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A few new Reference subs for your booty


Chad

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...the benefit of using two subs is obviously smoothing out the room, but also you can turn each sub down so they are "loafing along". This helps with definition. I have found that the appropriate crossover in my processor to my RF7IIs is 40 Hz for music. 60 Hz delivers more wallop but I have to turn the subs down. Right now the sub setup I have is tuned to make the most of 20-40Hz with a combo of R115Sw and SW115.

When those deep deep notes in music or effects in movies come along they are startling!

And yes I too test the patience of my dear wife. After dialing the subs in, I had to go to the kitchen cabinet where our wine glasses are and separate them so they weren't touching each other. oh yeah, much better ;-)

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you can turn each sub down so they are "loafing along". This helps with definition.

I forgot that multiple threads were talking about these... I mentioned elsewhere that I did do this, and yes it helped quite a bit with definition. I'm an old-school bass head so I had them up to a pretty obnoxious level simply because I like bass. When I backed off and ran them at least somewhat flat at normal levels but probably still boosted, it was significantly tighter. Honestly they sound real nice like this plus there is more overhead when the 20 something hz effects come on. I don't know what causes the sloppiness at the upper spectrum of sub sounds, whether it's the amp, cabinet, or woofer, but short of trying to making kick drums beat your chest in through these things, it seems to be a non-issue.

We watched the Toy Story Halloween special this weekend, even with seemingly lame source material such as this, these subs were scaring the hell out of the kids, such as when Buzz and Woody would run into a door... WHOP! The kids would get startled. Fun times.

Now that I'm familiar with them more, what I will probably do is keep these for sole sub duty during normal movie watching for the low effects and set everything up to be flat and proper. When I want to rock out, I'll fire up my Ultimax/iNuke setup. Curious as to if I can get all four subs working in harmony at the same time but I doubt it.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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A sub behind the seats is the sh..t. !!

 

I am with you on this one! Fwiw, when I first got my RSW-15 it was too big for the front (and the huge magnet was skewing my TV picture) so I moved it behind the MLP in a corner where it did localize some of the sound---I remedied that by putting an additional RSW-12 up front (in unfortunately not a prime location) and it REALLY balanced out the low end in a very sublime and effective way. B)

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.... I'm an old-school bass head so I had them up to a pretty obnoxious level simply because I like bass. When I backed off and ran them at least somewhat flat at normal levels but probably still boosted, it was significantly tighter. Honestly they sound real nice like this plus there is more overhead when the 20 something hz effects come on.

 

 

This reminded me of my initial subwoofer settings back in the day---After I got an AVR with Audyssey I started experimenting and found that running my speakers as Small and applying a crossover really tightened up the bass response and made other notes coming from my speakers cleaner--I started hearing things I'd never heard before and that wall shaking wasn't always a good thing when it came to actual Sound Quality.

Edited by tkdamerica
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  • 3 months later...

Why is the 15" model only 75lbs? This worries me, when you consider similar priced subs from the likes of HSU, SVS, Rythmik, PSA ect ALL have internal full cross bracing on their subs, and are considerably heavier. The SW-115 was about 70lbs, and it had a flimsy enclosure with terrible internal bracing. It had NO cross braces in it. Does the new one have cross bracing? Full cabinet bracing? Please PLEASE do not hit me with "it doesn't need it" - everyone who knows anything about subs knows that is total nonsense - a well braced subwoofer cabinet will ALWAYS sound better than one with flimsy bracing. And also, why not up the amp power? 800 watts of dynamic power really isn't that much, it should be 800 watts RMS, not dynamic. Why not extend down to 15-16hz and give the sub a larger port..? That port opening is awfully short looking. It should have a port closer to the size of an mfw-15. I really just don't understand some of the design decisions... :/ :(

 

I don't mean to "nit-pick", but to us bass heads, these details are really important, especially if you are spending nearly a grand on a single sub. If it truly is a bad-*** sub as you are claiming it is, why not show pics of driver magnet and the inside of the enclosure? That would do a lot to alleviate some concerns prospective buyers have. :D

Edited by ninjai18
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on't expect them to "move the foundation" or anything but to complement a bigger Reference II setup, especially for music, especially at lower (normal) volumes, they are probably great.

 

Why not move the foundation and knock some of those hills down in Kentucky, lol.

