North Creek Leviathan subs

North Creek Leviathan Subwoofers I have just completed building a pair of Leviathan sub’s. These are North Creek’s newest addition to their line of outstanding DYI speakers systems. I have build may speakers over the past 25 years for my self and friends but nothing has come close to the sound / quality of North Creek stuff. Note, I taught cabinet making for 8 years and could always build high quality “boxes” although North Creek’s bracing design is far better than any design I have used in the past. The problem, I am convinced, was the crossovers of the other kits, as they never sounded as good as I though they could. I own a pair of Sebels, a pair of the original Rhythms, a pair Rhythm Revelator speakers with remote crossovers & 8 gauge coils and a center channel Rhythm Revelator. Until just recently, my stereo system consisted of a Wadia CD player directly driving a pair of Ayre V-3 amps that were vertically bi-amped to the Rhythm Revelators and a Bryston 10B x-over feeding a Threshold 500e amp driving 4 NHT 1259’s. Wiring was all Cardas. I have now converted this system over to a home theater, using my original Rhythms for the rear channels and built a center channel Revelator. The new system uses a B&K processor (hopefully soon be to replaced by a more “musical” processor) a Denon DVD, and Parasound 3 channel amp. I had been thinking about up-grading my sub woofer system for a while now and looked at the Shiva woofers or rebuilding/adding more NHT drivers. Note, on VERY loud, low signals the 4 NHT drivers would “bottom out” I am assuming that the cones were hitting the back plate but I am not sure. So when I heard that North Creek was coming out with a Subwoofer I jump for it. The Leviathan’s woofer are expensive but they are the most impressive woofer I have ever seen. They make the NHT drivers look a toy. They came with individual test sheets and carefully boxed. Per my conversations with George Short / North Creek, I elected to build sealed (AS) boxes even though they would not go down as low (approx. mid 30’s) as a ported design (approx. low 20’s) but he/I felt the quality of the sound would be better with the AS. The other advantage with AS is the size of the cabinet, which is still large (22” sq. by 28” tall) but much smaller than the bass reflex. The cabinet / woofer design is down firing with extensive bracing. Compared to the NHT cabinets, which were built per Madisounds design, the Leviathan’s cabinets are “DEAD SOLID”. Even playing the loudest / lowest passages you can hardly tell they are on, where the NHT’s vibrated quite at bit. I fact it was kind of fun sitting on the NHT cabinets, when they were playing, you could “really feel the music”. I am still playing around with different room locations to get the best performance out of these subs but the POWER and sound quality of these subs is hard to believe. They don’t go much lower than my old NTH subs did but they completely blow them away in every other respect. Note, I think that room position is effecting the low frequency in-room response. I had some fiends over the other night and we were playing the DVD “The Haunting” and there is a scene where the “evil” comes knocking and it sound like thunder hitting right outside. Everyone in the room jumped and all I heard was HOLY SH--!!! The NHT’s could not come close to providing the “thrill factor” like the Leviathan’s could. On music, the subs blend smoothly with the Rhythms and do not draw attention until the music calls for it. In summary, I can’t believe you could find any other sub driver that can give you 2” of travel and sound as good as this driver does. I do wish it would go down lower (again, I think my room / positions has a lot to do with this) and the fact it is in a AS cabinet. Note, I think I am going to build a bass reflex box, just to compare the sound. I let you know how that works, when it’s done. Northcreekmusic.com or call (315)369-2500 Thanks Mark Hansen Mhansen@carbonair.com