I have a chance to listen to Triton 2 and JL sub tomorrow. Are these worth listening too compared to what you recommended? Are you refering to the Monitor rx-6 series? I really appreciate all the info! Its alot to take in when you start climbing out of the basement
Subs are far less subjective than regular speakers so in my opinion there is less reason to do listening tests than with speakers. Subs are also sized differently than speakers in that with speakers the distance from the speakers to the listener usually determines how much speaker (bookshelves vs towers) that you'll need. With a subwoofer what determines
minimum subwoofer that you need is the
total cubic footage including any attached spaces that are open to the room. That makes the size of the demo room a major factor in how a sub will sound and feel.
You probably saw us mention sealed subs vs ported subs and that does make a difference. A ported sub uses a bass port or two or three to help them reach really low notes with authority but once they reach their port tuning point (15-30hz depending on the design) they're pretty much done below that. What makes them fun is they can hit their lowest notes with
AUTHORITY and that makes them a ton of fun for movies. A sealed sub uses the difference between internal and external air pressure to help spring the driver back just a hair quicker giving them a slighting more detailed sound that can be wonderful for music. But the output of a sealed design left unmolested begins to gradually roll off up below 40-45hz and forcing the designer to use internal electronic equalization and lots of
raw amplifier power to boost output at the lower frequencies and keep the sub's frequency response flat to its lower limit and for that reason they can run out of steam and sound a bit compressed when trying to reproduce the deep explosive bass found in action movie and they don't put out the volume of a vented sub. I own both types and
done well both types can sound awesome but for a pure music system in a small room I like sealed a bit better. On the other hand for home theater and larger spaces I prefer ported.
What you're getting from internet direct subwoofer companies like SVS, Rythmik, and Hsu Research is a lot of very-very good to
awe inspiring subwoofer bang for the buck depending on the model. In my opinion they offer much better quality bang for the buck than mass market speaker company brands of subs like Klipsch and Polk.
I think the monitors that he was referring to are Ascend Acoustic's CBM-170SE bookshelf/monitors which are internet direct only.
