And she's got a great personality

[steve]

I have found a 12" woofer can sound both tight/accurate, and the bottom and with chest dynamic punch with FR spec of -3db at 28-29 hz and down 13db at ~19 hz. However, I use the large box approach.

cheers

steve

[James Edward]

I guess I misspoke somehow.
The question was is can you have both, clean tight fast LF and still have
the authoritative bass. Wouldn't it have to linger in the room and thus be slow(er)
and not as clean?

Thanks
Don

You kind of have a point. Thump your chest bass is higher up- 40-70 Hz? Or so… I have had many subs, and my favorite until now was an Hsu ported sub with a 10” woofer- it didn’t do much 20 Hz bass, but it was punchy as hell.

We all, me included, want 20 Hz, but in reality, I think we crave something a little higher- that’s where the ‘meat’ is… Really low bass is ‘wooly’ for lack of a better term unless it’s in a very large room or venue.

I currently use a sealed Hsu sub in my music only system, and have the ‘Q’ dialed down all the way- it’s a way to tighten things up considerably. Look up speaker ‘Q’ and you’ll read what I mean.

Since I hate when people tout what they have is best, I will say that Rhytmik’s way of doing things also keeps it tight, and I’ve heard some open baffle subs at a club member’s home that also kicked ass. Again I’ll mention SVS for their truly pain and dollar free trial.

Ultimately, if you tried a sub 10-15 years ago and didn’t like the resulting sound, try one again. They’ve only gotten better- my current Hsu bests the REL I had 10 years at less than half the cost.

[P.I.]

I guess I misspoke somehow.
The question was is can you have both, clean tight fast LF and still have
the authoritative bass. Wouldn't it have to linger in the room and thus be slow(er)
and not as clean?

Thanks
Don

You kind of have a point. Thump your chest bass is higher up- 40-70 Hz? Or so… I have had many subs, and my favorite until now was an Hsu ported sub with a 10” woofer- it didn’t do much 20 Hz bass, but it was punchy as hell.

We all, me included, want 20 Hz, but in reality, I think we crave something a little higher- that’s where the ‘meat’ is… Really low bass is ‘wooly’ for lack of a better term unless it’s in a very large room or venue.

I currently use a sealed Hsu sub in my music only system, and have the ‘Q’ dialed down all the way- it’s a way to tighten things up considerably. Look up speaker ‘Q’ and you’ll read what I mean.

Since I hate when people tout what they have is best, I will say that Rhytmik’s way of doing things also keeps it tight, and I’ve heard some open baffle subs at a club member’s home that also kicked ass. Again I’ll mention SVS for their truly pain and dollar free trial.

Ultimately, if you tried a sub 10-15 years ago and didn’t like the resulting sound, try one again. They’ve only gotten better- my current Hsu bests the REL I had 10 years at less than half the cost.

Bass is difficult.  So many systems are too full at ~ 80Hz which is the 'mud zone'.  Punchy bass is the 40Hz - 60Hz realm and definition is in the 100Hz to 200Hz area.  Kick drums that have a definite 'click' on the attack have a boost around 2KHz.  The 10Hz to 40Hz response area is where concert drum and lots of synths generate a bunch of energy.  As a recording engineer I can tell you that we regard that as the "foundation" for higher frequencies.  Without that frequency realm, C0 and C1 on pipe organs and orchestral music just lack oomph.

[tmazz]

I had a pair of Thiel 3.5s as well. Remember they went down to 20hz only with the use of a line level equalizer device. While it boosted the bass it was not kind to the rest of the frequencies.  JSP Labs, before they were making those purple cables, mad a device for the 3.5s called the Magic Flutes. The were a higher quality equalizer with a gentler slope that retained most  of the bass boost while doing less harm to everything else. (My dealer told me that Jim Thiel actually preferred the speakers without the EQ box, but he felt that from a marketing perspective he would have a very hard time selling a speaker at that price point that at least on paper did not go down to 20Hz.)

Of course the best way to handle the problem was to boost the bass with a sub (or 2) and get rid of the EQ box completely. I remember them sounding really nice with a pair of Vandersteen subs.