Speakers with deep/powerful bass

JBL 4350 will casually handle anything you feed them. I have a pair of them in our large living room, along with a pair of JBL Everest DD67000 on the adjacent wall. Playing a Simon Preston recording of Bach organ concerti, cranked up they shake plaster off of the ceiling.  Actually, either pair will, but the 4350s feel more dynamic. I wonder how they would sound if I ran them simultaneously.  Hmmm…

@Sandthemall is right--it’s the room. At least part of it is the room.

My biggest system was Vandersteen 4s driven by tube amps >80 Hz and by a heavily modded Adcom GFA-555 amp <80 Hz. Prior to the mods the Adcom was a decent but unexceptional bass amp; after the mods it was a ridiculously good bass amp. The Vandy’s had a pair of 12" woofers mounted facing in the same direction & coupled by a steel bar. The enclosure was vented. That was the best bass I ever heard--tuneful, deep, taut, airy, all the stuff I now believe ported subs can’t do (Vandersteen was/is a genius speaker designer).

Our house was built in 1825, all wood. There were something like 9 windows facing the living room where the speakers were; also many shelves with knicknacks on them. All those windows and knicknacks vibrated audibly when deep bass notes were played. On deep notes that sustained, like low organ notes, the effect was downright alarming. You’d feel a weird fluttering in your abdomen as your diaphragm vibrated along with everything else.

I love bass (IRL music and in audio) and that was an amazing experience.

For deep full, impactful bass, as well as overall good sound with a large open stage, I'd have to give a vote to the old PSB Strats Goldi. 

JBL 4350 and Everest DD67000.  We have a pair of each in our living room, on adjacent walls.  This thread has given me a few new tracks to check out.  

There are several ways to tackle obnoxious bass.  Obviously, you can turn down the volume, but if the bass still dominates you can try repositioning your speakers or consider bass traps and other room treatments.  An equalizer will get the job done but will likely alter the tonal balance and shrink the soundstage.   I am not a big fan of digital signal processing, but the technology is better than it used to be and could be considered.  Personally, I would ditch the big bass monsters and get more balanced speakers that work better in your room!

A pair of Thiel 3.5 speakers with its equalizer will give you full power down to about 20hz....enough that bass turns into a vibration as much as a sound.  The only drawback is that the speakers take at least 200 strong watts per channel to begin to handle equalized bass this low.

Bleh, 30 years ago I had some panasonics I bought at a PX.

they had either 18 or 20” woofers, 5 or 6 inch midrange and a horn tweeter with 3 buttons on the top for selecting which got more power.. drove em with Carver Silver Seven-t monos.

Those things were… loud and shook the rental house I had after ets..

cracked a few of the windows… the owner was not happy with me.. 22 and height of the rock era “and we had some fun.” I cannot even remember where or when I downsized.. but I always liked those speakers.

Legacy audio Focus XDs, dual 12 inch subs with active 700w per channel, my house and walls rattle, shake and boom like never before, especially with electronic music. Absolutely the best sounding and most realistic sound pressure level speakers for the money of any speaker I have heard. 

I have a pair of Altec Lansing VOT's driven by a Conrad Johnson Premier 4. I put on Aurthur Browns 'Fire' and give it the 'match test'; I hold a match about 1" from the woofer dustcover and the turbulence blows out the match. Yes, there is bass.

There's no replacement for displacement.

My Focal Stella Utopias have no trouble energising my 'difficult' room.

They each use a 13.5 inch field coil bass driver, similar to the 18 inch one in the Grande Utopias. I'm a fan of drum and bass, a genre where the melody is in the sub-bass region, as wel, as root rockers and dub reggae, plus deep house. No other genres require more ,well-controlled, deep bass

My speakers are supported by four 18 inch Velodyne dd18+ subs, in stereo bass stacks alongside my main speakers.  I reckon I've got sota bass.

Anything jbl with 12 inch woofers or bigger. My jbl 4345 will shake the pictures off the wall and still sound dang good while doing it

The old Polk audio SDA line put out some really good low bass if you properly powered them. They also have decent sound quality with upgraded tweeters and crossovers.

