REL vs JL AUDIO

REL for the win? assembled in China though. 

I have two nice systems, both with a pair of REL subs.
The older pair are REL Carbon Limiteds, run with Longbow REL wireless.
It works great.  The wireless allowed me to play with the sub's location until the boom went away.  I was stubborn about this, as I just felt that the subs should sit right beside my speakers.  Not so.  Moving them to the front corners of the room on an angle was the ticket.  Now I can't even locate the subs, but when I turn them off (only for demonstration) they are sorely missed.  I have never had reliability issues.  They improve everything about the music, not just the bass and sub base.

So when I did my new system I quickly went for the newer Carbon Specials with their newest Airship wireless.  Beautiful subs and easy to set up.  They were quickly dialed in and sounded superb.

But I had an issue, and it took me a bit to figure it out.  My home wifi went down the tubes around the time I installed the new Airship REL wireless.  I had an old Apple wifi router, so I replaced it with a newer mesh system (Eero Pro 6).  Supposed to be easy and amazing.  Did not work well either.  Turns out, it was direct competition from the REL Airship, which also uses the 5 Gh band.  Contacting REL, Eero and my IT guy, there was no solution.  So I returned the Airship wireless and ran Baseline Blue cables which sound great.  Fortunately I had the positions dialed in so it was ok.

Precision Audio and Video in Chicago was great on the purchase and shipping to Maryland, and support of the wireless issue. Call Albert.

My summary:

-I love the REL's.  Extremely musical and support the soundstage and        imaging.
-no reliability issues at all
-two is much better than one
-caution on the new Airship 5ghz wireless
-the baseline blue cables are much better than the standard cables
-the high level inputs are a must
-play with the locations even if it does not seem like the most obvious 
 spot

Thanks!  Ken

Try Perlisten subwoofer. from my experience D212S subwoofer is a better subwoofer than JL or REL offer - better DSP, less distortion level.

so many times you have to touch the subwoofer to actually "know" it's playing, never before i  have heard such subwoofer speakers (Sash DAW) smooth integration.

@james633 , I think you underestimate yourself. Building one of these kits is not that hard. Finishing them nicely with something like Piano Lacquer is not so easy but you can have that done by a pro for reasonable money. I tell people otherwise just to cover the enclosure with black carpet. 

The JTR woofers are very interesting. It looks like they are using a Dayton reference 18" driver which is excellent. Plywood construction is better than MDF. They are using a smaller sealed enclosure, a lot of power and DSP to force the woofer down lower. It is still a very large subwoofer. It would be impossible for me to fit four of them into the situation I have and with multiple subs a woofer that large is overkill. But using two in a point source system in a room 15 X 25' or larger would be fine if someone did not mind the look. You will also have to weight that enclosure down to keep it from shaking. I would put a granite slab on top of it. Used with digital bass management I would think it would be significantly superior to any Rel, SVS or JL sub. Here is the driver https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-RSS460HO-4-18-Reference-HO-Subwoofer-4-ohm-295-472

I owned the JL 112, it was not fast enough to perfectly melt with my main speakers (Sonus Faber Serafino), sound was a bit muddy.

I have now replaced it by the REL Carbon Special and it works great. REL is way faster and that results in a cleaner sound.

Hope it helps