I’ve tried so many great subs over the years, like so many others.
I’ll start about 10-12 years ago with epik. I bought 4 epik empires and they sounded incredible when they worked. As we all know chad never figured out how to stay in business and these amp failures were the cause. So I sold them and called Mark at seaton, thinking dual opposed 15s were what I loved. Ordered dual submersives, and they were nice but no match for 4 empires. So I returned and moved on to a new company called psa. Tom was incredible but the xv30 was just too big and couldn’t get it past the boss. So I called Brian at Rythmik and was convinced by the review at audioholics that the Fv15hp was my sub. Ordered two and one lv12f for my bedroom setup. I was blown away with the output of ported subs and never had this amount of spl. About a year later from boredom probably I called Tom at PSA. He REMEMBERED me from our conversations about family and many other things. He said he’d love to test an Fv15hp by Rythmik and gave me full msrp on trade. I was shocked by this and also his new subs that were coming out. He sold me maybe the first xv30f, these were incredible and output monsters. I bought dual xv30f and xv15 for my bedroom setup. Sold my Rythmik gear to friends in my audio group.
Then I got really crazy with psa gear. Bought 2 xs30se then sold xv30 and replaced with xv30fse. Xs were sold to a friend and I realized ported was for sure my preference. Then I went to dual v3600 and I wasn’t as impressed with the new lines. So my obsession ended with psa after I tried v1801. I tried dss mariana, JTR cap 4000 and cap 2400. These were very nice subs but I kinda lost my passion for bass. The dss was so expensive and wasn’t better than my old Rythmik fv15hp. Cap 4000 was huge and didn’t seem to have that chest pounding bass. So I had dual cap 2400 for about 3 months and wasn’t ever satisfied. They were great subs but for the money I wasn’t blown away. I did a trade with a buddy that just bought a pair of fv15hp. Those fv15hp didn’t have the extreme spl when digging deep as those cap 2400 but the Rythmik had more punch. It was that mid bass where Rythmik had the advantage in my room. Then we bought a new house and I sold almost all my gear.
We moved to this bigger house and I went kinda crazy with 7.2.4 setup. New canton vento, new amps, avr, and subs. Was my time to get whatever I wanted within reason. So I bought a pair of Rythmik fv18pc to go in this setup. I was blown away, deep bass like cap 2400 with that strong mid punch. Then I made the mistake showing a friend my setup and he offered me what I paid for them. My obsession with trying something else made me say yes. So they left after a year, and then covid happened. To hold me over I bought a pair of used psa v1512 that a guy local just bought and his wife wasn’t thrilled with their looks. So I used these and they were nice but suffered from driver noise and port chuffing. Which I can’t stand so I started to look but everything was out of stock from this pandemic. I got last Christmas a monolith 12 and I was shocked how good it was. Was put in my bedroom setup and I started looking at monoprice. Still I was convinced I was getting Rythmik subs again but I gave in and bought a pair of the mono 15s. Then about 3 weeks after I bought the new monoprice subs came out. I thought about returning but I felt like why would I do that. These mono 15s outperform my Rythmik fv15hp and are so close to Fv18pc. Even running rew the mono dig as deep with as much spl. Mid bass Fv18 did better but the numbers are so high with max spl. I’m hitting 8hz and 113db@10hz, 125db@25hz, and 120+db up to 100hz. Now I could buy mono 13 or 16 when it comes out but I realized for the $2200 I spent this was the kind of bass I was getting from much more expensive subs. These mono subs just won’t make a bad noise too. Just clean loud bass. So I’m going to stick with these till next urge comes. Hopefully it won’t.
also tried others like svs pb13, pb12+, pb16, hsu vtf3mk5.
So if I was you I’d get the mono 13, incredible output with low distortion. Mono 16 might change the market on these internet direct subs. Those numbers James posted on mono 13 were all ports open in thx mode. In my room extended with one port plugged gives me way more output below 16hz. Would love to see numbers in different configurations. Still great work on the review!
