Do Sound Labs play deep bass in large rooms?

i have owned the U1s with 300 watt tube research monos. they had plenty of bass. the dynamics are awsome large or small room. they will play plenty loud for me. i would not run ss with them though. they love powerful tubes. if you liten real loud they would not be the speaker for you though. they do have limitations as the panels will rattle if overdriven. the midrange is breathtaking as well.

Lrsky -

Brian of Essential Audio has done a superb job of covering the, ah, essentials...

The short answer to your question is, yes indeed, big Sound Labs will do bass in your room.

Sound Lab's specs may even be a bit conservative as far as bass extension goes. I have two M-1 customers with access to measuring equipment who claim to measure the -3 dB point in their rooms at 22 and 24 Hz respectively. I've heard of Ultimate 1's measuring -3 dB at 19 Hz.

The backplates have a 4-position bass control, which can be set at +3, 0, -3, and -6. Most M-1 owners that I know of have theirs set at -3. My room is 13 by 31 feet so it's not much smaller than yours in floor area (though my ceilings are only 9 feet, but that won't make much difference as the Sound Labs don't significantly interact with the ceiling). Anyway, on my Sound Labs the bass control settings range between 0 and -6, depending on which amplifiers I'm using.

Like Brian, I'm curious about your amplifiers. The highest damping factor amplifiers I have sound best with the bass control set at 0, but other aspects of amplifier voicing come into play as well.

While it's true that bass and treble propagate differently, with the Sound Labs you have essentially uniform coverage throughout the listening area because their radiation pattern is pretty much the same up and down the spectrum. So unless you stick your head up above the height of the panels (and lose the highs), they will sound good from anywhere in the room. The only room I've ever heard Sound Labs sound bad in was an extremely flimsily-built hotel room in Las Vegas at CES 2002. The room's walls were flexing and resonating, making the bass extremely muddy (nope, the volume level wasn't very high). None of the speakers in upper floor rooms at that hotel sounded good, at least not in the bass. With that one highly unusual exception, Sound Labs are in my experience much easier to get to sound good in a room than are most speakers. Usually, they sound great where you first plop 'em down; subsequent fine-tuning yields real improvements, but not drastic transformations.

Also, having owned both M-1's and A-1's, I can say that sonically they are identical. As Brian notes, there is a definite step up in some areas as you go to the Ultimates.

I'd be glad to take a shot at any other questions you might have.

Best wishes,

Duke

While I don't think I'll ever be able to afford Sound Labs. Man, judging by the way people talk about them, I just gotta hear them!

Unsound,
If you can't afford them, don't listen. The upgrade bug will haunt you for the next 10 years. They are that good.

......it may be getting to me also Sid!