I had my brother over tonight who also owns a 600 to help me do the comparison with the 400/600. We set up both subs in my larger HT on the right mid sidewall where I usually have my DD-18.
I set up the 400 on top of the DD-18 to get the drivers around the same height, connected them to an XLR splitter for easy switching and calibrated them separately flat to the speakers. Volume was set at 3 below reference.
We went through a variety of material. I didn't expect the 400 to keep pace but it did except in the most demanding HT scenes where the 600s deeper extension and higher SPLs clearly took over. On the music passages it was much closer but we detected a tighter more responsive sound with the 400. Here's details of how they performed:
First we played we played the opening minute from Eric Clapton's Sessions with Robert J DVD, an excellent recording of Clapton in the studio doing modern versions of old Robert Johnson blues numbers. Bassist Nathan East plays some very aggressive bass riffs for 40 seconds at the start of this DVD which makes it a great test for clarity, pitch, resonance, attack and decay. I had to replay this passage four or five times because the two subs sonic character is close. We both agreed the 400 was tighter and decayed more quickly than the 600. My brother described the bass from the 600 as fatter and lingering a bit more and he preferred that sound while I preferred the tighter 400 a bit more. I thought output coming from the 600 port also contributed to the subtle difference. In my way of thinking I would describe the 400 as more "musical" based on that track.
To confirm our initial impressions we then played the palace drum and beans scene from House of Flying Daggers and once again we described what we heard much the same way. A year ago I recall comparing the Ultra and the 600 in this scene and thought the 600 had better transient response and was more detailed. The comparison was much tougher with the 400, both were detailed but the 600 seemed to hang around a tad more with the loud sharp drum transients. Again my brother preferred the sound from the 600 and I favoured the 400 in this scene.
I know this can be cruel but I like to drive subs hard when testing to see how they perform in demanding film scenes. You can really tell much more about sub performance that way and subs that look great on graphs sound terrible when brought to their knees.
Pulse is one of the worst horror movies ever made and not watchable. However it has one of the better torture tracks in the middle of the movie, a very loud repetitive 15-30hz "pulse" that goes on for about a minute during a scene which makes no sense. (You know you've got a bass obsession when you rent movies just for the soundtrack
). Anyway the big 600 reproduced the pulse cleanly without flinching, while the 400 made some wretched whimpering sounds at the end of each pulse and the driver looked like it was going to pop out of the enclosure. Not enough headroom for one small sub, even a formidable one like the 400.
On War of the Worlds I was a bit leery of damaging the 400. A few weeks ago at a friends place in Richmond Hill, his Ultra-13 was making awful noises in the pods emerge scene just before the BASH amp shutdown and the smell of plastic filled the air. While the 400 alone just doesn't have the output to do that scene justice to its credit it didn't flinch or shutdown or make sobbing noises like the Ultra-13. The 400 limiters kicked in first to gently take the stress off the amp and driver. Very nice. Of course, when we played that scene again with the 600... well it was no contest with how visceral the waves of sound felt. The big enclosure, bigger amp and bigger driver do make for a bigger sound which is quite important for HT. Its also why Ian suggests at least two of the 400s for HT but part of our idea of using just one was to find the 400s performance limits.
With Master and Commander, Battle with the French Frigate, again the 600 performed with authority, easily reproducing the deep loud textured cannon shots. The 400 actually sounded very good given its size but couldn't produce the visceral physical feeling of bass. Again, the greater headroom of the 600 makes the difference.
We played one more musical track, Diana Krall, Live at Montreal Jazz, All or Nothing at All which features Diana's lovely voice with a strong acoustic bass. Again I preferred the sound of the 400 on this tune while my brother chose the 600.
The 600 is clearly the better performing sub all around but if I listened to music only I would favour the 400, though my brother would say different. Also its tough to stick a 600 in a audio rack or TV stand.
Next time I will set up the 400s one on each sidewall and see if these impressions remain.
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