Subwoofer Question

[gbalko]

<font color='#000000'>I am in the market for a subwoofer for my media room.  I have looked at several brands and like both the Velodyne HGS series and the Rel Q201.  The velodyne only has a LFE input while the Rel has a line and LFE input.  The line input is bi-wired directly to the main front speakers.  Their rational for this is several fold: 1) this allows the front main speakers to run at full range without having their bass clipped by the crossover for the subwoofer in the preamp. Rel puts their crossover in the subwoofer; but so do other manufacturers. 2) It additionally prevents possible signal degradation by this bi-wire connection at the speaker, by taking advantage of he higher strength input signal and by bypassing the subwoofer crossover in the preamp.

So does this argument hold weight or is it just a bunch of hype?</font>

 

[RLA]

<font color='#000000'>Hi
Having a bypass high level input output may have been usefull many years ago but
I fail to see the need for it now. Most all higher end
Receivers and Preamps have good to excellent bass management.If the low level LFE out put degraded the signal
you would not see them on high end pre amps such as
Classe,Maridian,Lexicon ect.. &nbsp;and in my opinion the processors in these receivers/preamps are powerfull enough to do bass management correctly (**Most Brands, there are a few that do not **)If you are worried about crossover cascading and the subwoofer does not have a low level bypass then you can adjust the subs crossover to a higher point than the crossover in the pre amp to prevent this.Have you looked at other brands? The RBH,SVS,HSU,
M&amp;K and Paradigm all make high quality subwoofers that sound great for 2 channel and still have plenty of slam for
HT &nbsp;The REL is a very good 2 channel sub but in my opinion
lacks in room spl for serious Home Theater applications
Cheers Ray</font>