A few things to keep in mind...
3. Hoffman's Iron Law has yet to be beaten, so you can't really expect miracles out of such a small subwoofer.
I'm not even sure what I'd need to get "proper" pipe organ playback or whether typical recordings properly capture it (and I don't listen to much pipe organ music anyway). Beyond that instrument, everything else is either a movie sound or artificial synth, etc. I think near 20Hz or less so I'm not sure what I'd even "need". I think it's a case of just wanting to have it to have it. I just bid $172.75 on a Hasbro Ark of the Covenant on eBay to display under my Raiders poster (didn't get it; one person had an automatic bid higher; I could tell since it advanced $3 exactly so who knows what their max was). It's a plastic flipping toy, but I thought it would look cool there (currently have the Fertility Idol and a Staff of Ra headpiece there which I was going to move to the bookcase instead if I got it). I'm clearly NUTS so...
If your sub is able to maintain that response at the output levels that you desire with low distortion, than it's not "junk". What sub are you running now?
It's a 1995 Def Tech Powerfield -1500 15" 250W. It was $1200 at the time that I got for 20% off at $800. That thing has been running strong for 24 years so I give it props for being well built, at least and it looks good (piano lacquer top),but even it's in a pretty big cabinet and weighs somewhere around 80 pounds. At my old house, it fell off in the much larger room around 25Hz, but it was strong enough to shake the walls above that. In this house, the room is smaller and reinforces the bass better. According to the AVIA disc and my sound meter, at least, it stays right flat as a grizzly's appendage from 40Hz right down to 21Hz and then suddenly nose dives (I've got a straight 20Hz tone and you can't hear the walls rattling, but not the tone normally). Now with Audyssey correction, you can actually hear the tone at 20Hz (it seemed to bump it up about 8dB and it's only down about 6dB now from the 21Hz tone). I'm not sure why it's such a sudden drop, but then the AVIA tone might not be visually syncing up precisely for all I know. It might be closer to 23Hz or even the 25Hz figure if so still. I should really download some closer in-between single tones instead of that slow sweep. Let's say it IS 25Hz when it drops down now 6dB to 20Hz. Do I actually 'need' more bass between 20Hz and 25Hz even? That's hard to answer with real material and clearly if it is, I didn't realize I was missing anything. Other than electronic music and a few pipe organ CDs, I have nothing that plays that low musically.
If a second sub improves the 20Hz response a bit flatter overall for the room and evens out the room nodes, I think I'd be pretty happy with that. I have no idea if I might be missing some magical "faster response" on a newer sub for music. It doesn't sound boomy crossed to the PSB speakers or anything so I doubt it's too distorted.
I think when William called it junk he was getting a bit defensive when I questioned throwing it out/replacing it as he suggested and buying two new subs instead of just one. I started out just looking for a cheaper sub to even the room nodes out above 40Hz (below that, the bass carries quite loudly to the back of the room and scares the crap out of me in the half bathroom as it's about 10-12dB louder in there at all <40Hz frequencies, even 20Hz) than in the room at the same volume. I figured I'd probably order one sub and if it were magically 'faster/tighter' sounding with music or whatever, I could always give my old Def Tech sub to my mother for her house and order a second one. But even then, there's the question of what would do well enough in this room that it's not actually 'worse' given the Def Tech is a ported sub and I've been thinking about a sealed one (it'd be nice to take up less space in the room not more to some extent, at least).
Might be worth taking up SVS on a free trial to find out. How big is your room, and what kind of budget are you working with?
The room is 12x24x8.5 feet. (See
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/2321145-beyond-7-1-4-multi-avr-set-up-immersive-audio-54.html#post56799092 for photos). You can just see the sub in the forward view sitting behind the end table.
Well, the budget is a bit fluid. It's not so much what I 'can' afford as it is how much I'm spending in general on this room. I just spent about $8000 in the past year on furniture and speaker/components alone (and a few hundred more decorating it with movie props in the back and some key places) let alone all the movie I bought in the past year and a half (167 3D ones alone) and the 3D projector itself back then.
I don't have kids and I'm not married so I 'could' buy that $4000 sub if I
really wanted to, but if I don't 'need' to I have other things to upgrade yet (thinking about a 115" 2.35:1 tensioned motorized screen and an Epson pseudo-4K/3D projector (I need lens shift where it's mounted) with zoom memory to do 2.35:1 movies; that would be around $2600 for both (installation is another matter as I'd probably need a stronger mount setup for the heavier 26 pound projector and I'd have to move my front height speakers outward to accommodate the screen that is about 16 inches wider each on either side.
Just keep in mind I only had evening out the back of the room for the occasional guest in mind originally, but looking at subs for days on end gets me in the "gimmme more" mood.
I'm really just considering my options at the moment. I'm not in a big hurry because it really does sound pretty good in the MLP at this point and I don't often have more than two other people in the room (front row alone covers them) so the two seats in the second row and the one in the back don't get a lot of use (OK the center middle row does because it's a heated massage chair by the fireplace; a nice place to watch sports and TV Shows...as in I'll sit there for those. I watched the Super Bowl from the back. It still looked like a 65" screen >20' away so I couldn't complain. With a 2.35:1 screen, it would look plenty big even in the back and maybe kind of ridiculous at 9 feet from the front row. But ridiculous is what's fun.
I just realized the sub is in my prop photo for my
Hellraiser Lament box (along with the left front wide speaker and my Nvidia Shield controller charging). The sub makes a nice secondary end table as I discovered as I no longer had room for the tissue box with the cube there).