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Why is the 15" model only 75lbs? This worries me, when you consider similar priced subs from the likes of HSU, SVS, Rythmik, PSA ect ALL have internal full cross bracing on their subs, and are considerably heavier. The SW-115 was about 70lbs, and it had a flimsy enclosure with terrible internal bracing. It had NO cross braces in it. Does the new one have cross bracing? Full cabinet bracing? Please PLEASE do not hit me with "it doesn't need it" - everyone who knows anything about subs knows that is total nonsense - a well braced subwoofer cabinet will ALWAYS sound better than one with flimsy bracing. And also, why not up the amp power? 800 watts of dynamic power really isn't that much, it should be 800 watts RMS, not dynamic. Why not extend down to 15-16hz and give the sub a larger port..? That port opening is awfully short looking. It should have a port closer to the size of an mfw-15. I really just don't understand some of the design decisions... :/ :(

 

I don't mean to "nit-pick", but to us bass heads, these details are really important, especially if you are spending nearly a grand on a single sub. If it truly is a bad-*** sub as you are claiming it is, why not show pics of driver magnet and the inside of the enclosure? That would do a lot to alleviate some concerns prospective buyers have. :D

sorry to tell you this but from what it sounds like if your a "bass head" as you say you are you need to just look elsewhere. Diy reigns supreme. A grand can get you some INSANE bass.
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sorry to tell you this but from what it sounds like if your a "bass head" as you say you are you need to just look elsewhere. Diy reigns supreme. A grand can get you some INSANE bass.

Tonight, I was Face Timing Wakejunkie while we were doing some Xover testing and he played a 20Hz frequency on his DIY Dual 18" Infinite Baffle subs and he walked probably 30' away to the other side of his HT and a picture frame was bouncing off of the wall and a tissue sticking out of the box was moving.  My Dual RSW-15's hit hard but I'm pretty sure they don't move things that are 30' away.  He has had items upstairs "walking" when he's cranking the bass.  I can't wait to hear them in a few weeks.

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I guess I am lucky as my grandfather built the house I'm living in and it's a freakin tank! I can shake windows upstairs but nothing buzzes off the wall or anything. I believe some when they say that kind of stuff and I'm as bass head as they come but guessing the quality of house makes a large difference in this sort of thing.

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I had the chance to demo, well some what demo one of the newer subs.  I thought for around 350.00 it was a decent sub, I actually asked the sales associate to turn it down as I was trying to hear the new book shelves out.  Like I said I didn't get a full demo as I didn't have much time, but from what I heard on both the sub and monitors and the price, they both would have been worth a purchase.  

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A lot of commercial subs don't have as much internal bracing as a lot of DIY subs since they are made out of heavier material, MDF and not wood.  Bass heads need to head over to DIY as mentioned. Driver parameters, weight, cabinet size all playing into how much power(amp) is adequate for that sub.

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A lot of commercial subs don't have as much internal bracing as a lot of DIY subs since they are made out of heavier material, MDF and not wood.  Bass heads need to head over to DIY as mentioned. Driver parameters, weight, cabinet size all playing into how much power(amp) is adequate for that sub.

 

An enclosure that size, that is also ported and a 15" driver, should ALWAYS have cross bracing. No excuses.

Edited by ninjai18
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sorry to tell you this but from what it sounds like if your a "bass head" as you say you are you need to just look elsewhere. Diy reigns supreme. A grand can get you some INSANE bass.

Tonight, I was Face Timing Wakejunkie while we were doing some Xover testing and he played a 20Hz frequency on his DIY Dual 18" Infinite Baffle subs and he walked probably 30' away to the other side of his HT and a picture frame was bouncing off of the wall and a tissue sticking out of the box was moving.  My Dual RSW-15's hit hard but I'm pretty sure they don't move things that are 30' away.  He has had items upstairs "walking" when he's cranking the bass.  I can't wait to hear them in a few weeks.

 

 

 

My daughter and I watched "Echo" last weekend.  There was some sustained LFE in that movie as well.  Definitely below 20Hz.  You're going to love the IB when you go have a listen.

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Why is the 15" model only 75lbs? This worries me, when you consider similar priced subs from the likes of HSU, SVS, Rythmik, PSA ect ALL have internal full cross bracing on their subs, and are considerably heavier.

Surely you realize that a very similarly priced SVS PB-2000 weighs 10 pounds lighter than the Klipsch and a PSA XS15se with the same size driver is 8 pounds lighter. Considering the typical street price, these both cost more than the Klipsch.

It's not the cross bracing that makes other offerings significantly heavier anyway. There are drivers alone that weigh more than this entire sub/cabinet/amp all put together. Cross bracing is cheap and light. Driver weight can vary wildly and changes the total weight much more than any braces.

 

And also, why not up the amp power? 800 watts of dynamic power really isn't that much, it should be 800 watts RMS, not dynamic.

Ever think that maybe you should match the amp with the driver instead of blindly running up the numbers for bragging rights? This driver is pretty efficient and the amp flexes these subs nicely. Doubling the amp's power while doing nothing else would probably do more harm than good.

 

Why not extend down to 15-16hz and give the sub a larger port..? That port opening is awfully short looking. It should have a port closer to the size of an mfw-15. I really just don't understand some of the design decisions... :/ :(

You need to go back to subwoofer design 101. :) The area of a sub's port alone has nothing to do with its tuning frequency. Larger ones can simply move more air without huffing. When you do that though you have to make the port longer to maintain the tuning frequency, which adds to the cost and weight. As long as its not huffing, there's really no need to make the port opening larger. These don't huff.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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