Excellent. Let us know where and when!

It's always the price vs performance issue. US price for SB13+ is $1249 (piano black) vs $949 for PC12+. That's a 31% difference. Means the SB13+ would be about RM7.1k here. If you choose the oak/rosenut finish price would go down to 6.9k. These are my guesses.

So it's more expensive, but you're meant to get more accurate bass at the expense of output (i.e. it might not have the max SPL of the PC12+). Some more the PC12+ can run in sealed mode, but whether that is as good as a true sealed sub I don't know. Of course the one advantage you cannot ignore is the SB13+ is much smaller.

All depends on how big is the room and how loud you play movies. If you play loud (like some fellas in US who play at reference level) then a sealed sub would not be able to keep up with a ported sub.

Still waiting for the chance one day to hear one of the SVS subs at my usual listening levels. Anybody in Klang Valley side wanna invite me

What do you define as "performance"? If you're talking about output (i.e. quantity of bass) then yes, sealed subs fall behind. In terms of accuracy (i.e. quality of bass) sealed subs are supposed to be superior.

As for amp, the SB13+ has a 1000W amp. However, it's not necessarily true that all sealed subs need a monster amp. If the driver is light and efficient a smaller amp could work too.

In general this seems to be the thinking. But like I said there are other factors to take into account and it is possible for a sealed sub to be good in movies too (e.g. the Submersive).

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Added on August 19, 2009, 11:48 am370W. Apparently it has a light and efficient driver.

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 19 2009, 11:48 AM

Wah, how you're gonna hide that PC13 Ultra? Your lounge now so nice and clean, then suddenly have this big black tube appearing

Yup, Submersive has 2x 15" drivers. It's not small in absolute terms, but considered small for 2x 15" drivers. I think Mark is very busy with US orders so not really entertaining overseas orders much. He did reply some of my emails but never got back to me with a shipping quote.

Yup, those 2 scenes from Valkyrie are bass demo material. Of those 2 I like the bombing part when they are hiding in the basement. Everything is quiet and then POW!

Apart from just asking questions here you should also do some research. There's a lot of information out there which can be found using Google and many articles will go into a lot more detail than what is posted here. There are also helpful guides in how to select a subwoofer, like here: http://www.aperionaudio.com/AperionU/choose_subwoofers.aspx

A simple search would have found this. You want to enlighten yourself? Well the whole Internet is right at your fingertips.

Yup, reading can only get you so far but it is the first step.

And if you think reading is hard, getting actual experience is even harder. You see so many people asking how does this sound or which is better? Very few of us are really qualified to answer such questions unless we have actual experience listening to the item in question.



That was simply due to SVS being less accessible compared to Velodyne. Now even with htkaki bringing it in, the rate of sales for Velo will likely still outstrip SVS.

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Added on August 20, 2009, 5:30 pmMy room is about the same size, but I'm using 15".

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 20 2009, 05:32 PM

Indeed room size does matter. Nothing surprising about that. The other factor is how loud do you playback movies.



Then you should ask A&L the basis of their opinion. That way you also get to learn from them (and also see if they really know their stuff).



So your next question should be why did I choose to use 15". The key factor is I wanted more headroom, meaning how much extra potential capacity your sub has. Let's use a car analogy - say you have a Kancil but you like to drive fast on the highway. Sure a Kancil can reach 140 km/h but at that speed the engine is straining, it will be very loud in the car, the car might feel unstable, etc. Now if you drive at 140 km/h using a BMW, the experience will be totally different. The car will be more composed, internal comfort will be much better. This is because with a Kancil you are stretching the limits but with the BMW it is well within its ability.

Same with a sub, yeah maybe a 10" would be sufficient. But if you're playing loud will your sub be straining? will it distort? will the amp clip? It's like you're running the car with the RPM at the red line. If you get a bigger sub, then it has more headroom. Do you need the extra headroom? That's a decision for u to make. So my advice is find a shop that allows trade in, then get a smaller sub by all means and try it. Don't like it, then at least you have option to upgrade without losing money.



Further reading will tell you that the difference between 10" and 12" isn't only power. The other key difference is extension, meaning how low the sub can go. Generally you will notice that smaller subs don't go as low as bigger subs. Check the freq response spec (at -3 dB point).

So with a 10" sub there are just some frequencies that you won't be able to hear (or feel) compared to a bigger sub. Sometimes you will read people saying the sub shook the room, or it hits them in the chest or that they feel the explosion. In order to do this you need a high performance sub.



