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Two Sub Questions


Islander

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14 hours ago, Schu said:

Has there been any further development from a design perspective beyond a thtlp or table tuba in those smaller sizes?

 

When sound waves are shrunk to smaller sizes there will be an update.

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That Tuba sub is way too big for my place, plus it would need to be finished, plus it's local pickup only, and so on.  I've made a choice, and I went with the Paradigm Seismic 110.  It has a sealed housing, but instead of being a rectangular box of MDF or plywood, it's made of a cast aluminum tapered tube, with four big chunky feet.  It didn't come from China, it came from Ontario, so my money stays in the country, plus it can be easily sent right to the factory if a problem arises.  

 

This happened once with my previous sub.  After about 10 years of service, the amplifier quit.  No problem, I just took it to Sound Hounds, the shop where I had bought it, and they removed the amp and sent it to the Paradigm factory.  Within two weeks I had the sub back, better than ever, and it only cost $200.  This is on a sub that was $900 when new, and still sells for $450-600 on the used market today.

 

Anyway, that's the old sub.  The new one is part of the Reference line, and uses no off-the-shelf parts.  It has a cool-running 850 watt RMS amplifier and a heavy duty 10" driver.  You can see a cutaway of it in this test, around the middle of the page:  https://www.avforums.com/reviews/paradigm-seismic-110-subwoofer-review.156

 

This next review gets into more detail, and has some proper tests, which reveal that the Seismic 110 has useful output down to 18 Hz, and even goes down to 16 Hz.  While I'm still breaking it in, it does seem to have more punch than the old Paradigm sub, a PW-2100, and it goes way deeper.  The tests in this review also show that the distortion is very low, especially in the 30-40 Hz. range where a bass guitar can reach.

 

Here's that review:  https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/subwoofers/paradigm-reference-seismic-110-subwoofer/

 

As well, I got the ARC kit, which consists of a microphone, a stand, and some software.  The supplied cable plugs into a USB port on the back of the sub and runs to the laptop, while a second cable connects the calibrated microphone to it.  The kit is claimed to be able to tune the sub to compensate for any room issues.  I'm looking forward to checking that out.

 

Finally, I got a great deal on the sub, and now I'm considering whether to go for a second one, although for the levels that I normally listen to, this sub may be all I need.  Thanks for all your advice and suggestions.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/5/2020 at 11:14 AM, Islander said:

That Tuba sub is way too big for my place, plus it would need to be finished, plus it's local pickup only, and so on.  I've made a choice, and I went with the Paradigm Seismic 110.  It has a sealed housing, but instead of being a rectangular box of MDF or plywood, it's made of a cast aluminum tapered tube, with four big chunky feet.  It didn't come from China, it came from Ontario, so my money stays in the country, plus it can be easily sent right to the factory if a problem arises.  

 

This happened once with my previous sub.  After about 10 years of service, the amplifier quit.  No problem, I just took it to Sound Hounds, the shop where I had bought it, and they removed the amp and sent it to the Paradigm factory.  Within two weeks I had the sub back, better than ever, and it only cost $200.  This is on a sub that was $900 when new, and still sells for $450-600 on the used market today.

 

Anyway, that's the old sub.  The new one is part of the Reference line, and uses no off-the-shelf parts.  It has a cool-running 850 watt RMS amplifier and a heavy duty 10" driver.  You can see a cutaway of it in this test, around the middle of the page:  https://www.avforums.com/reviews/paradigm-seismic-110-subwoofer-review.156

 

This next review gets into more detail, and has some proper tests, which reveal that the Seismic 110 has useful output down to 18 Hz, and even goes down to 16 Hz.  While I'm still breaking it in, it does seem to have more punch than the old Paradigm sub, a PW-2100, and it goes way deeper.  The tests in this review also show that the distortion is very low, especially in the 30-40 Hz. range where a bass guitar can reach.

 

Here's that review:  https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/subwoofers/paradigm-reference-seismic-110-subwoofer/

 

As well, I got the ARC kit, which consists of a microphone, a stand, and some software.  The microphone plugs into a USB port on the back of the sub, and the kit is claimed to be able to tune the sub to compensate for any room issues.  I'm looking forward to checking that out.

 

Finally, I got a great deal on the sub, and now I'm considering whether to go for a second one, although for the levels that I normally listen to, this sub may be all I need.  Thanks for all your advice and suggestions.

2 subs are not always about spl but a more balanced sound/bass output. I would listen to the first sub see how you like and how it fills the room.

