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Rythmik Vs REL Subwoofers - What to Buy?

I have an L Shaped living/dinning room.  The living room measures 13.5'x18.5' and the dining room measures 10.5'x13.5".  I have a pair of Paradigm Prestige 85F towers along the 13.5' wall hooked up to an ARCAM AVR550.  They are currently placed 8' apart with a 72" stereo cabinet between them leaving 45' on both sides of the cabinet.  This wall shares the outside 13.5' wall in the dinning room.  There are two 3' walls that narrow the opening to the dining room.

I am trying to decide what subwoofers to add to my system.  Three dealers suggested I add a pair of subwoofers rather than adding just one based on my room dimensions and room layout.  I am trying to decide between adding a pair of Rythmik F12 Signature subwoofers or a pair of REL T/9i's or a pair of REL S3's and locate them next to the towers.  However, because of limited space I may not be able to consider the S3 subwoofers, as they will crowd my towers more and it will most likely require moving my towers closer together from 8' apart to 7' apart.  The dealers I have talked to suggested I locate the subwoofers in the corners.    

I have an upright piano along the 18' wall to the right and I would prefier to use just one subwoofer located to the left of the piano located approximately 5' to 6' in front of the right front speaker.  This would prevent cluttering the wall where my towers are located and it would make our room look better.  If I locate just one subwoofer next to the piano, the speaker would point directly into the opening of the dining room.

Could you please advise as to whether to go with a Rythmik or a REL subwoofer?  I like the idea of the Rythmik Direct Servo technology.  The amplifier in the subwoofer has the ability to boost lower bass frequencies at lower listening volumes to prevent fall off.  However, would they sound too boomy?  I talked to a highly regarded speaker manufacturer and he told me if I went with the T/9i's, they rated them to go down to 28 Hz at -6 db.  He told me based on this, they would actually be lucky to play down to 35 Hz.  He went on to say this is woofer rather than subwoofer territory.  I have listened to both the REL T/9i and the REL S3 and I was not able to hear a significant difference in bass extension when they were played with a pair Bowers & Wilkins 702's.  However, I liked the way they blended in with the main speakers.  They were seamless and I swore all of the sound was coming out of the towers.  The problem is there are many recordings that contain bass frequencies of 24 Hz and possibly lower and if I go with the REL's I would not be able to hear anything lower than 35 Hz.  The Rythmik Signature F12's play down to 14 Hz.  The speaker manufacture I talked to makes custom Rythmik subwoofers and he told me the Rythmik subs are the most musical subwoofers he has ever heard.  Rythmik sells only direct and it would be helpful to be able to hear one before making my decision.

I listen to 70% music and 30% HT and my first priority is music.

If you were in my shoes, what would you recommend I do?
128x128larry5729
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,803 posts
 

Richard Vandersteen came up with a great idea for his subs: feed-forward. He determined the difference between the signal the sub was fed, and the sub’s output. He then created an electronic circuit that provided an inverse signal to the woofer, to eliminate that difference. So the feed-forward signal is static.

The Rythmik Direct Servo-Feedback circuit is an active, dynamic system; it reacts to, amongst other things, the changes in voice coil temperature (the temperature of the coil in ALL woofers changes in reaction to signal strength and driver-cone motion), compensating for that change in temperature so as to keep the output of the woofer consistent. You can read about that and lots of other technical information on the Rythmik subs on the companys’ excellent website.

b_limo's avatar
b_limo
2,276 posts
 
Larry,
Just  go buy the rythmik already!  Why start a second thread covering pretty much the same topic?

You mention that the problem is that there are many recordings that contain bass frequencies of 24hz and possibly lower... really?  Like what?  You can barely hear 24hz.  I don’t believe you can hear below 20hz but you can feel it.

So anyhow, , I’m confused as to why a manufacturers freq. response rating is of utmost importance?  You ought to take into consideration your room treatments, or lack thereof, as well.  You give a detailed description of your room shape and size... do you have any room treatments?  Tight, articulated bass with finesse and no overhang are probably more important (especially in music) than eeking out that last 5hz of audible bass.

