A pair of Mirage BPS-400's. Nicely compliment my NHT 3.3's. Also excells when listening to music. Overkill at times. Definitely NOT subtle. But can be tamed with crossover and gain.
David.
David.
While my HT mains each have two 12's per cabinet, the center channel has two 8's and the rears have two 10's per cabinet, i'm also running two good sized DIY sealed and stuffed subs. Each cabinet houses a 12" driver with a Q of .5 at resonance. The F3 of the subs is appr 23 Hz. The mains are powered by 1200+ wpc rms with the center, rears and each sub being fed by 800+ wpc rms. I also have two RTR subs that are of a VERY unique design called a "negative pressure chamber". Each cabinet is divided into three separate sealed chambers. The two outside chambers each house their own 15" drivers on opposing sides of the box. The center chamber houses a 12" driver that is down-loaded. The three chambers are internally linked by two passive radiators, which do not contribute to the output that one hears at all. Like i said, it's a "weird" design. These are phenomenally fast and tight and about -1 dB at 17 Hz. I think that the factory rating was -1.5 dB at 16 Hz if i recall correctly. These subs were given to me by a friend that owns a speaker repair facility for free : ) I also have a large Sumo Andromeda sub that will probably end up over at my Dad's house. This uses a 15" JBL 2235 driver in a double vented 5 cu ft enclosure. Factory rated for 25 Hz at -1.5 dB's. This one almost broke the bank as it set me back a whopping $40 and is in phenomenally good shape : ) In another system, i'm running eight NHT 1259's ( four per side ) in a low Q sealed and stuffed arrangement with 3000 watts rms + 2.2 db's of dynamic headroom driving just the woofers : ) My bedroom system uses two subs, each housing a down-loaded 10" in sealed and stuffed low Q boxes. These are fed by their own "measly" 100 wpc amp and the monitors have their own 100 wpc amp also. After all, you don't need a lot of power when listening in bed : ) Last but not least, take a look at the folded horn sub that a friend of mine in Ohio built. The one that i'm talking about is the picture on the bottom right with his wife standing next to the partially built cabinet. He's running THREE of these in his system !!! For the record, YES, this man IS completely insane !!! Luckily, Mike has a VERY understanding wife : ) Sean > |
I do not run a subwoofer at all in my system, but my mains can put out enough bass that adding a sub would decrease my bass output and response by bleeding the LFE track from my mains. I just run all channels as large and feed the LFE back into the mains. What I did add for more effect was add an Odyssee motion simulator by D-BOX Technologies. It is the most amazing piece of home theater equipment on the market today. In addition to adding the bass effects of shaking the room, it can even give you the G-force sensations you would experience when riding in a car or the rolling waves you get when being on a boat. The information on it is right here: http://www.d-box.com/html_en.html As far as the best sub, there is no sub in the world that can do what the Odyssee can. At some point, more bass isn't going to give you the effect you are looking for anymore than a projector with greater light output will make up for a lack of resolution or inaccurate colors. The Odyssee has a response curve from 0Hz to 100Hz and can hit with 2G's of force. The XL system I have at home can lift 1.2 tons with as much ease as lifting one pound. And unlike tactile transducers, it has its own discrete motion track. I have more bass in my sound system than anybody can ever need in a home setting (+/-2db to 15Hz. Max SPL: 141 db at 80Hz, 132db at 25Hz, 128db at 20Hz, 120db at 12.75Hz anechoic) and it just pales in comparison to what you can accomplish with the Odyssee. |