I’ve always failed to understand the obsession with bass. Give me an exceptional midrange any day of the week. Maybe I’m simply in the minority. 

For pounding rock with deep bass the large JBL's are great. The specs on the low end say 33HZ.  IF I had the money I would demo these baby's

It isn't hard to get lots of low bass, quite often rather poorly controlled but it is very hard to get really good well controlled low bass.

I have two speakers that are excellent at low bass (one is 3dB down at 23 Hz and the other at 20 Hz.  Implementing well controlled low bass is hard to do and probably impossible to do cheaply except in boom boxes 

There is a big difference between low bass and just a lot of bass.

@tonywinga - enjoyed your description from the manufacturer side!

Some the best bass I have heard in a conventional floor standing speaker is by Gershman. The bass is insanely powerful for the foot print. Similar comments for the high end Paradigm models with the built in plate amplifier for the woofers.

+Carlsbad   ..  He's right.  Floor shaking bass or good sound.  I'm thinking I've driven beside gregdude and every one within a block got to audition his sub bass system.. LOL ..  

Experienced that at the movie Earthquake.

@gregdude Sounds like I hit a nerve.  Sorry about that,  good luck.

@carlsbad  says who exactly? Lol that is one old trope. Debbie Downer, your wet blanket is ready 

If we start with the retail price of a product and work backwards from the dealer and from the distributor, then typically- not always the selling price from the manufacturer to the distributor is half the retail price.  This is typical for luxury items.  The manufacturer's selling price is based on manufacturing costs plus overhead, administrative costs and profit.  (Marketing affects the price too but only in the positive direction, ie. if a company cannot make money producing a product then they won't.)  The manufacturer's selling price is typically a 300% markup added to the material and labor costs of the product plus a markup for profit.  This 300% covers all costs of doing business- R&D, Healthcare, 401k contributions, taxes, building leasing, utilities, etc.  Labor is typically 8%-13% of the cost of the product making material about 90% the cost of a product.  Luxury items that are low volume and mostly hand made can skew the labor costs higher to maybe 15% of the cost of the product.  

So let's say, for the sake of argument, that the cost of all materials for this pair of speakers adds up to $4,000.  These are some premium grade components and very expensive cabinetry.  We will also assume all assembly is done in house and not farmed out to a low cost country.  Focusing on one speaker we have $2000 in material costs.  This premium speaker contains some high dollar composite material that costs $10/lb.  This speaker weighs 200 lbs and let's assume that half the weight is the cabinet.  That's $1000 for the cabinet material.  (That's $1000 of our total of $2000 material costs).  So the other $1000 covers the drivers, crossovers and hardware.  This is definitely a premium speaker.  Labor costs are about one hour to cut the panels for the cabinet at $150/hr machining time.  Then assembly of the cabinet and finishing takes 4 hours because this is a handmade labor intensive finishing process typical for a premium luxury product.  Assembly of the components into the speaker takes one hour and testing takes about 0.2 hours.  Say being a premium speaker it is subject to a listening test, then we add 0.8 hours.  6 hours labor total for assembly and test costs about $30/hour (unburdened) so total labor is $180+$150 or $330.  Manufacturing costs of our high end speaker, material and labor is $2330.  Add in 300% for overhead, admin, etc costs and this speaker now is at $6990.  Add 10% profit and the manufacturer needs to sell this speaker to a distributor for $7689.  Final cost to the end user ends up being $15,378 for one speaker or $30,756 for a pair.  The irony is that this business considers moving the manufacturing to a low cost country to save on labor.  That's right- the $330 that it costs to machine, assemble and test the speaker.  They potentially could save $100 minus shipping costs.  The other way to cut costs is to reduce overhead so that the multiplier is not 300%.  That means either outsourcing or moving the engineering, administrative functions to a low cost country.  But in the end these measures have limited impact on costs.  This is my opinion:  Outsourcing engineering and administrative functions lowers product quality in terms of both design and reliability, customer service degrades as well  leading to a loss of reputation and market share.  In other words, it is a downward spiral.  

