No that the initial euphoria has subsided, a bit more on my experience thus far. After spending about an hour with the sub today and calibrating with Rich's SPL meter (thanks Rich!), it turns out that the windows rattling were only half of the noise I was hearing when I was first testing the sub.
There is something inside the woofer cabinet that is loose (or maybe it is the woofer cone itself) making a noise that can be heard over the bass during extreme bass scenes (Nemo-Darla scene, U571-Depth Charged scene, etc). Total bummer.
It is not audible during most music, which is good, so I'm still getting a sense for what it is capable for, but I have a sinking feeling I'm going to have to send this one back unless the folks at Axiom can help me troubleshoot the problem from home. I wrote JC a note next week and we're planning on talking this week in more detail. I'll keep you guys posted.
As a side note, I have to sadly report that thus far the difference between this and my existing Earthquake MKIV 12" sub is much more subtle that I expected. The EP600 plays a touch lower and without question much louder. However, my room is small enough (12x20x9 enclosed) that it doesn't require the volume, so that isn't a noticeable difference in most situations. Considering the EP600 takes up at least 3x the physical space and was not a cheap upgrade, I had envisioned a more dramatic effect.
Today I did some A/B testing with the existing sub versus the 600 using the Dave Matthews Blu-Ray, Eagles DTS DVD, and a couple of regular rock & country CDs. My impressions thus far are that the 600 is lacking the pressurizing 'thump' I was hoping for. It is a touch better than the Earthquake both in sound depth as well as "punch," but both are very subtle differences. I have experimented a fair amount with placement (I've done "the crawl") and also the trim settings and didn't find that the performance changed dramatically.
The only way I seem to be able to get the oomph I want is to really crank up either the sub's gain knob or the receiver's channel setting. Doing that does bring up the bass but it soon makes for a muddy sound as the bass overpowers the rest of the sound. (the Earthquake has the same problem, and it was what I was hoping to overcome with the 600).
I can't tell you how much it pains me not to write a glowing review, but after shelling out the big bucks for this monster, I really was expecting fireworks (loud, deep, thumping ones)
I definitely want to give it a fair evaluation and am reaching out to the rest of the experts here to see if perhaps the 600 wasn't the right choice in the first place for what I'm looking for or if there is more tweaking I could do to bring out the sound I was hoping for. I've read a lot of comments in the past that maybe the new 350 or 500 has more of a "punch" factor... maybe I should have gone for something different than the 600? Or, maybe the flapping noise that comes out when playing extreme bass has an effect on the sub's sound when playing music too, even though it can't be heard over the source material??
