On 12/12/2010 2:29 AM, DGDevin wrote:
"Smarty" wrote in message ...


I entirely agree. I have owned several (Velodyne, Hsu Research,
Carver, Dahlquist) and installed many others in some extremely high
end systems. They add a profoundly better and more realistic
foundation to many types of music and theater / video performance.

As 'Home Guy' states, true subwoofers installed and adjusted properly
are a joy to hear, but misused, misadjusted, or misnamed speakers
pretending to be subwoofers but are actually not suitable for subsonic
frequencies give true subwoofers an undeserved bad name.

I still have a Triphonic 3a system made in France several decades ago
(although it's in storage at the moment). It has three 12" woofers (with
accelerometers on the cones) driven by a built-in power amp.

Yow, that's something!


There is an
analog computer in effect that compares the motion of the cones to the
input single and corrects for errors, Philips used the same technology
in their Motional Feedback speaker systems. The satellites also had
ribbon tweeters (Celestion?) and the overall effect was of effortless,
accurate sound reproduction. So when somebody tells me subwoofers are
inherently lo-fi, well....

Of course many of the so-called subwoofers sold today are rubbish, meant
only to lay a thick, furry layer of *thump* over everything. Sadly, car
audio and home theatre have done a lot of damage to the whole concept of
hi-fi. But that doesn't mean that subwoofers as a species are a bad
idea, they just have to be properly executed.


Let alone badly clipped systems where the distortion is just masked
by more distortion. And the owner is oblivious.

I've had my house sound down for a while and am unfamiliar with what
is on the market. Anything frugal that you know of that can do multizone
(4) and have a remote? Alas all I have is old and analogue. I want to
keep all the speakers and amps and just upgrade the tuner/preamp. I'm
sort of trending towards a dedicated PC and was going to track down an
old bud of mine that does home theater installs that I used to run sound
with... Lucky I didn't go deaf, his hearing rattles...


Jeff
Out of date on what's new. Way out of date.