Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater EP350 or SVS PB10-ISD

Hi all, I have a room of approx. 12' by 14', and a setup consisting of 4x m3ti's for fronts and surrounds, along with a vp-100 and a yamaha rx-v657 receiver. I am now trying to decide on a subwoofer, and I was previously told that I'd get more bang for the buck with an SVS as opposed to axiom for the lower end subs...my question is as follows:

the svs pb10-isd is £470 here in england. a bit more than i originally intended to spend, but i'm told that it puts the ep175 to shame...for £500 i could have the ep350...slightly less amplifier power than the SVS, but a 12-inch driver. Which is the best subwoofer between the two? i'm more inclined towards the ep350 as i'm told that it automatically powers up/down when my amplifier is switched on or off, along with the fact that i'd like a full axiom house. if i do however go with the axiom, i don't want to have sacrificed any performance. i'm fairly new to sound systems, however i'm learning fast. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

I recently was doing some SVS research and came across this:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259890
(Sorry.. I don't know how to do the link properly)

Is there something these testers are missing or can that little sub really challenge the EP600?

Check out this thread

LINK

For those who don't want to wade through the long threads, there was a lot of debate about those tests, specifically whether the measurements were at all relevent to real world performance. The main point was that the testing approach Ilkka used focused on single notes which caused the DSP logic to kick in and take the output levels way down, resulting in an artificially low output. I'm guessing there is some hum protection code in there, but not sure.

The other concern was that the graphs were misleading, in the sense that they focused on distortion in frequency ranges below the enclosure's cutoff where actual sound output was very low. The discussions got very ugly and a number of threads were deleted by the moderators.

The PB10 is a really nice subwoofer but it would not be a substitute for an EP600 in a real world listening situation. Ilkka tended to ignore (and even bypass) the DSP circuitry which is the heart of the EP600, and he didn't like the resulting performance

After reading that review I would have to go with the PB-10 ISD. If it could make a respectable showing against the EP600, at only $429 I imagine an EP350 would'nt match up against it very well.

Just be aware that most people do not agree with the review. Ilkka means well and did try really hard to work around the DSP logic to get useful test results, but with the introduction of complex DSP programming the traditional "run some sweeps and crunch the results" sub testing doesn't really suffice any more.

It was quite inconsiderate for Ian to design a subwoofer that was so damn hard to measure

EDIT - peversely enough, with Ilkka's test regimen I expect the EP350 would have outperformed the 600 in his tests.

Yep.........we may never see the super center speaker becasue of this.

I am not into all the testing procedures. I usually skip to the "Conclusions" part of the review for the summary. I look for the opinions after listening to music and movies, that usually gives me a better idea in a test of speakers/subwoofer/equipment, than a bunch of graphs.

Too bad most people use subwoofers in a room, not a parking lot.