Home Audio Sub Help

[Danny McGee]

Basically i want to buy myself a sub but dont really have any thoughts as to what to get.

Am looking at about 250 max for now i think.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[mattJT]

Do you mean just a sub to hook up to an existing home cinema system, or a whole system including a sub?

I've got a pretty dated sony home cinema set up, went through quite a few to find a good one, but in the end the one with the highest power watts output was actually the best :)

[mx0range]

iv been very happy with my wharfedale diamond sw150. superfi have it on sale for £150! well worth the money imo

[mikeyscott]

Head to an local audio t branch if poss. Just taken delivery of an onkyo av amp and they had plenty of good kit. Shame my audiolab amps are going :(

Next upgrade, sub, new blu ray player and rack.

Audio t allowed me to demo my own kit with the stuff I was looking at so you got a better idea.

I'd look at dyna audio / kef / mourdant short if budget can stretch

[Danny McGee]

Sorry that message was a bit hazy. Here's a bit more detail.

I've recently got myself a set of whalfedale floorstand speakers as my fronts and some mission mx1's as my rears. I've also got a sony centre speaker from a previous set i had. At the moment i dont have a sub as i want a fairly good one.

I have all of this running through a Sony STRDH810 which seems fairly good.

I was looking at the wharlefdale SW150 but ive heard some bad reports, how has yours been? I want to play games, music and movies. I've also heard that B&W are pretty good but the one i want from them is 450 and thats a bit much for now.

Any more thoughts would be good

[kinggareth]

Are you certain that you want a seperate sub?

I had one for a couple of months, but too be honest it was such overkill most of the time.
I've found that a decent set of fronts is all you really need most of the time - I've got the same amp as you (great amp!) and it gives plenty of kick to the fronts if you set it up right.

[mx0range]

if you find a sub to be overkill then your probably not setting the filter low enough!

as for the sw150, iv had no problems at all with mine and it adds some weight to films nicely. its running off a sony str db798 with wharfedale vardus 400's front / 100's back and a gale centre 20 :)

[Danny McGee]

if you find a sub to be overkill then your probably not setting the filter low enough!

as for the sw150, iv had no problems at all with mine and it adds some weight to films nicely. its running off a sony str db798 with wharfedale vardus 400's front / 100's back and a gale centre 20 :)

Yer i want a sub. I have the Vardus 400's as well and they just dont have enough bass for me. Im not really sure if its set up correctly to be honest.

I guess i need to read through the manual again and see if i've missed something.

Any tips on setting the amp up?

[mx0range]

tbh iv found my sony amp to have the most complicated menu iv ever used :eh?: (im much more at home with car audio :woot:)

i changed to vardus 400's from valdus 400's which were very bass happy but not too great everywhere else lol. since i got the sub, theres so much more depth to the sound and clarity as iv dropped some of the bass being sent to the fronts

[Richard Lowe]

Any chance you can stretch the budget a little...?
http://www.bkelec.com/HiFi/Sub_Woofers/XLS200.htm

Based on a very good Peerless drive unit, of the subs I've built using the XLS drivers they can take some punishment!

With speakers setup is everything, have a play with Room EQ Wizard [http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/] while you move it about to reduce room modes. Ideally you need a parametric equaliser with any sub that has decent low end extension, either a seperate one (I use the good old Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro) or the EQ quite a few modern receivers have now is better than nothing. Looking at the Sony website it does'nt look like your amp does any EQ aside from tone controls :(

A decent subwoofer is essential IMO even in stereo, you only have one low end to EQ and it takes the heavy lifting away from the rest of the speakers/amps giving you much more headroom and lower distortion. I've got proper floorstanders for fronts which can get down into the mid 30Hz range in room but I still cut everything below 60Hz and send it to my sub :)