Update on the EP-600:After talking to both JC & Brent over the weekend, I took apart the woofer today and checked for anything loose inside. Nothing found... I then tightened the hex screws around the amp which seems thus far to have silenced the rattle coming from the back of the sub. (great news)
After doing both, I didn't have a lot of time to experiment, but from a quick review of U571, it appears that the audible rattles during extremely loud/low bass is gone.
At this point, I am focusing more on placement and receiver configuration to see if I can dial into a sound on music that I like. I did listen to
the Mugzy's Move CD for a few minutes and was very happy with the performance of the 600. This music is really not in my most-listened to genres, but I feel it really shows the full range of the Axioms and was very happy with what the 600 added to the performance.
I've also been playing a bit with the Buckcherry CD that Mojo and I were discussing in thread about the new SVS sub and have been working on tweaking the crossover and other receiver settings to see how close I can get to reproducing the ever-elusive "punch" we've been seeking. Given all the time Mojo has spent on this and all of the previous discussion about how what I think I want is actually described as sub-par performance from a sub, I don't expect to find what I'm looking for, but I don't see any reason that it should keep me from trying!
The biggest change for the positive so far is the removal of the rattles that were really distracting me from any critical listening. Secondly, I've moved it around to different areas of the room and did another round of "the subwoofer crawl" to make sure I hadn't overlooked a better opportunity for placement. I actually did find a spot I like better for both sound and aesthetics (front left of the room, moved from the back right). The earthquake sub now sits in the back right where the 600 was, which seems to have smoothed response in the room a bit as well (though the issues with daisy chaining it through the 600 unfortunately remain).
JC and I are scheduled to talk tomorrow about the input impedance questions. He was going to talk to Ian & Tom to see if he could get some definitive info back to me about what's going on and if there is a way to overcome it.
I'm hoping to take the next week to spend some quality time with a variety of musical material to get to know the 600 and its performance with different genres of music. As you can probably tell by the tone of the note, I'm feeling a bit more positive about the 600 after fixing the rattles and moving to a new location. Now I can really take it for a test drive, which should be fun. (as soon as my ears stop rattling from the U571 test run tonight that is)
PS: I need to point out that what appeared to be a non-response from Axiom to my first set of e-mails on this issue was my fault, or rather, Yahoo's fault. Their spam filters were grabbing all of JC's e-mails back to me and not letting them through (despite him diligently resending them to me 3x over the course of a week!)
Of course, as soon as I called and left a message this weekend, JC called me back within 10 minutes and got me on the right track and figured out what was going on with the e-mail situation. JC/Brent, sorry about the confusion and thanks for all the help you've provided already!
