Audiophilepure

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/features-menu/opinion-menu/1264-nice-guy-jason-and-the-bowers-wilkins-db2d-subwoofers

Simply put: this is the best bass I’ve yet had in my room. Not the most. Not merely the tightest. No, it’s more than that. It’s like the juicy, whip-crack tight bass of the 801s, sure, but add in a sense of natural integration combined with a feeling of realism that I’ve not experienced before.

Back to the original premise of this project: creating a half-price 801 D4 Signature. I haven’t listened yet to the DB2Ds fronted by the 805 D4 Signatures. That’s going to have to wait until I get back from the Florida International Audio Expo in late February. And that means it’s time to get my passport and Metamucil ready for international travel from my home in Toronto, Canada.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/rel-no31-powered-subwoofer

After I began using my dedicated listening room, in early 2023, my hankering for high-quality subwoofers returned. Pinging REL Acoustics seemed like a good idea. There are other great subwoofer manufacturers, but REL—born in Britain but especially prominent in the US—is the brand that pops up more than any other when audiophiles talk about high-end subs. Owner John Hunter readily agreed to lend Stereophile a pair of REL’s No.31 Reference models ($7500 each). For my 21′ × 15′ space, the No.31, with a 12″ carbon-fiber driver and a 900W class-D amp, seemed the ideal choice. REL’s larger, louder top dog, the No.32 ($10,000), which has a 15″ driver powered by a 1000W amp, might be overkill for spaces under 400 square feet or so. The models are so named, by the way, because they were designed 31 and 32 years after the company’s founding.

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/perlisten-r18s-thx-dominus-18-sealed-subwoofer-review

I can only conclude that when Perlisten designed the R18s, it understood that there was a gap in the premium sealed subwoofer market in need of filling. That a machine combining the displacement offered by an 18-inch driver, the refinement of an audiophile-quality true high-end hi-fi design from a company focused on measurable, provable high fidelity, plus the relatively compact nature of sealed subwoofers, which allows for impressive bass extension and delivers the significant displacement needed to achieve it, these things come together in a superb subwoofer that, in my view, hits a Goldilocks price point, a Goldilocks performance point, at a Goldilocks size. It is a clear Sound & Vision Top Choice selection for a premium sealed subwoofer, but it also gets the unofficial triple-Goldilocks award for really nailing what a premium sealed subwoofer should offer.

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/perlisten-r18s-thx-dominus-18-sealed-subwoofer-review

This magical subwoofer transformed any and all the high-quality speakers I auditioned with it connected into true full-range powerhouses. The sub is so clean, it always sounds like an extension of the speakers, and never like a box on the floor huffing and puffing to dig deep, like so many other subs. Its poise and power create a sense of awe. No other audio component I have reviewed so instantly transformed the rest of the system, elevating the fidelity to levels you’d rightly associate with the very best sounding stereo systems in the world. And nowhere was this clearer than when I was using my TV as the streaming source, the Kantos as my speakers, and the mighty Perlisten to take care of all the bass the speakers could not handle.

Bottom line: The sub makes the system. Yes it’s great to have a five-figure AVR-based Atmos rig singing and dancing, but goddam it is mind blowing what a killer sub can do for a modest-sized and priced pair of active speakers. Only a serious expletive can do it justice: The Perlisten R18s is the shit!

https://audiophilepure.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

The applications for this new subwoofer system don’t stop with SVS’s speakers. This subwoofer is so powerful, linear, and tuneful that one can add SVS as a go-to subwoofer for speakers from Magnepan, B&W, Sonus faber, and a host of other high-end speaker companies. SVS was also recently chosen as the official subwoofer partner for luxury HiFi brand Metaxas & Sins, and their upcoming Electrostatic loudspeakers. A pair of SB-17 Ultras for under $5,000 could elevate a lot of wonderful speakers (which do everything except the bottom two octaves of bass) up to world-class performers. Yes, this new Ultra subwoofer is that good.

So, there are the results for the comparison between the SVSD PB16-Ultra and the PB17-Ultra R|Evolution Subwoofers. Even though distortion is more prominent in the PB16-Utra, I don’t see it being a problem at all because the harmonics are also very low frequencies. If you use a low-pass filter of 70 Hz – 80 Hz in your home theater processor like I do, 30 Hz will only produce one harmonic since the 3rd-ordered harmonic at 90 Hz is reduced due to the low-pass filter.

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kef-kc92-subwoofer-review

But the first 30 minutes of the film depicts one of his pre-crash missions as a crewmember in a B-24 bomber. When the film was released in 2014 this opening sequence became prime demo fodder at home theater shows everywhere. It’s alive with the roar of four noisy aircraft engines, wind from the open bomb bay doors as the crew attempts to close them, machine gun fire, exploding anti-aircraft flak, and a near tragic crash landing. While in some respects the KEF, in my room, didn’t attempt to deliver the sort of ear-searing experience the above description might suggest. It was instead totally believable—realistic without pushing over-the-top simply for effect. Never having been in the same situation as the bomber crew, I can’t say for certain exactly what real machine guns and flak explosions sound like. But I was impressed enough by the KEF’s crisp, bottom-end clarity and startling punch to convince me that I’d rather not volunteer as a crew member on a B-24 bomber to experience the real thing!

Of all the films in my collection, however, Blade Runner 2049 offers possibly the most challenging bottom end. While the KEF can’t quite match the sheer bass weight at high levels of the two ported, spatially displaced subwoofers that usually handle the deepest bass in my room, it came remarkably close at roughly one-eighth the total size. The KEF also surprised me in how it revealed to me (for the first time) some very deep and extremely low bass in both the abandoned factory scenes (as officer K/Joe searches for clues to his past) and, later, a sequence in a similarly abandoned Las Vegas.