Ok - I'm going to get another SUB/Bass module.
My AV room is 8m x 4m. I have an old but serviceable DA1200es Sony AV Amp - the satellites/centre are Canton Speakers but are perfectly fine top and mid for the space - I just need to fill in the bass and to handle LFE a little bit better than the SW150.
Average to good music performance would be a bonus too - but I mainly use the room for gaming and films.
I don't have unlimited budget - but could stretch to a little higher than the £170 that the SW150 cost.
I have seen people talk about the
BK Gemini 2 - but it's a minefield and any advice would be appreciated.
I don't mind getting a second hand unit if you can recommend any models.
Thanks again for your help
I might as well give it to you straight. European subs are pretty much useless. The problem is there is no market for a decent sub because there are so many apartments, semidetached and terraced houses. This coupled with the ability of police to confiscate your rig if the neighbors hear you sub, significantly curbs demand for devices that truly reproduce the last octave.
Now I have no idea if that Gemini sub is any good, but have good reason to believe it is useless.
For one thing I would never by a sub the did not have a spec. sheet. All I know is the power of the sub, that it is a 10" driver and the power is 150 watts. There is no information about frequency response. It likely does not play much below 60 Hz.
Now a ported box is more efficient and couples better to the room. At resonance the port produces most of the sound, and pressure in the cabinet limits cone excursion, and then the decoupling occurs below that and output falls rapidly and you get the flap.
A sealed enclosure on the other hand, is very inefficient. The air in the box limits cone excursion, and the driver never decouples. Bass falls off at 12 db per octave, half the rate of a ported box. However all of the sound has to come from the cone, and that is very inefficient. Further bass rolls off occurs at a much higher frequency that for the ported box. On the plus side, the frequency response can be equalized. This requires a driver with very high excursion and a voice coil able to handle a lot of power and a powerful amplifier. This does not come cheep.
So in those small cheap sealed units, you find one of two things, either they are very lean in the bass or produce a false peaked bass. Usually the latter occurs, in which the driver and box are aligned to give a big peak of bass around 60 Hz and you get big thump. These are often know as thumpers.
The bottom line is that I would never buy a sub that I did not have reliable data for frequency response and the variation in db and especially the frequency where response is either 3db or 6 db down. In addition I would want to know the available power output at those frequencies.
The other issue is that in those cheap subs the amps frequently have a very short life. They are probably the most unreliable audio products available.
You might want to look at the
Tannoy TS10
That is a 300 watt unit. The F6 is 29 Hz, which means that it starts to roll off at 44 Hz, and it will be 12 db at 22 Hz. It also has a built on limiter, which will reduce power at overload and prevent damage.
At your budget, you are not going to shake the walls.
The best subs are from American brands, but are hard to come by in the UK and are high cost, when you add your VAT.
To be honest there really is not a decent sub on the whole Watt site at any price.
