Vandersteen Sub woofers v Rythmik Subs

@noble100 

Hey Tim!
This Horacio, the Brit from Argentina!!! Hahaha. Fortunately I got to see your post early on, but had not had the time to reply. I'll keep away from political remarks to circumvent censorship.

OK, I'll say forums :-)
I'm very often at DIYaudio, a lot more than here these days. Indeed, there are several forums where room acoustics are discussed. I worked on room acoustics before and I'm getting ready to take it to the next level. Another level of magnitude vs other topics often discussed. It's unusual to come across people who also study it - hence my question.

Cheers mate!
Horacio

Sorry I'm late to the party, lol.  Haven't been on as much as I recover from surgery etc.. still.  I'm a Quatro owner and went that route because I needed the bass EQ.  I'm sure Tomic and others have gone over the V advantage of the Sub amps taking on the sonic signature of any main amp it works with.  The cross over also allows the main amps to only have to process 100hz and up, so that really frees them up to sound even better than they normally would.  Once I installed the Quatro's I noticed my Ayre AX5/20 sounded noticeably better as it was more relaxed and much more dynamic.  That was a huge issue for me and it was an extra benefit for me.  This is a huge reason I love his subs, even the ones without the EQ like the new ones do.

I know this gets discussed a lot, but it needs to be.  I also like the 3 8" woofers for their speed.  I have heard the 2wq's a lot and feel they go plenty deep in a room that can handle it.  Most rooms can't handle ultra powerful sub bass.  Standing waves and other excited room nodes (around 50hz) really screw up the sound.  Like Wolf and others, I dislike all the high end DSD I've listened to.  

I do recommend 2 subs no matter what you go with.  The eq V subs are going to most easily fit into any room.  That's why I upgraded to the Quatro from my beloved Treo's.  Never looked back.

Thanks for sharing.  I do love my Quatro upgraded from the Treo. Just smoothing out the bass has helped teh sound tremendously.  I have heard a substantial upgrade in the sound of my amp now that it doesn't have to do any heavy lifting below 100hz.  

I auditioned most things under the sun and didn't like the speakers that used DSP as I always heard it unlike the analog approach Vandersteen is still using.  

Hola Horacio,

     So, your 'cheers' sign-off does indicate your British heritage but you're now living in Argentina, interesting.
     Yes, I share your interest in room acoustics, have read many white papers from leading acoustic scientists' research and read a lot of various online audio blogs on the subject.  I've learned quite a bit but definitely do not consider myself an expert.
     My main focus has been an attempt to attain the best sound reproduction for 2-ch music and ht in my 23 x 16 foot living room.  I've basically been trying to adapt what I've learned to my room and system. 
     For example, one of the principles I learned was that it's more difficult to attain good bass response in a given room than good mid-range and treble response
.  Therefore, I decided to initially concentrate on attaining very good bass response in my room as my goal.
     The findings of acoustic engineers Earl Geddes and Floyd O'Toole were instrumental in my decision to employ a distributed bass array system to attain state of the art bass performance.  It has been scientifically proven, by Geddes and O'toole and independently verified by others, that bass standing waves are reduced (and bass response improved) in any given room as more subs are added.   
     They also found that bass standing waves will be significantly reduced as subs 2-4 are added and that the vast majority of standing waves are eliminated by deploying 4 subs; any subs added beyond 4 will only result in relatively smaller improvements.
     Because of the above,I decided to purchase and install the Audio Kinesis Debra distributed bass array system that consists of four 1' x1' x28"  44lb. 4 ohm subs with 10" drivers all powered by a 1K watt class AB amp.  
     This system has allowed me to reach my goal of very good bass response in my room as a solid foundation for my system to be built upon.  It not only provided accurate, smooth, textured and effortless bass at my listening position but also at the 5 other seating positions in my room. I believe it's possible to achieve this level of bass response utilizing as few as 2 subs if properly positioned but the bass will only be optimized at a single 'sweet spot' seating position, not throughout the entire room. 
     Once the bass system was installed and functioning at a high level, I found I only needed to independently dial in the mid-range, treble and sound stage imaging and illusion at my listening position.  I have large Magnepan 2.7qr panel speakers and this was relatively easy to do by experimentation with their positioning; distance between the left and right speakers, distance from my listening seat, distance out from the front wall,angling or toe-in and room treatments at the first reflection points.  
     I've come to the conclusion that it's best to treat any sound system as 2 systems: a bass system and a mid-range/treble sound stage imaging system.  I've arrived at this conclusion by research but also by applying this research in my own room and system(s).

Hope this helped a bit,
 Cheers,
Tim 

Well written Tim . You are preaching to the choir or at least me