Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Question about EP600 v3 sub

i'm new to the forum, and I'm hoping someone can help me out regarding the EP600 v3 sub. I have an opportunity to purchase one in near mint condition for $900.00 locally. can someone give me their opinion on this sub? there is very little reviews from actual users online. I've also researched trying to find out how many watts it is?? thanks for any info!

From what I have gathered here, the v3 sub were ported. The v4 is not. I believe that the unit has the same 500w amp except the layout of the v3 is different and it has an XLR in that also take the 1/4" phono plug.

I have a pair of the EP500v4 and they can easily shake the whole room. I has some sub test sounds that pan up from 10hz to 80hz and the whole room shakes if you play it too loud.

I have not heard any of the v3 subs from Axiom so I cannot comment on how they sound. my v4 is very subtle in sound and paired up with my tower speakers, you really don't realize that they are there.

Thanks for the reply. I can't find much info on them as far as any for sale. I'm not sure what to pay , but half of retail seems good though.

I have an older V2 600. I love it. It's the sub I use for a 4.1 channel system in my great room (28X32). Fills it up nicely.

Axiom subs do not get much praise. I think it's price driven more than anything. There are several other options for subs at similar, or lower price points, so those are the subs folks tend to migrate towards.

My thoughts exactly although earlier versions of subs had that port chuff issue. I haven't heard any later sub versions to see if it has been curtailed.

It was cured on my EP800s - there is no port, ha!!

TAM

I must be tone deaf, cuase I never heard this "port chuff" you speak of in any of my ported Axiom subs (two 500's and the 600). I think some folks spend way too much time trying to come up with crap to bitch about with respect to speakers and subs.

The new 500's I'm using do sound 'different' than the old ones. More precise, tighter, but that's about it.

I still love my 600.

When we tried the EP500 and EP600 here in 2006, one thing we could not do was get any audible chuffing from either.

And look for a test of the new Reaction Audio Gamma 18 directly against the EP800. The Gamma 18 uses a single 18 inch driver with about a 30 mm "throw" on it. The owners of Reaction Audio know we will be conducting level matched, blind tests between the two subs, and are fine with this.

The Gamma 18 sells for $1200 shipped, so it's a lot less money than the EP800.

Several other subwoofer manufacturers were asked to participate, and never even bothered to respond.

While this thread was not about a subwoofer comparison, it's possible that, based on posts here, people will be interested in the results of such a test.

I know of no other review source that can level match two subs and do instant A/B switching between them at line levels.

The port chuff is an OLD topic; way pre-EP500 years when the EP500 was barely a dream twinkle in Ian's eye.
When they brought out the EP500 it had a new wide mouth port on it which i figured was a 'test' of a new design considering the noise the old EP350 ports were producing.

I can dig up the old threads somewhere i'm sure.
The port chuff was simply an excess and fast volume of air leaving the port creating turbulence that sounded like lips farting. I could easily re-create the sound with various heavy bass movie scenes. The sound was not evident when testing with other subs including a SVS.

The EP350 is still in use but it now has extra internal baffle material over the inside port hole to reduce the air flow. It improved the reduction of port chuff, but not eliminated.

Long since that time have i been thinking about replacing the EP350 with something else.

Oh, thanks Chess.

I have no idea what 95% of the audiophile terms and jargon mean anyway. Don't really care either I suppose... Something either sounds good to me or it doesn't. I’ve had a V1 500, V2 600, V3 500, and now a pair of the V4 500’s. For music, I just like the way the 600 sounds. Better than all the others. The V4 500’s are my favorite for movies, and they do OK for music too….

I have the 600 crossed at 60, and my floor speakers have some pretty good sized drivers (Wharfdale Opus2-2). I have a set of M80Ti’s that I have in this room as well. They are for 4-channel stereo, and surround channels when watching the boob tube. Between the four tower speakers and the 600 in this room, there is no lack of anything.

Of course there is.

You have no 800, slacker!

Yes it has been reviewed.

https://www.dvdplaza.fi/forum/threads/axiom-ep-600-2nd-test-testi.50461/

We live in a great time for subwoofers. There is so much competition right now, that we have been getting more and more performance for subwoofers at lower prices than we could have come by 5 or 10 years ago. The www.data-bass.com website is a wonderful resource to give you an idea of comparable subwoofers in the $900 price class (http://www.data-bass.com/systems). Below I pick out two that I would put toward the top of your list, if you need the output of a large subwoofer. I'm just guessing that is the case since the EP600 is pretty large.

The SVS PB2000 is in the price class and here are the measurements of the previous generation model, which has improved the performance for about the same price.

http://www.data-bass.com/data?page=system&id=66&mset=71

The Rythmik FV15X wasn't measured, but it is in about that price class and but has about 2-3 dB less output than the FV15HP.

http://www.data-bass.com/data?page=system&id=51&mset=50

I have a 6500 cubic foot space to pressurize and my Outlaw LFM-1, which was purchased at a much smaller house is no longer able to keep up in such a large space. I'm strongly leaning towards the Rythmik FV15HP to pressurize the larger space, yet remain clean. The HSU VTF 15 H Mk2 can be purchased for less price with about the same output capabilities (also at about your budget), but I don't think that it plays as clean. You may want to add the HSU sub to your list as well.

I don't know how the new Axiom subwoofers perform in comparison, since I haven't seen any measurements. But, I would expect the new ep600 to be in the ballpark of the long term output compression measurements (in the link) above or less. This is because going with a sealed design over a ported design in a similar sized box, driver and amp combination will yield less overall output, in general, especially below 40 Hz. Also, a sealed design will, in general give more distortion down below 40 Hz, in comparison. But, the sealed design may have more output above 40 Hz and better transient response (the ability to start and stop playing a certain frequency) in comparison.

I think that the measurements from the various links really do give you a good idea of how the various subs will perform. I don't find reviews of subwoofers without detailed measurements all that useful, in general, since the room plays such a dominant role in what you actually hear with just one subwoofer. So we are mostly getting an idea of how a subwoofer, perhaps properly placed in the reviewer's room or not, sounds to them. If they have a rectangular room and properly placed two of them (at midpoints of opposing walls), then I might take more of what they say into account. But, this is rarely the case. For example, there was a somewhat recent shootout with subwoofers (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/review-power-sound-audio-xv15#BHA1lXRYZ4OMx556.97) and the comments that the reviewers mention don't really gel with the measurements we see for the HSU, SVS and Powersound Audio subs that you can see on data-bass. Good luck in your search.

This is as good a time as any to delve into what to look for at Data Bass.

The vast majority of people go right to the CEA-2010 Burst test, which is, to anyone who has experience with subwoofers, a mistake. For example, the 20 Hz burst has a duration of 0.325 second. What a subwoofer can to for less the 1/3rd of a second is not relevant to its performance.

The real information at Data Bass can be found in the long term sine wave tests. There is a page here that shows these results:

http://www.data-bass.com/data?page=systems&type=2

For a subwoofer in the price range, look at the average for 20-80 Hz. That is the priority for a relatively affordable subwoofer, the two octaves from 20 to 80 Hz.

In terms of real world performance, almost every, if not EVERY, subwoofer that is ported will have audible chuffing at high volumes. It's just a matter of physics. This chuffing will not turn up in any measurement test, but it sure is an ugly sound.

One aspect of the EP-600 is, due to the huge port area, port chuffing will not occur. In the real world, even though it loses a couple of dB at 20 Hz to some others, it will sound better at higher volume levels. To put it simply, unlike other subwoofers in its price range, you just cannot get an EP-600 to make a bad sound.