Help with choosing sub-woofers please

Thanks y'all.

@danager     Early in his vid Mr Geddes says damping all the room boundaries is good for bass.  Then just after 17m he says it won't do any good at all.  Kinda put me off him, that and his whiny voice and condescension, including to members of his audience.

@avanti1960    Methinks you protest too much about REL.  They are good subs and already on my shortlist.  Do you represent them at all?

@atmasphere   The Swarm looks interesting in principle and good value.  Putting in 4 subs to cancel room reverberation is a bit like herd immunity.  I suppose 'herd' = 'swarm'.

But why are they two feet tall?  What's the other half of the cabinet doing?  They're not really 'compact' at 23x12x12 inches.  Why do we have to have old-fashioned wood veneer finishes?  Why don't they quote the frequency range between dB limits?  And, as @tomic says, any small sub can be 'swarmed'.

@atmasphere   The 14 foot wave takes 12 milliseconds to pass my ear.  Is that fast or slow?  My MLs are flat at 80Hz and the bass there is pretty tight, not an unrecognisable reverberating mush.  What's more I can hear it arriving from its source on the soundstage.  I await to hear how much worse it gets at 25Hz.  And whether it's really true my room boundary damping won't make any difference.

@audioconnection    What is it about the design of the Vandersteens that allow them to behave so differently as a stereo pair with essentially the same control systems?

@clearthinker

Yes this video was more like the ones we record at our DIY meets but I believe he was talking about constrained layer dampening for bass which according to his comments later in the video do provide bass dampening.

This video was from 2013 almost 10 years ago. Before you make a judgement you should know who this guy is. Dr. Geddes (PHD in acoustics) has done extensive research, real scientific research on how we perceive sound, environmental reaction to sound and wave guide design. He and his wife worked together to design experiments to actually measure perception. I just saw another video regarding THD and how our perception of it varies at different volume levels and what harmonics we can detect and which ones are masked by the way our ears work. This reinforces my theories that measurements don’t really mean that much because we’re measuring the wrong stuff but I always like the people who agree with me more than those who don’t.

Dr. Geddes is now out of the stereo biz and makes stained glass windows but I bet his stereo sounds really good while he’s doing it.

Cheers, and good luck

Quested Subwoofers from the UK, Studio Accuracy at its best and easy to intergrate using a analog crossover control or DSP if you into DSP.

I added a second Rel this weekend and I'm very pleased with the improvements in in the depth and smoothness of the bass. Seems like the whole soundstage is more cohesive. I was going to sell my speakers and single sub and buy speakers with built-in subs but what I was interested in weren't available to listen to. Good for me. Too bad for them.

@danager   Thanks.  Yes near the beginning of his talk he said he has an acoustics PHD.  Most of what he said makes sense, but he was totally contradictory on the benefits of conventional room boundary damping for low frequencies.  My room is built so I can't alter it now.  Looking into constrained layer damping, it is said the effect is gained by attaching two different materials to each other, even though these may be relatively thin.  Other vids have suggested that short of mounting walls on springs (not very practical, it is impossible to damp low frequencies.  One said you need 5 feet thick material to damp a rear wall.  Not very practical either.

@dalims4     Noted.  Did you wire the two RELs separately for stereo or wire both sides into both?   And where did you site them in the room?