And that sums up the challenge of my entire engineering career trying to keep costs down and keep jobs in the US.

What is your budget  these cheaper speakers have bass but it’s far from bein tuneful and accurate , bloated is a good way to describe vs even a goodsubwoofer like a Svs 400; Rel anythjng over $1500 in a sub will be more accurate 

in a speakerover $10 k for quality drivers , please remember only 25% on average goesinto thespeaker this includes all packaging ,the rest R&D overhead and markup..

grundy1700, I remember glancing over this article some time ago. It seems that's all I remembered.  

https://www.tnt-audio.com/intervis/jpse.html

Just like that AC-DC song the media plays a huge part. 

Someone else mentioned Legacy Focus SE. I have the XD version of the same speakers, bi-amped leaving the internal amp to run the 12 inch subwoofers on each..... supplimented with 2 Rythmic 12 in subs. Where they need to, the bass rocks it in a very controlled manner with the rest of the speaker. Still though, cannot literally shake my pants legs the way my K-horn knock offs from the 80's did with ELP "lucky man". Loved those speakers but finally grew up and went with my current system that blows all of that away with amazing sonics out of a "real" speaker system. changed it all out and never looked back. Except for the 2 minutes just now. :-)

m-db  The Golden Flutes extended the bass without disturbing the midrange. They were used in the tape loop - so no long cables were needed. They also needed a wall-wart for power. I always had a hard time knowing if they were actually doing anything. The AC-DC song I mentioned made me realize they worked very well. They didn't ever cause any harm to the speakers. I think they just flattened the frequency response.

["grundy1700      This would only happen if my JPS Labs Golden Flutes were looped into the system, and it was playing very loud. Without the Golden Flutes it didn't happen. It was a truly frightening experience the first time it happened, because I was home alone. Has anyone else had anything like this occur?"]

As I understand it, the JPS Labs Flutes were a low frequency filter that allowed lower frequencies access to the speakers woofers likely bypassing some aspect of the the crossover? 

If memory serves me the Flutes required another long speaker cable run which became the impetus for the JPS Labs Cable business?

Did running the Flutes do any damage to those woofers?

Unknowingly, my first Gene Cerwinski product was the L-187 driver used in Russ Alee's acoustic Control 360/361 electric Bass amplifier. Shortly after I purchased my first stand alone solid state amplifier the Cerwin-Vega A-1800 and a B-36 bin for the PA all from Leo's Music on College Ave. in Oakland.

https://www.paradigm.com/en/floorstanding/founder-120h

sandthemall:

Great review of your previous listening room! What were the dimensions of that room?

As I read through the responses the talk turned to only what the bass could or was doing and nothing about the overall sound quality of the speaker. With that in mind I will put up my old Bose 901’s running through my Sansui 7070 receiver. I was able to knock trinkets off the shelf of my neighbors home. Take sound quality out of the mix they are the best party speaker made. 

I had the Snell Type A V5 system. It was fun to bring a newbie into the listening seat and hit them with deep percussion. (18 inch subs) Even their wife downstairs would jump when the walls rattled!

They were VERY well-known for bass, but when we built a couple of cabinets for  24" Hartley woofers for the Mark Levinson HQD system, we learned what REAL bass was in a relatively small room.

No slam on CV's, but it you want REAL bass...get yourself a pretty hefty amp, of  course...

I've shook my room and at times the house with my Moab's (2 - 12's" each) more than a few times. My wife thought the military base not far from us was detonating old ordinance (MCAAP base in OK).

The Volti Audio Rivals w/ their 15” pro audio sourced woofers, while maybe only flat to 35hz, can play as loud as you want & sound great doing so in just about any size room. I have listened to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung on many good systems & thought I knew it well. Then through the Rivals w/ a good tube amp, I heard the true impact of the bass guitar & drums like never before. It was up very loud & I was both scared & cracking up at the same time. That said, Martin Barre’s guitar solo on the cut was also outstanding w/ power & body that few speakers can do at least for long. 
 

