Getting a paradigm sub12 later today.

[Unobtainium]

I agree. Paradigm subs are not the best bang for buck in terms of performance. Neither are the ID brands though. DIY is the king there.
Life is all about compromises. Which ones are you willing to make, and which ones you are not. I am 100% sure there are better subs than the Sub 12's, and some are less money. They simply met my criteria for improved performance and looks.
I am also pretty sure the FW 18.0 will be the next subs I get. I will get 2.
They meet my criteria for the next HT room I will build in the basement.
I won't sell the 12's then either. They will stay. I'm assuming they will be plenty for 2ch music listening, so I'll use them accordingly, and the FW 18's will join them for HT. It's all about what makes you happy. There will always be something better.
HT seems to be a bit better than high performance auto parts, but you still take a hit on selling stuff, and that hit must be factored in with the overall cost of the upgrade.
I'll watch the HSU thread to get your impressions of the 15", hopefully it impresses you as much as it has others.

 

[dobyblue]

The SUB25 is definitely a bit more palatable at $2,400 instead of the MSRP of $4,000.

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?homesubw&1300578989&/Paradigm-Sub-25-

9/10 condition on Audiogon, located in North Carolina.

I would like to add a 2nd sub sometime towards the end of this year to compliment my Servo 15v2. My room is 19'x13'. I was leaning towards the 18" sealed eD A7s-450. I figure with one sealed sub, perhaps another sealed would be easiest to integrate? For $850 I could probably sell the Servo 15v2 and get 2 @ eD's, lol, then they're only $800/ea.

 

[clouso]

its sold...looking for something bigger....

 

[billy p]

its sold...looking for something bigger....

Wow...that was fast, I sure hope you sold it at a fair price. What will you be upgrading too...if I may ask?

 

[clouso]

Wow...that was fast, I sure hope you sold it at a fair price. What will you be upgrading too...if I may ask?

Hi billy...look at my signature....''subwoofer''........i think if all goes well i should order it next week....

 

[Unobtainium]

Well, the pics are crap, I'll take more later. I was in a hurry, wanted to crank it up!!

The subs are ridiculous. The blend on music with the 100's is amazing, and for HT they absolutely dominate the room, without any rattles. I'm going to get the guys to e-mail me the graphs, they were shocked at how good they were.
The placement has a little gain at 20hz, but almost perfectly flat to 200.
Watching Fifth Element right now, sounds great. There is no bloat, no slowing, and the bass has buttery layers to it and crazy headroom in my little 1700ft3 room.
This is all the bass I need and more while using this room. The performance is a cut above for sure. The slight room gain at 20 hz means very good extension, I can only assume at least as good as claimed.
The headroom has struck me surprised. Playing at very loud levels, this duo still has enough left in the tanks to add texture, and big peaks.
Worth every penny of admission for me.

 

[jp_over]

Well, the pics are crap, I'll take more later. I was in a hurry, wanted to crank it up!!

The subs are ridiculous. The blend on music with the 100's is amazing, and for HT they absolutely dominate the room, without any rattles. I'm going to get the guys to e-mail me the graphs, they were shocked at how good they were.
The placement has a little gain at 20hz, but almost perfectly flat to 200.
Watching Fifth Element right now, sounds great. There is no bloat, no slowing, and the bass has buttery layers to it and crazy headroom in my little 1700ft3 room.
This is all the bass I need and more while using this room. The performance is a cut above for sure. The slight room gain at 20 hz means very good extension, I can only assume at least as good as claimed.
The headroom has struck me surprised. Playing at very loud levels, this duo still has enough left in the tanks to add texture, and big peaks.
Worth every penny of admission for me.

That's a great looking set up!

 

[ntrain42]

Well, the pics are crap, I'll take more later. I was in a hurry, wanted to crank it up!!

The subs are ridiculous. The blend on music with the 100's is amazing, and for HT they absolutely dominate the room, without any rattles. I'm going to get the guys to e-mail me the graphs, they were shocked at how good they were.
The placement has a little gain at 20hz, but almost perfectly flat to 200.
Watching Fifth Element right now, sounds great. There is no bloat, no slowing, and the bass has buttery layers to it and crazy headroom in my little 1700ft3 room.
This is all the bass I need and more while using this room. The performance is a cut above for sure. The slight room gain at 20 hz means very good extension, I can only assume at least as good as claimed.
The headroom has struck me surprised. Playing at very loud levels, this duo still has enough left in the tanks to add texture, and big peaks.
Worth every penny of admission for me.

