JimJ

What's better mean to you?

Listening impressions: The following comments are based on sealed testing, in 2 cubic feet with 500W from a PG Tantrum 1200.1. Vehicle used was my '94 Ford E-150. The low pass crossover point was 63Hz with a 24dB/octave slope. Woofer firing towards rear doors. Front stage consists of 6.5" Memphis M-Syncs with passive networks, PG Tantrum 500.2 for amplification. Let's get started... Eva Cassidy - Wayfaring Stranger (from "Songbird") If you've read any of my reviews, you know this is one of my personal favorites, I love this track musically and becuase a lot of woofers simply get it wrong. The BM handled it impressively, not blurring the notes together like I've heard with other speakers. This track demonstrates well that it's not the woofer's job to determine what frequencies get reproduced louder, it's the performer's...The key here is playing each note without overpowering Eva's vocals, and I thought the BM did a good job blending with the front stage - each note was distinct and equal in amplitude. The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over (entire album) From "Hotel California" to "Life in the Fast Lane" to "The Last Resort", there's plenty of tight, precise kickdrums to go around. I thought the BM did well with all three. I couldn't distinctly localize it when it was playing, but as soon as the sub preout was turned off the difference was obvious. That's really the mark of a quality woofer matched to the install - letting you know it's there without letting you know it's there Harry Gregson-Williams - The Battle (from The Chronicles of Narnia OST) Displacement, plain and simple. To accurately reproduce the deep, resounding kettle drums in the first minute without choking, a driver needs to have a lot of linear displacement or an enclosure alignment to really let it shine. Here I thought that the recommended sealed enclosure was limiting what the driver could really do. The BM did its best, but tracks like these don't come into their own unless you have an infinite baffle setup with a lot of cone area or physically large enclosures such as transmission lines. Placed in an environment like that, I think the BM would have fared a lot better. Deanna Bogart - OK, I'll Play the Blues (from "Great Unknown") Some audio reviewers have a fetish about something called PRaT - Pace, Rhythym, & Timing...sometimes "Attack" is thrown in there as well. Toe-tapping ability, in other words. If a speaker can't accurately convey that, it's doing something wrong and I don't want to waste my time listening to it. On this track, both the bass player and the drummer lay down a driving beat that sounds deceptively simple - but if the woofer isn't up to the task, the entire underlying rhythm sounds muddy and indistinct. Jazz players talk about being "in the pocket"; being right on the beat. The BM certainly was, and it always seemed to be where it should be. Blue Man Group - Drumbone This is a layered, complex track with a lot of different "stuff" going on, and here's where I thought the BM made its biggest misstep. I've heard very few woofers that do really well on this track, and the introduction played on the pipes didn't sound as realistic as I've heard it before. Like "The Battle", this track demands intense low frequency ability and is very unforgiving of crossover points above 50Hz - what I felt I was hearing was the top end of the driver that really shouldn't have been playing that high. Dream Theater - Stream of Consciousness (from "Octavarium") I love the kickdrums all throughout this, they're simply unrelenting and I've heard far too many drivers condense the ending into one incomprehensible sonic mush. The BM kept its cool - you're going to run your front stage into distortion well before the subwoofer here. Ported Notes: To give the driver its fair shake, I also listened to it in a ported enclosure; at 1.5 cubic feet, tuned to 27Hz - slightly smaller than recommended in contrast to the sealed enclosure which was slightly larger than recommended. Personally, I'm a fan of it in sealed or possibly other, more unorthodox designs. I didn't like the overexaggerated bottom end I got from porting, even tuned as low as it was. It lost some of the naturalness that I liked. If you consider yourself a basshead, you'll probably love it in a ported environment. Overall Thoughts: Having been familiar with the previous generation of BM's, I'd say that SI has built more than a worthy successor, and a very good driver in its own right. It's not an infrasonic monster in the recommended sealed alignment, but it'll command the bottom octave and do a very good job with all but the biggest orchestral arrangements. The new basket change might make a difference if you like inverted baskets and don't like the cosmetics. It's just refreshing to see a driver that doesn't need a kilowatt or more to come into its own - the BM is proof that if you've got a couple hundred watts, you've got enough to have a solid subbass platform for the rest of your setup

First off, I'd like to thank Nick Lemons of Stereo Integrity for giving me the opportunity to demo this driver. Having listened to the previous generation of BM's, I was curious as to what the new ones would do. Just to get it out of the way, I did this review for free, I'm not being given anything...the driver in question's going back to North Carolina as soon as I finish writing this First thoughts: When I received the BM, it was packaged in an almost identical fashion to my e12a.22 - a simple but effective cardboard frame, with the speaker itself wrapped in plastic. No damage was sustained in transit, it arrived perfectly. On first inspection, the biggest cosmetic difference between this generation of BM and the previous one is the basket. The 12-spoke has been replaced with a 6-spoke, curved design. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I liked the 12-spoke much better; it was more understated, DIYish if you will and quite frankly didn't remind me of something sold at Best Buy. But this is really only a valid concern if you're mounting inverted. The quality of the parts seemed impeccable; this was only a prototype so obviously things like the dustcap, motor boot and backplate weren't finished. Even without these finishing touches added, the woofer lives up to the quality standards set by the Magnum and BM before it.

Tower would be free, but I'd hate to see the concrete bill for that job...

If I had one of those hydraulic boom loaders and a semi to haul it away, I'd be all over it Climbing 180 feet might give me a moment of pause though...I would imagine there's a bit of a difference between 40 feet and that

Get the Q, it sounds like it's more to what you want to do.

Bingo. If you're concerned with a flat response, you don't need an extra kilowatt of power handling, if anything it'll be detrimental.

You mean something like this? http://passdiy.com/speakers.htm (scroll all the way down)

Surplus on here = cheaper than a computer store will charge...

Anyone have any CAT5/6 cable they want to get rid of?

Yeah, I know It took me about two months to figure out what kind of cabinets I wanted, then another three months trying to find someone to build them, a month debating whether I could build them myself and still be happy with the results, and the rest I can't quite remember...

Yep, deez: http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/forum/i...ic=7722&hl=

Just some ones I posted way back the 'hop. http://www.zillaspeak.com/bib-howtobuild.asp That's an idea what the design is like...mine are for 6.5's, Ryan had the bigger ones for 12's

Sure Dave won't mind having those things out of his garage finally

allllmost done.

hmm...peeka building time to-morrow

Why not buy a BL?

Best option right there.

By doing that, you're simply prolonging the time the suspension needs to settle in. Just play it, it'll break in on its own without you having to do anything.

W6v2's?

You didn't look at the enclosure recommendations before buying it? Going with a ported enclosure is about all you can do if you're putting it in a vehicle.

Go Sox...

I'm 'ing at everyone else.

I've never been amazed by CDT...midbass is very install dependent, but even in proper installs I wasn't impressed. The "upstage" idea is bad, you should just run a set of tweets wherever it makes the soundstage sound best. It only takes one set of tweets for that

Are you mass loading the line at all? Just seems awfully short for a non-loaded line...considering you're looking at 14 feet or so of length, easy. But I know nothing about these things