that makes commercial systems for theaters and studios. They currently make the best audio and theater processors and that is not IMHO. I have no interest in Trinnov other than I plan to replace my aging 2.2X with an Amethyst in the near future. I probably will not use it's phono stage but everything else is top notch.
As for the efficiency of subwoofers, this is a real wild card. It depends on where you put them and how much correction they require. The beauty of digital correction is that you can get away with a much smaller enclosure as long as you have the power to do it. Adding a port or passive radiator does not necessarily make a sub more efficient. The sub will go lower before rolling off but when it rolls off it does so twice as fast making it more difficult to correct if you just happen to want to go lower. With correction like you have in your Fathom it is best to use a sealed enclosure. If done right you can push it lower with less power and avoid issues like port noise and passive radiators bottoming out. Take a strobe to any passive radiator and watch what it does!
The only commercially made subwoofers I would buy are made by Magico. They are using what is called a balanced force design. This involves putting two drivers at opposite ends of a symmetrical enclosure. The drivers operate in phase so their reactive energy cancels out and the enclosure remains stationary instead of shaking. Turn the volume up and put your hand on your subwoofer. Any vibration or shaking you feel equals distortion, a lot of distortion. Countering this requires a very stiff, heavy enclosure with a balanced force layout. This is also the main advantage of a down firing subwoofer. The driver is trapped between the floor and the weight of the enclosure. The main problem with this is how stiff the floor is.