Looking for a budget/used sub that fits my system

[lovinthehd]

Bought it. Seems to work perfectly. Sounds fantastic! It's my first real sub so I guess I don't have much to compare it to but I absolutely don't need more bass.
I will keep a lookout for a used BK XLS200 anyway as I'm curious how a smaller sub which is really made for music would compare. I have my hifi system in the living room but I also have my music studio which could use a sub as well. So, let the gas continue.... But for the moment I am very satisfied.

Curious, what would make the BK sub "made for music"? If you think it's smaller drivers, that does not make them "for music", it just limits the sub's performance. SVS makes their subs "for music" as much as anyone does....no one has much use for a sub that can't play music.

 

[john_dikeman]

Curious, what would make the BK sub "made for music"? If you think it's smaller drivers, that does not make them "for music", it just limits the sub's performance. SVS makes their subs "for music" as much as anyone does....no one has much use for a sub that can't play music.

Well, there are a few things that make me interested in the BK XLS 200. For one, it seems BK themselves say (or said) that the 200 was the preferred sub for music, over the 300 or Monolith. Now that I have one sub that is definitely bigger than I could need in any current application I wouldn't mind trying the opposite side of the spectrum, a compact, modern sub.
And again, I know anything written online on a forum should be taken with a grain of salt, but some people said the SVS 20 39 was better suited to HT and less so for hifi. To my ears it sounds fantastic, but now I'm curious...
For the moment I'm totally happy as is. This is just an aside.

 

[lovinthehd]

I glanced at the BK site, didn't see that particularly, altho it is "criitcally damped" for the XLS200DF description I checked, so think that's what they might be referring to, a preference in system Q. More a design parameter/taste thing IMO. I wonder what @shadyJ thinks about that. The SVS is probably just as "modern" as BK, tho different designs somewhat. Might depend what your "music" is or what your spl or extension goals are.

 

[TLS Guy]

Well, there are a few things that make me interested in the BK XLS 200. For one, it seems BK themselves say (or said) that the 200 was the preferred sub for music, over the 300 or Monolith. Now that I have one sub that is definitely bigger than I could need in any current application I wouldn't mind trying the opposite side of the spectrum, a compact, modern sub.
And again, I know anything written online on a forum should be taken with a grain of salt, but some people said the SVS 20 39 was better suited to HT and less so for hifi. To my ears it sounds fantastic, but now I'm curious...
For the moment I'm totally happy as is. This is just an aside.

Subs range from good to very bad and everything in between. It will not matter what they are playing, the result will be the same.

From what I have heard of commercial subs, they tend to the bad rather than good. I think this is because of marketers, and my sub plays lower than your sub.
This tends to drive the system Qt higher than is ideally acceptable. In my view it is always a better choice, to sacrifice a few Hz of F3, to lower system Qt, but tell that to the marketing department!

 

[shadyJ]

I glanced at the BK site, didn't see that particularly, altho it is "criitcally damped" for the XLS200DF description I checked, so think that's what they might be referring to, a preference in system Q. More a design parameter/taste thing IMO. I wonder what @shadyJ thinks about that. The SVS is probably just as "modern" as BK, tho different designs somewhat. Might depend what your "music" is or what your spl or extension goals are.

In their wording, "Critically Damped" means a Q of 0.5, which means that it will have a gentle roll-off towards the resonant frequency of the port. Many subs aim for a Q of 0.7 which gives a flat response down to port tuning. If you have a system Q of greater than 0.7, many would call that under-damped, and the response would be peakish at the resonant frequency. A lot of cheap band-pass subs have that kind of response, the kind that comes with HTiB type systems. Those are the subs that give ported designs a bad name.

 

[TLS Guy]

In their wording, "Critically Damped" means a Q of 0.5, which means that it will have a gentle roll-off towards the resonant frequency of the port. Many subs aim for a Q of 0.7 which gives a flat response down to port tuning. If you have a system Q of greater than 0.7, many would call that under-damped, and the response would be peakish at the resonant frequency. A lot of cheap band-pass subs have that kind of response, the kind that comes with HTiB type systems. Those are the subs that give ported designs a bad name.

I really believe that subs should be critically damped for domestic use and absolutely not chase the lowest F3. These non critically damped subs are an absolute root cause of so many of these bumpy room responses was see.

A critically damped bass, really cleans up the whole system. In fact my experience has taught me, that unless the bass reproduction is critically damped the sound will always sound "reproduced" and never give that hair raising experience of live. Of course the rest of the system has to be superb as well. But a high Q bass will always destroy the illusion.