Best sub for S2EX, Music + HT?

[N Boros]

It isn't clipping, it is ringing / breakup modes. All dome tweeters exhibit a rather harsh break-up mode while RAAL ribbons do not.

There are basically 4 characteristics that I attribute to why RAAL's sound so go.

1. They are generally about 1/50th the moving mass of a dome tweeter. They basically accelerate and decelerate instantaneously, a near perfect transient response.

2. Extremely wide and linear horizontal dispersion

3. No break-up modes (as I described above)

4. There is no voice coil, no former, no surround - the only moving part is the resonating diaphragm itself, that combined with the extremely low mass = practically zero stored energy.

Thanks!

I've been curious about subwoofers, so I looked at a number of them (even though it doesn't make sense for us).

Monoprice has a new 8 inch THX subwoofer that looks interesting - it's smaller and lighter than you'd expect:

Monolith by Monoprice THX Certified 8in 150-watt Powered Subwoofer - Monoprice.com

It's reasonably priced, and goes down pretty far, although maybe not as far as some would want. They just posted that they're expecting more in stock in 9/22, which might be too long to wait.

One thing I liked is that they have line level inputs and outputs, with a real crossover, which would be what we'd want with our 2 channel system with older equipment. We'd put it in between our preamp and amp.

For me that would be a step down in performance. I have an Outlaw LFM-1 subwoofer, which has a 300 or 350 Watt amplifier and a 12 inch driver. I'm looking for a similarly sized ported model with a 12 inch driver, but one that has better detail in the 60 to 80 Hz range, where the Outlaw sub is lacking. I'll probably just go with a Rythmik LVX12 at some point. I'm also kind of waiting for this subwoofer to die, but those Bash amps last forever. The subwoofer is 19 years old at this point and still works great.

One suggestion for you is the Rythmik L12. It is a little bit more money that the subwoofer that you mentioned, but I would expect quite a big setup in performance. Still pretty compact too, where it is just about a 14 inch cube.