Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Axiom EP600 vs. SVS PB13-Ultra

Another review & comparison:

Last week, tomtuttle (Tom), samandnoah (Rich), and WhatFurrer (Steve) all came by for some comparative listening tests between these two subs as well as a demo of the entire Epic 80 system as a few of these guys hadn't heard the 80s in action before. The get-together was a ton of fun, but for now I'll focus on the comparison of the subs given the subject of this thread.

I'll attempt to repeat what I heard from everyone while we were listening, though of course it'd be better if they all jumped in and commented themselves.

First, some technicalities. I did move both subs next to each other (grunt, groan) in the right rear corner of the room. Room trim on both was off, XO was in bypass on the sub, 100hz in the receiver (not my normal listening XO, but for purposes of the curve, I wanted to go out further), the SVS was tuned to its 10hz setting, which means 2 of the 3 plugs were put into the ports on the front of the sub).

Both subs were tuned to 80 dB, the mains were tuned to 75, center to around 78. Just my personal preference, no further science to the choice. The subs were then also both tuned to a flat response individually using the BFD. (As a side note, this is one truly miraculous little device - I HIGHLY recommend it for flattening in-room response.)

Here is a comparative view of the tuned response curves:


Just as comparison, here are the two curves before the BFD tamed them (witness the power of the BFD!)


As you can see, they both have a nice flat response from 20 - 90hz, with the only noticeable difference in the sub 20hz range, where the SVS is capable of producing ~15-25 dB more than the 600 in my room. (this is running it in its lowest tuned mode, to 10hz, which cuts total SPL possible from the SVS, but in my room, I've yet to approach its limits, so there's not much downside for me to tuning it down to the 10hz mode.

Now, onto the actual thoughts/reviews...

Opinions were very mixed on the subs depending on source material. For the U571 scene, I felt that the SVS was absolutely incomparably better (blow your pants off better), but others weren't as certain as they felt it was almost overpowering, which I guess is what I like. Tom pointed out that he liked the 600 more on the U571 explosion scenes because he thought the SVS was overpowering the mains and not producing any of the finer details in the explosions of the depth charges. The SVS was clearly louder and produced more "shake your pants" effect, but for him the 600 was still a nicer sound. Rich and Steve agreed that they noted this difference, though I don't remember as clearly which one they liked better.

We also watched the opening scene of Toy Story 2 where the opening credits roll in and the following scene where Buzz infiltrates Zurg's headquarters. In these scenes as well, the SVS was clearly deeper and louder. The output was so much louder with the SVS that it led all of my guests asking whether the two subs were really tuned to the same volume, which they were, but I'm still not sure everyone believed me. (despite knowing that I'd done this myself, the difference was so noticeable that I was questioning myself as well).

For music, the SVS was a little harder to blend into the rest of the material. Despite Rich's objections, we listened to Hotel California from the Eagles DVD (in DTS) to test the subs' performance on music.

Here I believe we all agreed that the 600 definitely smoothed into the background more nicely without additional tuning effort, which I can't really explain considering the very comparable response curves. When I knocked down the SVS by 2 or 3 dB in the Denon's menu, it blended a bit more nicely but still not as well as the 600. With that said, I still feel like somewhat of a neophyte when considering all of the options on the amp for the SVS and need to do more work with the various tuning options before giving a final verdict on musical performance.

Since the test, because of the strange volume differences we observed during both music and movies, I blanked everything out of the BFD and Denon and recalibrated everything one more time to ensure that there was nothing off in the setup. That took a couple of hours and I haven't been able to actually do any more comparative testing, but at this point the room is ready for it. I plan on doing more this week (Mother's day is not an idea day for such tests it appears). I'll post back with my thoughts.

Jakewash, I'm looking forward to what you think as well now that you've got it back in your room.

Sounds like a fun GTG! I look forward to reading the others' impressions.

Thanks for posting your impressions, Jason. Of course, I won't believe a word you say until I see pics.

Great info myrison! I can tell from looking at your curves that you have a great room even without the BFD (+/-5db from 20Hz to 100Hz on the EP600, not as good with the SVS). Out of curiosity, how many filters did you employ on the BFD to get the resultant curve?

