not to bring an old thread to life and beat it to death some more...
.....
but i'll share some of my opinions of the subs i've had in my room for the past month or so.
having been off work since the middle of december, i decided to play around with a few subs a bit before i ultimately get the ultra 13. yeah, i know, just buy it already!
but i'm curious to hear others for myself. having built many a box around 1990 or so(think orion hcca), i know what i like to hear from a sub. i've never really liked any sealed sub i've heard. besides, the ones that do sound good, are really, really expensive due to the massive amount of watts it takes to make them sound decent. i'm sure the jl audio stuff is outstanding, but the price tag makes me say wha?
since i have all klipsch reference towers, i started with a few of the klipsch subs. the rw-12d turned out to be a really nice sub for the money. great sounding, played plenty loud, looked the part, small footprint, but unless you can get it at a deal, $799 is way out of line for it. i only paid $350 for a practically new one, so that was a great bang for the buck. sold it for a little profit.
onto the klipsch rsw-15. $1k for a used one is about the going rate. a 15" woofer and a 15" passive radiator, 650 watts rms, looks killer, relatively small footprint, falls off below 30 hz or so like you threw it over the grand canyon!! pretty good mid bass slam. sold it for a profit.
onto the klipsch sub-12. around $400-500 new. i picked up a used one for $150. talk about a deal of deals! 12" down firing, rear ported, 300 rms watts, small footprint, decent looking(kind of plain), sounds pretty darn good. plays low pretty well, and plenty loud for most situations. still got it laying around...
onto the mfw-15. b-stock deal at $530 including shipping. a little bit bigger, but still a decent size footprint. exceptionally nice finish. a little concern on the amp issue. 350 watts rms, 15" front vent ported, plays low fairly well. one thing i noticed about this sub if you watch the cone movement closely, is that it starts to lose control at higher volumes. easily overdriven. sold for a profit.
if i had to pick from the above subs based on a mix of sound, looks, and price, the klipsch rw-12d easily takes the top spot for me. but only at a deal of a price. otherwise, the mfw-15.
all of the above subs were listened to for atleast a week each in the same spot in the room. i even tried all of them in different locations, but ended up back in the 'sweet' spot. i'm not into using test tones, creating graphs, and the such. i mainly listen to music(sacd, dvd-a, dvd concerts), so certain movie scenes are not going to determine what sub sounds best to me. these are just my 'experienced ear' opinions. no matter what a graph or specs look like, it has to sound good to me. i have only used a rat shack meter in my room once, and i can tell you that i generally listen to more than 'reference' levels. with rf-7's, and an emotiva amp driving them, it takes a lot of sub to keep up. that is my main problem is finding a sub to keep up to the levels i enjoy. i do not really want to run two subs, so the one i end up with will have to be a real barn burner. thanks for taking the time to read my mini-rant on a few sub offerings!