Paradigm makes very good products. I sold their speakers and subs for years. If you want to get the most out of those subs, get your room setup RTA'd.

A little tip as well for ya: For music, set the high/low pass around 50hz to the tower/sub combo on those 100's should play all but the last octave. And the Sub 12 pair will benefit from a lower xover point as well. Assuming you haven't done this already.

 

[Unobtainium]

Paradigm makes very good products. I sold their speakers and subs for years. If you want to get the most out of those subs, get your room setup RTA'd.

A little tip as well for ya: For music, set the high/low pass around 50hz to the tower/sub combo on those 100's should play all but the last octave. And the Sub 12 pair will benefit from a lower xover point as well. Assuming you haven't done this already.

I was playing with that yesterday. Had it at 50 for music, but went with 100 for music DVD's and movies. CC doesn't like 50hz x-over, and with this elite receiver, I can't set the fronts different from the mains.
I'm just tickled the room is great for bass, and the PBK graphs both looked good. You can hear it too. Some songs have fairly low frequency mixed with mid bass. The low stuff use to be 10ddB lower, now it plays about the same.
Never took any measurements yesterday as the whole family was watching and listening most of the day.
The combo of the 2 subs and the bi-amped 100's is so dynamic and sweet.
The diva scene in Fifth Element was a real treat.

 

[its phillip]

Very nice, but get some drapes or blinds at least! I couldn't watch anything with the light from 3 windows in my face :x

 

[Warpdrv]

You should really do some subjective listening with the xover set higher.... I'd suggest 100-120hz even...

You have a nice balanced layout and the Sub 12's will perform far better in the upper bass region then the 100's... and not have to worry about localization with the flanking positions of the subs... This will provide you with much better and more defined bass slam and impact with movies and music....

 

[ntrain42]

I was playing with that yesterday. Had it at 50 for music, but went with 100 for music DVD's and movies. CC doesn't like 50hz x-over, and with this elite receiver, I can't set the fronts different from the mains.
I'm just tickled the room is great for bass, and the PBK graphs both looked good. You can hear it too. Some songs have fairly low frequency mixed with mid bass. The low stuff use to be 10ddB lower, now it plays about the same.
Never took any measurements yesterday as the whole family was watching and listening most of the day.
The combo of the 2 subs and the bi-amped 100's is so dynamic and sweet.
The diva scene in Fifth Element was a real treat.

My recommendation was based on 2 channel listening with those 100's only. With the tuning point they have I have found they are really dialed with a great pair of subs right about 50hz, steep(24db/octave) high pass preferred if available too. Im sure the CC and surrounds aren't gonna want to play near full range sound for HT.

 

[ntrain42]

You have a nice balanced layout and the Sub 12's will perform far better in the upper bass region then the 100's... and not have to worry about localization with the flanking positions of the subs... This will provide you with much better and more defined bass slam and impact with movies and music....

I disagree with this portion. Those 100's use 6 drivers for the bass region which are equal in linear displacement to a good pair of 10" drivers. High passing them at 50hz means you will be crossing them just above the cabinet tuning point and they are only going to be playing just over 2 full octaves. With careful phase adjustment blend on the sub playing only an octave roughly will keep the bass extremely clean and dynamic both for the sub and the mains when listening to music.

 

[GranteedEV]

I disagree with this portion. Those 100's use 6 drivers for the bass region which are equal in linear displacement to a good pair of 10" drivers. High passing them at 50hz means you will be crossing them just above the cabinet tuning point and they are only going to be playing just over 2 full octaves. With careful phase adjustment blend on the sub playing only an octave roughly will keep the bass extremely clean and dynamic both for the sub and the mains when listening to music.

why the hell would you want port output from you mains crossed to driver output? you should want the port contributing as little as possible and also to keep intermodulation distortion near the midrange to a minimum. warp has this ontarget while you're jist lost.

 

[TLS Guy]

You should really do some subjective listening with the xover set higher.... I'd suggest 100-120hz even...

You have a nice balanced layout and the Sub 12's will perform far better in the upper bass region then the 100's... and not have to worry about localization with the flanking positions of the subs... This will provide you with much better and more defined bass slam and impact with movies and music....

With these speakers I agree completely. I auditioned these previously and the bass was of poor quality and the enclosure seemed miss tuned. There is a broad peak from 200 Hz to 30 Hz with peak output at 50 Hz.

So in this instance the higher the crossover the better. Even with the crossover at 120 Hz there will still be a rise in output with the sub, between 60 and 120 Hz, without Eq, I would suspect.

