Hi Curtis and all,
What you say is absolutely true, but the room's dimensions, sub locations and your location will affect the response of every subwoofer in any room.
But you can still make relative judgments if you place each subwoofer in the same location in the room. If you have competitive subwoofers in different locations in a room and you are comparing them, there is a high probability (if you hear differences in performance) that the differences are largely due to placement issues, not to intrinsic differences in performance.
I did some listening tests of the EP500 and EP600 vs. several other brands during my extended stay at Axiom last month, and I can tell you that the EP500 has greater extension to lower frequencies (and greater output at those frequencies) than the other two subs. The EP600 has even more, so much so that folks in the Axiom office were complaining of the pulsing low frequencies from the adjoining listening room when I ran the EP600 at high levels.
This was only a preliminary test, and although levels were carefully adjusted, the test was not "blind." But even when I stared at the switcher, which was not labeled as to which sub was which, it was apparent that the low-frequency extension of the 500 and 600 clearly outstripped the competition. I'll have more to report in the future.
Regards,