Around 7 as a first pass to get them reasonably flat. To get them where they were in the pictures, which is probably a bit of overkill, 13 for the 600, 14 for the SVS. I configure the Left channel for the 13 and right channel for the SVS in the BFD so that I don't have to change any settings when doing A/B testing.

Once I pick one, I will use the R&L channels to tune whichever sub I keep and my Earthquake sub to give the best smoothed response throughout the room with the two running together.

myrison, can you post a link to this BFD device that you speak of?

I believe they're talking about the Behringer Feedback Destroyer, if that helps narrow your search. I see a couple Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pros on Behringer's site. I'm not sure what model they're talking about.

It' the FBQ-2496. Nice piece of equipment.

With link: FBQ-2496. I bought it from this place as they had some demo units going for $30 cheaper at the time. For 120-150, it makes a heck of an impact.

Sorry I'm slow to jump in, but I seemed to have suffered the same Mother's Day audio moratorium Jason did. I've been married long enough (and to 2 different women at that!)that it was a self-imposed moratorium.

Anyhow, I think Jason captured it spot on, at least for me. I own an EP500, and have owned an SVS 20-39 pci. It was pretty easy to tell which sub was playing each and every time. Talk about a "signature sounds". I had never participated in a true blind test before. So I'm no expert, but it was fun.

That SVS hit low and it hit hard. It was very impressive in that regard for movies. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it literally had my pant legs flapping on both Toy Story 2 and U571. I could hear the point about all of the LFE almost obscuring the higher frequencies of the metal twisting, but I'm not sure that I personally missed it as much. The EP600 was no slouch by any stretch of the imagination when we played those scenes, but they were clearly different.

For the music (which was focused on DVDs) the Axiom was my preferred choice. The SVS would seem almost too intrsuive at times. That was why we asked to see if dialing it down a little would help. When Jason did that, it did seem to blend a little better, but I still felt that the Axiom was more tuneful and integrated. The Axiom filled in the low end without calling attention to itself.

Even though the 2 subs were co-located, the SVS initially was the sub closer to the wall/corner. To rule out any additional corner loading benefits for the SVS, Steve suggested that we swap their positions. That really didn't seem to have that much of an impact on our overall impressions.

In the end, it really boils down to personal preferences (talk about cliches!). Both are fine subs. I think you need to consider your content, and hear them both to figure out which appeals to you more. I definitely came out of there pretty ambivalent, and was not sure what I would do. It's easier to be impressed by the sheer attack of the SVS on film content than it is by the subtlety of the Axiom's music performance.

Listening to them also made me start pondering what was the audio engineer's intent? Which of those subs was reproducing what the movie maker or musician wanted? Would they say one sub was better than the other? But that's an entirely different thread, and one that I've seen beaten to death as well. But it did come to mind as I was trying to decide if there was a "winner".

Many thanks to Jason (and his wife!) for so graciously hosting this mini gtg on a weeknight. Jason had clearly worked on this long and hard, and had considered many of the variables. I was impressed with his thoroughness. The overall set up was gorgeous and sounded terrific. So I really appreciated the opportunity to hear and see all of this. And it was awesome to meet Tom and Steve!

Rich

I aspire to Rich's eloquence.

No dissent from me on synopses presented thus far. I think both Jason and Rich captured everything quite well.

It was fantastic to get together and enjoy some truly spectacular home theatre experiences. That Epson projector rocked my world.

The SVS really pressurized the room in a satisfying way. It made me wonder about a few things. First, were the differences we heard attributable to the gaps in the graphs at <20Hz or at ~25Hz or something else ("headroom"?)? Second, I know Jason has fiddled endlessly with setup to even the field, and to great effect. One of the things we did NOT do was to increase the gain on the EP600. Jason's experience has been that doing so made a muddy mess (or was it a boomy blasphemy?). I wish we had time to fiddle with that variable a bit.

Another thing that was reinforced for me is the absolute importance of size and shape of the room.

I had a great time, and developed a pretty advanced case of sub envy. I can't imagine more pleasant companions for a listening session.