I frequent a few other forums, but I wanted to pose this question here because I know a lot of you are very intelligent and knowledge about sound; and I trust your judgment.
I currently have a 250w KLH sub. It’s not a very good sub, but it has served its purpose for the time being. About a month ago, I ordered a sub from SVS. The sub came and I put it through the normal, rigorous tests. But, for some reason, the sub just didn’t sound very good.
When I had the KLH hooked up, I could feel explosions, the hum of a lightsaber and the thump of bass-heavy music from across the room. When I had the SVS running, all I could feel was a light vibration and I could hear the wall behind it shaking. I kept moving the sub into different positions around the room, but I still got this flat sound.
Finally I went over to the sub and placed my ear against it and I could swear I heard rattling.
OK, now this is the part well I need to be told if I’m crazy or not.
I wanted to figure out if 1) the sub was rattling (denoting that something was lose or broken) and 2) where the bass was going from this 600w sub. I accomplished this by doing the following:
1. I turned off all of the other speakers, thus isolating the sub.
2. I then hooked up the KLH in its normal listening position and played a particularly LFE-demanding scene.
3. I then repeated with the SVS.
This allowed me to hear that the sub was, in fact, rattling and that the bass was not reaching the seating area like the KLH was.
I’m being told that my “isolation” test is invalid and doesn’t really tell me anything about the sub. This makes no sense to me, so I leave it to you fine Axiomites. Am I nuts?