The aluminum dome tweeter also seems to be a problem child, running into problems as early as 7 kHz and operating in full break up mode above 10 kHz.

If the bass is tamed, it might have the effect of drawing more attention to the tweeter problem.

As you can guess I could not give these speakers a passing grade.

 

[ntrain42]

why the hell would you want port output from you mains crossed to driver output? you should want the port contributing as little as possible and also to keep intermodulation distortion near the midrange to a minimum. warp has this ontarget while you're jist lost.

This is a 3 way speaker, the midrange driver does all the critical midrange octaves and NO BASS FREQUENCIES. The 6 bass drivers are low passed and only play only the bass frequencies. Your not going to get IMD issues into the midrange with the bass drivers.

Highpassing the 100's at 50hz is well above the cabinet tuning point as well which is under 40hz.

 

[ntrain42]

There is a broad peak from 200 Hz to 30 Hz with peak output at 50 Hz.

All the more reason to set your crossover at 50hz(which will be the -3db downpoint to reduce the bump). Last thing I would want is to have the main subs crossed over that much higher interacting with not only the bass drivers on the 100's, but the midrange driver on em as well. So you would have 3 sets of drivers overlapping each other through a few octaves. No way. I'm not here to argue the frequency response or quality of these speakers one way or another, but having your subwoofer crossed over up higher than need be with a 3 way full range tower speaker is not the best way to go about it IMO. Doing that can introduce problems on its own.

 

[GranteedEV]

This is a 3 way speaker, the midrange driver does all the critical midrange octaves and NO BASS FREQUENCIES. The 6 bass drivers are low passed and only play only the bass frequencies. Your not going to get IMD issues into the midrange with the bass drivers.

Paradigm's website states

3rd-order electro-acoustic at 300 Hz
(bass drivers)

Which implies that the midrange drivers are not high passed at all, and if they are, it's just a 1st order electrical filter (which explains why they would use a 7 inch driver as a midrange in a 3-way)

Highpassing the 100's at 50hz is well above the cabinet tuning point as well which is under 40hz.

If the port is tuned around 38hz, it will contribute output as high as an octave to two octaves above that. 10hz above the tuning frequency is not even half an octave above that.

having your subwoofer crossed over up higher than need be with a 3 way full range tower speaker is not the best way to go about it IMO. Doing that can introduce problems on its own.

FIR digital filters on processors and receivers are not the same crossover issues as the problems introduced by analog 3-way/4-way crossovers.

assuming a THX 24db/octave low pass @ 100hz, that's 24db down at 200hz, and 36db down at the midrange "crossover" frequency of 300hz. The midrange drivers would be virtually unaffected by a 12db/octave FIR filter @ 100hz.

I would not cross these speakers any lower than 70hz and I would experiment with going higher.

 

[Warpdrv]

I disagree with this portion. Those 100's use 6 drivers for the bass region which are equal in linear displacement to a good pair of 10" drivers. High passing them at 50hz means you will be crossing them just above the cabinet tuning point and they are only going to be playing just over 2 full octaves. With careful phase adjustment blend on the sub playing only an octave roughly will keep the bass extremely clean and dynamic both for the sub and the mains when listening to music.

Yeah you got it all figured out do ya....

Perhaps you'd like to actually post up your pics of HT with measurements and 3rd party listening impressions (friends) of your different experiments with different xovers - maybe your a bit too occupied with your XBOX 360....

I'm certain that with a 1700w rms amp in the Sub12, let alone a pair of them, the bass would be far more accurate and articulate then with the 100's driven by an amp load spread over the entire driver array.... I also am pretty sure that they designed the SINGLE driver in the SUB12 more extensively with more excursion to fill a room with bass more effectively intended for HT and not just music then a pair of speakers with a ±2 dB from 44 Hz - 22 kHz

Your a real class act my friend - just searching through your posts I truly get the impression that you honestly come here to be argumentative on just about everything just so you can be heard... But please carry on - your in depth tested / posted results and experience is as always, very enlightening...


Unobtanium - relieve your speakers the burden of trying to deliver that last octave, and you gain yourself more power delivery to all the drivers in 100's, as well as headroom and less distortion.

 

[TheGovernment]

LOL warp, you should go see all his posts on the emotiva forums. Well at least it's the same name, so I'd assume it's the same guy since the IP's match lol.

Every post is an argument about something LOL!

Nice LMS subs by the way warpdrv!!!