Best Home Theater subwoofer for < $1000?

[vondy]

You should start a new thread about this. It doesn't really have much to do with the OP

Done, sorry.

[ClaudeJ1]

Sorry to thread jack but I was curious, I'm thinking about taking a bare wall in our living room and doing some custom built-in shelving, cabinets, etc. Looking at some of these tall tapped horns gave me the idea to build one, or two, at the ends of the built in. Against the corner walls. Seamless look, you wouldn't even know they are there. My built-in would house the TV and my Forte II's would be in front of the built-ins at the corners.

Would building these subs into cabinetry effect the sound, or as long as the opening is free would it sound fine?

That make any sense? See my very rough mockup.

Not a hijack, but on topic. The easiest cab to build is a tall tapped horn. You mockup is a good one. I have just one tapped horn in my new place to the left of my Front Left channel in a corner and it's flat to 20 Hz. useable to 16 Hz. How long you make the folded internal horn determines the cutoff and you can use a woofer with a resonance of up to twice the cutoff. So if you build the simplest (one fold) 8 foot tall tapped horn, the effective length is maybe 15 ft. with an effective 19 Hz. 1/4 wave cutoff. Two doubles your output and spreads out the evenness. You can find lots of good DIY plans where the design and driver selection is already worked out. You just need to make some sawdust. IMHO, tapped horns are the easiest to build and offer the lowest bass in the smallest cabinet possible......kind of like a bass reflex horn, since both sides of the cone radiate output. You are trading efficienty for amplifier power vs. a hyperbolic full efficiency horn, which would be so HUGE to get flat to 20 hz., which a tapped horn can easily do.

Tom Danley, the king of BASS and Tapped Horn innovator uses mostly Tapped Horns for all his designs and commercial installs for a reason.

[ClaudeJ1]

You should start a new thread about this. It doesn't really have much to do with the OP

I disagree. The title is "Best HT Sub for under $1,000. This easily meets the criteria of the original poster, who did not negate the possibility of building vs. just buying. Almost all DIY Tapped Horn Designs will easily TROUNCE most direct radiator subs when you consider price/performance. That includes low end cutoff, low distortion, high ouput, efficiency, etc. you name it.

I used to have twin Large VMPS subs with lots of drivers and cones and lotsa watts. They cost way more than $1,000 in total and my LAB 12 TH does a better job, especially in the transient response department and matching the low distortion of an ALL HORN setup. I am biased for good technical and economic reasons. The cost to build my sub was $300, which means I could build another and still have money for a used Crown XTi 1000 with PEQ to drive them.