Then you are missing out on a lot. While some of their tastes or room sizes might be different from ours, try to learn the principles and fundamentals because these apply anywhere. And frankly, the level of discussion in overseas forums tend to be a lot more technical than locally.



Hey, we were all new in this hobby at some point in time. I was also a noob once, still not an expert now. Asking questions doesn't irritate me, hey I also ask a lot of questions in other forums. But before I ask I do quite a bit of reading first to get a basic understanding and if I still fail to get it then I ask rather specific questions.

I'm sure you're familiar with this term called 'upgraditis' - it's a disease suffered by many AV enthusiasts You can see it here too where people upgrade from old sub to new old, etc. The point is that at some point in time you will lose money when you decide to upgrade. Even if you don't trade in back to the shop, you still need to sell off 2nd hand and you will lose money.

As said earlier buy the best sub you can afford, some might even suggest you stretch the budget a bit.



I do understand what you mean. Salesmen are biased because they want to sell their product. Many people also don't fully trust the magazines because they think magazines are influenced by the advertisers. Getting input from real users is valuable.



I'm a little confused... you said "seems to lack the punch and oomph but the bass was sufficient for the room i demo in". To me, if it lacks punch and oomph then it is not sufficient. But that's just my view.



I think there u meant to type "10" right?

Anyway, in general the bigger sub will give more punch and oomph compared to the smaller one. Of course whether that is too much or whether the smaller one is sufficient for your needs is up to you. If you can arrange to demo a 10" and 12" sub in your room that would be the best. Otherwise for a place like A&L I think you can negotiate with them to buy the 10" first and if you change your mind within 1-2 weeks then can trade in at full value to upgrade to 12".

One tip to remember about sound, sound is just air being moved at particular frequencies. To get powerful bass, more air needs to be moved. How much air can a sub move? Basically this is a function of driver surface area x driver excursion (how much it can move backwards and forwards).

A 10" driver has a surface area of 78.5 sq in.
A 12" driver has a surface area of 113.1 sq in.
A 15" driver has a surface area of 176.7 sq in.

Assuming they all have the same excursion, the 12" moves 44% more air than the 10".



Talk to them and see. They can be accommodating sometimes. Which A&L branch do you go to?



You're welcome.

Haven't been able to compare the F15 vs PC12+ because no one near me has a PC12+. I've not had a chance to listen to any SVS in fact

The build quality is comparable to other mainstream subs out there. It's not a high end build quality like JL Audio though

At A&L I did listen to the Velo SPL1200 before (for a short time only). In the past I also heard another forummer's Sunfire sub (forgot which model exactly). Of course these were all in different rooms and using different demo material. So I actually don't have an apples-to-apples comparison.

Back to the F15, so far I've mainly used it for watching BDs (movies and concerts), not stereo CDs. As a sealed sub the F15 is tight and controlled. Works beautifully for concerts, bass lines are very articulate and fast. For movies it is powerful enough so that I feel the bass and pressure waves where the scene calls for it (didn't happen with my CHT-12Q). Since it is also fast, the "attack" of the bass is also very nice (like the scene where they blow up the sock in Monsters Inc). In Iron Man, when he stomps out of the cave in Chapter 5 the footsteps are more defined, previously it was more muddy with the CHT-12Q and less weight too.

Hmm... JL Audio doesn't have any model called Fathom F15. There is the F110, F112, F113 and F212.

Anyway, the F15 you see above is the Rythmik F15.

Yup, it is sealed. 2 reasons why I decided to get sealed:

1. Smaller size. I did think of something from SVS but the size was a little larger than I would have liked. Even my F15 with a 15" driver is smaller than the SVS 12" box models.

2. Bass quality. Sealed subs are generally thought of having better bass quality and among the sealed subs, the Rythmik's bass quality is supposed to be right up there with the best (from the many reviews I read on AVS). This is due to its Direct Servo design. Yes, sealed subs sacrifice some output compared to ported subs, so I decided to get the F15 (instead of F12) to get that extra headroom.

Ha-ha, take a queue number. I think got someone reserved already.

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Added on August 22, 2009, 12:30 pmWow, Ron is coming too?

Count me in. I'd love to hear some SVS as well. Would be good to listen to some top notch ported subs.

I don't suppose any of the sealed models will be ready for demo then?

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 22 2009, 12:30 PM

Pay a visit to htkaki in Seremban.

The more the merrier. I'm sure if lots of us turn up in Oct, Ron will be impressed by how many people are interested in SVS.

How to tapau balik if car cannot fit the sub? Unless you're bringing a large SUV or MPV...