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On 5/5/2020 at 10:14 AM, Islander said:

That Tuba sub is way too big for my place, plus it would need to be finished, plus it's local pickup only, and so on.  I've made a choice, and I went with the Paradigm Seismic 110.  It has a sealed housing, but instead of being a rectangular box of MDF or plywood, it's made of a cast aluminum tapered tube, with four big chunky feet.  It didn't come from China, it came from Ontario, so my money stays in the country, plus it can be easily sent right to the factory if a problem arises.  

 

This happened once with my previous sub.  After about 10 years of service, the amplifier quit.  No problem, I just took it to Sound Hounds, the shop where I had bought it, and they removed the amp and sent it to the Paradigm factory.  Within two weeks I had the sub back, better than ever, and it only cost $200.  This is on a sub that was $900 when new, and still sells for $450-600 on the used market today.

 

Anyway, that's the old sub.  The new one is part of the Reference line, and uses no off-the-shelf parts.  It has a cool-running 850 watt RMS amplifier and a heavy duty 10" driver.  You can see a cutaway of it in this test, around the middle of the page:  https://www.avforums.com/reviews/paradigm-seismic-110-subwoofer-review.156

 

This next review gets into more detail, and has some proper tests, which reveal that the Seismic 110 has useful output down to 18 Hz, and even goes down to 16 Hz.  While I'm still breaking it in, it does seem to have more punch than the old Paradigm sub, a PW-2100, and it goes way deeper.  The tests in this review also show that the distortion is very low, especially in the 30-40 Hz. range where a bass guitar can reach.

 

Here's that review:  https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/subwoofers/paradigm-reference-seismic-110-subwoofer/

 

As well, I got the ARC kit, which consists of a microphone, a stand, and some software.  The microphone plugs into a USB port on the back of the sub, and the kit is claimed to be able to tune the sub to compensate for any room issues.  I'm looking forward to checking that out.

 

Finally, I got a great deal on the sub, and now I'm considering whether to go for a second one, although for the levels that I normally listen to, this sub may be all I need.  Thanks for all your advice and suggestions.

Congrats on the new sub all speakers benefit from a sub IMHO.

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On 5/15/2020 at 5:07 AM, Lbk said:

2 subs are not always about spl but a more balanced sound/bass output. I would listen to the first sub see how you like and how it fills the room.

 

I’m liking the new Seismic 110 more every day.  So far, I’ve been listening at mostly low volume levels, so any bass impact is not much different, since the old sub had its level and hi-cut set to properly integrate with the main speakers.  However, on certain tunes, the new sub goes quite a bit deeper, with no sign of roll-off in power at the lower frequencies that would have been easy to hear with the previous sub.  Colour me impressed!  Meanwhile, I want to get fully familiar with it before I start checking the bass sound field in the room for variations.

 

The new sub has as yet untapped potential, in that it’s equipped to use Anthem ARC Genesis to dial in its frequency response to correct for any room issues.  However, the kit came with only one cable, to go from the sub to my laptop.  I had to pick up a second one, to run from the supplied calibrated microphone.  All set?  Not quite.  After several attempts, the ARC app is not being cooperative, so I’ll have to wait until next Tuesday to talk to Technical Support at Paradigm, this being the Victoria Day long weekend, or May 2-4 Weekend, referring to the usual date and the preferred size of beer cases.

 

Frustrated?  Only until I put away the kit, then I forget about it and enjoy the great sound I’m already hearing.

 

And a happy listening weekend to everybody!

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Well, the Paradigm Tech Support guy called me on Monday morning, to my surprise.  He was the only one in, so I hope he was getting paid overtime for working the Victoria Day stat holiday.

 

Anyway, we went through the steps that I had done, without success.  Finally, he sent me the beta version of the program, which I downloaded and installed, overwriting the previous version.  We ran the test again, and this time everything worked.  The sub put out a tone sweep test sound, and the response graph appeared on the laptop within a second.  I moved the microphone to four more positions, as prompted by the program, and four more graphs appeared.  The program then combined them, and applied the vertical mirror reverse of the test curve, which brought the frequency response very close to the ideal line,  which was also shown.

 

After all that, the sound of the sub went from very good to even better.  Now I hear low notes that I never heard before, so before I got this sub, I was missing out on part of the music.  I’m very happy with the Seismic 110 sub, and with Paradigm Tech Support.

 

 

As for getting a second Seismic 110, to smooth out the room response, I’ll listen to this sub for a couple of months, and make a decision then.  So far, it seems fine by itself.  It took a fair bit of experimentation to find the current sub location, which works very well, with no obvious peaks or dips in the room.

 

The next thing to do is pretty simple:  find the bottom rolloff of the speakers, and adjust the top rolloff of the sub with a bit of overlap, for a summed curve that has neither a dip nor a peak at the nominal crossover frequency.  I’ll get to that sometime in the near future.

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