Velodyne DD Plus: New King of the Jungle?


I've had the new Velodyne DD15 Plus now for about a week. I've had and heard plenty of subs, always looking for that magical moment where you are immersed in the music in its fullest range, uninterrupted by separation and unwanted resonances. Subs are difficult to judge; it depends on how well their sound can be blended with the system in use. And there's always that artificiality of tone the listener is fearing to detect, so my expectations were tamed as I set the thing up. My gear is simple, some of it is not the finest in the world but performs amazingly well for what it is, and I've heard lots.

I set it up on a stool about 8 inches off the floor, with plenty of padding to isolate it from the wooden floor(I'm funny about isolating stuff from wooden floors but it seems to sound better). It was placed diagonally, near a corner of the room. I put on some Diana Krall and roughed dialed it in. I have to say that right out of the box, not broken in and not EQ'd yet, the DD15 Plus and walls of my listening room just disappeared and left me with my jaw in my drink. I was in the concert hall with her. This sub just may be in a league of its own.

About an hour later, my wife came home. I was playing some Allman Brothers and upon walking in she exclaimed, "Something's different; did you get something new?" I was dumbfounded. Luckily it was covered up and in the same place the old one was so she didn't see it. "What Do you mean?" I mumbled. Later I confessed to her about the purchase. When asked about the sound, she said that when she walked in (45 feet from the sub), the whole house had "an atmosphere" to it and she thought "there was a live band in the living room". Now that's music to my ears!

Even as it was with the factory settings, it would have been good enough. But of course I ran the auto EQ with the microphone, video connection to my TV played the tone sweep CD it came with.

With one push of a button on the remote the DD15 plus began listening to and adjusting itself. Five minutes later it had analyzed my main speaker's low frequency output and matched their cutoff to its own, set its low level output and frequency responses to the contours of my room, set its crossover parameters, phase and parametric filters. The result was a very flat response line across the range on my TV screen. The crossover points were showing up as little dips, varying no more than -3db. It started rolling off gradually around 160db. I could have gone further with fine tuning the EQ manually but didn't need to.

Back to Diana Krall. Same effect only this time, the whole experience was smoother and more seamless. I realized its not only that the DD Plus gets completely out of the way, but it has a very organic and natural * tonality *; significantly more "real" IMHO than any other sub I've heard. I played some rock, blues, jazz and samba with the same effect. We have an extremely versatile sub here.

I'm using it for music in my stereo system so I don't need that much power. This is way overkill. However, I did play a DVD (Wall-E) on the surround system with it in place and again, it made the room disappear and put me right there in the action, everything not being lifted out but rather enhanced with detail I've never heard before. I felt like this sub could take me anywhere sonically. And the kicker is that the volume was at about 25% of its 3000 watt capacity.

I'm running Harbeth Super HL5's and they're extremely fast, detailed speakers with tons of naturalness. The DD15 Plus kept up and possibly exceeded them in velocity. For fun, I set the crossover on the sub to its highest point (200hz) and adjusted the volume. The instruments timbre and tonality were filled in with more detail and their stage presence more placed. Wow! This is one fast sub, full of natural tonality, detail and can put you right there in the musical event.

I can't wait until it breaks in -

I look forward to other fellow AG'ers who have far more experience, different gear, more brains and better ears than I do to give their opinions on this amazing piece.

Cheers,

Sonicray

Gear:
Odyssey Extreme SE monoblock amps
Odyssey Candela tube preamp with Mullard ecc82 long plates
Harbeth Super HL5 main speakers
Velodyne DD15 Plus sub
all IC's and cables custom made UP silver over OFC
custom 12 gauge pure copper wiring from meter
customized and treated listening room

Resources:
David Weinhart, Weinhart Design, LA
Klaus Bunge Odyssey Audio
Alan Shaw, Harbeth Loudspeakers, UK

All are IMO, among the very best in the business and phenomenal to deal with.

sonicray
11-06-11: Irvrobinson
So, Johnk, just curious, what in music generates such bass pressures? I was just at the symphony last night, and it is remarkable how little bass a symphony orchestra generates during a typical program.
Maybe your seat wasn't the best location to catch all the bass. ;) I go to the symphony several times a year and how well I hear the bass sometimes depends on where I sit. There's certainly more bass if you're seated closer to a wall. Then there's the auditorium acoustics (acoustics at Seattle's Benaroya Hall are excellent!) and the program itself. I favor big bombastic orchestral pieces and Holst's "The Planets" makes use of the full percussion section plus pipe organ. There's *plenty* of sub-30 Hz activity going on there. I'm a percussionist, and the 60" dia. concert bass drum has a very low fundamental. Piano goes down to 27 Hz and the contrabassoon goes down to just a half step above that. Let's not forget tympani either.

Think about what great subs would do for Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Host, Elgar, Shostakovich, Respighi, Debussy, Ravel, and Moussorgsky! Yes, there's plenty of sub-40 Hz energy going on in a live classical concert.

One thing I noticed about a live orchestral concert is the way the air in the hall is energized. The whole venue feels alive, and that seems to be the big plus with these super subs--they energize the entire space in a way similar to a live concert--something that a stereo pair of speakers very seldom does.
You are correct, Johnnyb53, the acoustics at our local hall are not nearly the best I've heard. Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles are better by far. And I agree about Benaroya (been there, hearing a family member play). My question was not that there isn't bass in music, but what Johnk's super-sub was aimed at.

The headline piece at the concert I mentioned was Mozart's Jupiter, so there was a bass drum, but the horns were more prominent in my memory.
If money were no object, I'd book myself with all the live events I possibly could and with good friends. Needless to say, a live event carries that energized air and sound experiences in their most organic and dynamic form which as we all know, you just have to be there, literally as our percussionist Johnnyb53 has so well indicated.

For the rest of us, its exciting that there are these super subs available which can come into our listening rooms and actually help recreate the air of a live event like the ones being mentioned.

Yes! Live concerts with a great orchestra and venue are da bomb! I grew up in Cincinnati, and Music Hall is one of the best sounding old school concert halls in America. It's very similar to Boston's Symphony Hall, definitely considered one of the best, which was modeled after one a highly regarded hall in Europe. I've had the good fortune to attend concerts at Kennedy Center in DC, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA (under Zubin Mehta in the '70s), and Benaroya Hall in Seattle, where I live and attend now.

Maestro Gerard Schwarz just stepped down after 26 seasons, and in that time he both shaped the Seattle Symphony into a world class orchestra (their ability to do large scale orchestral pieces is astonishing!) and he oversaw the acoustic design of Benaroya Hall, built about 11 years ago.

A season ago I heard them play both Holst's The Planets and Moussourgsky/ Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition. Four years earlier I heard Rostropovich conduct them in a Shostakovich birthday celebration. The way live music energizes that concert space must be experienced to be believed. You can hear and feel a lot of infrasonic bass energy there. The air is fairly crackling with musical energy.

A couple other venues in Seattle where I've experienced this are St. James Catholic Cathedral and St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, where in both cases 16Hz pedal tones from their respective pipe organs had my pants leg flapping. St. James in particular is huge, giving the 64-foot soundwaves plenty of room to form and oscillate

And if there's hope in recreating that room energy with a pair of super subs, well, I'm going to be saving up for a pair of sealed subs that extend below 20 Hz.