Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dual EP800 vs SVS Ultra 16

Those would be something! Better factor in a screen wall to hide them.

The term Mid Bass is getting thrown around here without any definition.

0 - 80Hz: Lower-bass / subbass range
80 - 150Hz: Mid-bass
150 - 250Hz Upper-bass

if we are using this as the standard, then why are you criticizing a sub, when you can just as easily be pointing the finger at the mains? The 150Hz down to 80Hz sounds like something that your front speakers should be performing.

What are you using for your left and right front speakers? Or is your definition of mid mass something else.

yeah, I agree, what are you calling mid bass? My 800 isn't lacking anything.

Having the experience of a direct comparison between an EP-800 and an SB-16 Ultra in our theater, the EP-800 was the subwoofer we kept. It is a subwoofer that starts out great, then gets better with age. The slam is excellent, but it's the subtle bass lines that it delivers that seal the deal.

Sonically, it's the best sub I have heard. This includes a JL Audio Gotham @ $13,000.

A crossover is not a brick wall, with a 12db rolloff plenty of midbass comes from the sub but yeah it is also up to the mains to chime in . This is why i mentioned a MBM to really fill out the MB slam. A car has a huge amount of cabin gain that you just dont get in a large room without lots of drivers. I plan to build a couple MBM so i will update when im done.


Speaking of MidBass SLAM , i shot a 50 cal a while back, now thats what i want in my theater.

The most tactile energy is perceived around 100hz + or - centred in the mid bass region.

The LFE channel is mixed up to 120hz in soundtracks AFAIK. The crossover setting is only a low pass from the other channels to sub -not a high pass from LFE to mains. The discrete LFE channel uses a greater range of the subwoofers with multichannel content. Mid bass galore.

The SB 16 Ultra I bought had no guts whatsoever, in fact it was about even with the very inexpensive PC 2000 I had on loan to test. Worse yet, the SB16 Ultra died after a few hours of use (amp just stopped suddenly). My 15 year old box store purchased Def Tech PF 15TL Plus with a paper cone 15 inch driver and 500 watts outperformed all of the SVS subs I tried... again, in my room, not necessarily what your room will produce. But the fact that my old Def Tech took a lightning hit, died immediately then came back to life and lived another year afterwards speaks volumes towards a US built speaker (sadly they are no longer built here, China rules). I will not replace it with another product from them as I don't do Chinese, if at all possible which is becoming increasingly difficult.

Not to start a rant but this was one of the key reasons I was willing and spent the kind of money that Anthem was asking for from their pre-amp.

The complexities of many of the AV receivers blows your mind. To say that a crossover is not a brick wall can be very deceiving as it really depends on how the firmware is implemented. On my old Pioneer Elite the unit had the default setting that cut out the mid-bass from the mains with a sharp knife. If you had a sub connected, it would direct all the bass sound to the LFR like falling off a cliff from 150hz down. Your 120hz sweet spot wouldn't make a peep from the mains. To get it to output, there were 3 different setting spots hidden inside the menus to expand the bass, play both LFE and Mains, and configure the mains as LARGE FULL RANGE.

For the month I had the Mirantz, I can't say it was much better. What Anthem did that I really like is with the ARC gives you a proper calibrated mic and a graphical screen showing you the response curve measured from each speaker. That way you can actually see if you are getting a null at a certain spot either from your speaker location or perhaps just the spot that you are sitting at. Worth every penny spent.

When I installed my new system last winter, the initial system that is with the SVS Ultra Towers and SVS SB16 Ultra, followed by the PC12 Plus then the PC Ultra13 (all failed including the towers), a Parasound A51 amp and Anthem AVM60. I used the ARC software which worked wonders with the SVS towers and subs; it really cleared up room deficiencies

After the failure of the Ultra Towers, I decided to just pull the trigger and replace with what I always wanted, the Bryston Model T's and then just use my old Def Tech PF15TL Plus sub for the time being. I used initially the ARC settings I had run with the SVS speakers just to see how it worked which included bass management. It was terrible, so I ran a new fresh scan of the room with the Bryston's and it once again was so so, not bad, better than the original, but not great.

I turned off all room correction and bass management and the sound just blew me away! Simply amazing. I called service at Bryston to tell Mike and he said good to hear.... that is how they like it, no room correction at all, just let the speakers do what they are supposed to do (if they are well designed) and not add in any 'filtering' which is what ARC is.

Try using your speakers and processing with NO filtering or correction at all, you might be surprised. However in the case of the SVS Towers, they needed it so it shows that the crossover design was not well designed perhaps.

I've had multiple speakers, from different companies, in my space since enabling XT32 on my Onk. They all sound like garbage without Audyssey. Ditto with my EP600. The room and the speakers form a system whose response is controlled by Audyssey.

It sounds freakin' amazing and that's not just my opinion but the opinion of everyone I've blind-folded and converted to an audiophile. Once they've heard it, they can't go back to the junk they used to call "good enough".

I don't want to listen to the Model T 'cause I'm sure mine would sound like junk in comparison.