It is not good in business to say my products are good because yours are crap.  Your product should be good enough to just make statements based on your product.  Pretty much everyone knows this...

You seem to really be getting bogged down with specs here and I highly doubt that your musical enjoyment will be compromised because it only plays to 30hz vs 20hz.  I listen to a-lot of bass heavy music that would probably offend most listeners here and I’ve had a few different “entry level” subwoofers from SVS, REL, Velodyne, Emotiva, KEF, Paradigm, Sunfire, etc.  I was not able to integrate any of them properly except for the REL.  The T9i integrates so well that either the bass sounds like its coming from your towers or it is energizing and griping the room as a whole.

It is interesting that you mention that you can’t even her a REL subwoofer, yet you also state that REL’s only play to 35hz and that because of this, bass freq. of less than where the crossover is set will overlap the bass from the mains, creating too much bass and driving you out of the room.  

I’ve found that whenever I was adjusting the volume of a subwoofer, its best to barely be able to hear it otherwise after 30 minutes you’ve had enough. 

In closing, there are probably many great subwoofers out there.  I am a fan of SVS and also REL.  Rythmik looks very good as well but if its true that the owner (?) or higher up employee had to bad mouth REL in order to sell their subs, I won’t support that type of business.  Also, Larry, why spout off he said she said statements when it would appear that you personally have little to no experience with subwoofers?  

Maybe you could share with us the type of music you listen to that is just not going to be musically satisfying playing to 30 hz vs. 14hz...

Nice Paradigms by the way!



mcslipp's avatar
mcslipp
123 posts
 
I too have a pair F12’s that I use in my home theater setup and couldn’t be happier.
larry5729's avatar
larry5729 OP
1,008 posts
 
b_limo,

Thank you for your response.  I just want to keep from making another mistake.  After purchasing my Paradigm Prestige 85F towers a friend of mine sent me an article that discussed why a 3 way is better than a 2 1/2 way speaker.  So, from that day forward, I felt I purchased the wrong speakers.  My friend already knew when I was looking for speakers he was going to purchase a pair of Salk Song3 Encore speakers at the RMAF last October and I think he wanted to make himself, as usual, one up me.  Needless to say I no longer want to be around a person who needs to feel I am not on his level.  

It was interesting for you to say you like SVS and REL the most.  I always felt SVS was more for home theater.  The one thing I like about REL is the way they hook up.  It seems like their subs are designed to act more like woofers than act like subwoofers when playing music.  Maybe this is what I should be looking for.  What I don't want is to have a bassy/boomy sound system where the bass masks everything else and it drives me out of the room.  The Rythmik Direct Servo technology makes sense.  When I talked to the owner of Rythmik, he certainly did not bad mouth REL.  He just used his incredible electrical engineering background to explain why he felt his technology worked better.  However, the Rythmik looks too complicated for a beginner to hook up.  They have all kinds of ports and knobs to adjust them, but their sales person basically told me to just use the LFE hook up and use the ARCAM DIRAC system to calibrate everything.  Since LFE is for special effects, wouldn't the subwoofers sound like they are turning themselves on and off when they detect lower bass frequencies than what my towers can produce and sound jerky when playing music?  If this is the case, why do they bother to provide all of these different connections and adjustment knobs if they suggest the LFE connections on their subwoofer and my ARCAM?  Based on some of the conversations I have had with Rythmik, they must be designed to be used by experts and by audiophiles with tons of experience.  Also, because Rythmik sells direct, there are no local dealers who can come to my house and set things up.  Perhaps, this is huge reason why dealers exist.

I hope you can now see where I am coming from and why I am concerned about making yet another mistake.
bstatmeister
537 posts
 
I have an idea, why not take advantage of the direct seller's 60-90 day trial period and order 2 or 3 subs and then have a thunderdome shoot-out. Winner take all and return the losers. Shipping costs would likely need to be paid, but would be a small price to pay for peace of mind knowing you got the right sub for your room.
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