If you want the volume & dynamics of the old JBL’s, Altecs, Klipsch, Cerwin Vegas etc & the nuanced detail & imaging of good modern speakers, check them out. Imo, They’re the closet thing to live music I’ve heard at anything near a reasonable price. Their “smaller” model, the Razz, comes pretty close for less than half the $. ( about $6K vs about $15K).  Both are so much fun!!

Most speakers mentioned here has Non accurate bass big rounded bass altec Lansing cerwin Vega , Klipsch , these speakers at best upper 30 hz 

that’s why i mentioned  a good quality powered sub woofer if that’s what you want 

this will enhance most speakers unless you have  over $20k+ for upper quality speakers. I am torn from a decent say marten oscar trio which will do quality bass to around 30 hz , or buy a great stand mount such as the. MBL  126 stand mount with matching stands , and just buy another Svs SB 4000 sub . I have all year to ponder this for these are all in the $15k + range , I have to save my Pennies.

Good ole Infinity Kappa 9 and 9.2 will rattle the house 

with the right power behind them 

@mofojo 

Cheers to that. 

I used to have a pair of Cerwin Vegas. Old Fisher Audio amplifier + CD player. It was nice...a big, open, warm sounding system. It couldn't convince me that what I was hearing was real, but did a nice job of filling up the room with sound and plenty of bass too. 

I used to enjoy watching people who came over to enjoy some tunes, jump out of their skin, when Tony Levin hit that certain note on his bass stick on Al DeMeola's Scenario. At the time I had a pair of AR9lsi driven by a pair of Perreaux PMF 2150's. Priceless! 

So do you want it to sound like it was recorded or do you want it to shake the floor.  Very seldom do those 2 choices overlap.

GoldenEar Triton Reference.  Built in subs with 750w amps. They go down to 12 htz. 92db sensitivity. Great speaker. 

+1 on the room being the most important factor. My Rockport Avior ii speakers give all the high quality bass I would ever desire and then some. 

I used to sell those big 15 inch Cerwin Vega's in the 1980's - sold them with the massive Pioneer/Sansui/Marantz receivers back then. I probably account for hundreds of people losing most of their hearing at a young age. But man did Stairway to Heaven sound like Heaven, as did the Who, Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Meatloaf and AC/DC. Mozart? Not so much.....

Hmmm, might be giving away my age there.....

As my longtime HiFi mentor recently reminded me "Bass Counts".

Why? It enhances the sound stage. Use as many subs as you can.

Paradigm is the brand I am considering next.

In 1991, I had Cerwin Vegas.  They could rip the roof off and keep going. So much fun.  Funny thing is, they really weren't that bad of a hifi speaker. They weren't great either but they were all around serviceable. 

Used a 25 inch sub for dances for a while.  Could rattle every window in the whatever venue I was in if you let it.  Not intentional, but cracked a plate glass window doing a wedding dance at a Holiday Inn once.  Used a Phase Linear amp on it, high damping factor, had good control over the sub! 

I love my KEF Blades!  Great bass for sure and it fills my room and sounds amazing.  Definitely the most full range speakers I’ve ever had.

Just buy some Svs 4000 or ultra subs they will go lower and with more impact 

with their high current amplifiers built in and 13-16 inch drivers 

buying 2 will balance out the rooms Bass.

I have a pair of AR303s that are driven by a Parasound Halo A21. 12" woofer acoustic suspension "Bookshelf". They are set 4 feet above the floor. Enough bass to shake the room with the right song or movie. No subwoofer needed.

I had Salk Songtowers that, all of a sudden, had deep, powerful bass. Had them for years before I put them in a new position. I thought the reviews of this speaker’s bass response were mostly hyperbole until I placed them in a decent room, in a decent spot with nothing between them or around them but air.

It’s really the room. I’m guessing most of us have no idea what our speakers are truly capable of. I don’t even think I found a perfect position but simply came closer than any time before.

So really, I had a room that produced amazing bass. I've since moved, sold those speakers and have invested triple my investment. Although I like the sound of my new system...it really falls short of that room...