Paradigm's SUB 12 and SUB 15 subwoofers promise to dive deep, make a big splash
By Steven Kim 
posted February 26th 2009 2:19PM
posted February 26th 2009 2:19PM
Toronto, Ontario – February 24, 2009 – Paradigm Electronics Inc., an international leader in speaker design and manufacturing, proudly introduces its Reference SUB 12 and SUB 15. Natural evolutions in Paradigm's lineup of award-winning subwoofers, these new models benefit from the company's years of research into the mechanics of producing louder, lower-frequency, lower-distortion bass. In fact, those three "Ls" are the driving force behind Paradigm's ongoing commitment to refine and improve subwoofer performance with each new generation.
Although Paradigm's popular and successful Servo-15 subwoofer is now officially "retired" (as is the earth-shaking Seismic 12), the company has achieved servo-level performance even without the servo; as a result, the SUB 12 and SUB 15 possess higher playing ceilings and so much more. The new models' unique amplifier/driver configurations allow them to play "louder and lower" than any other subwoofers in their price range, and they still cost less! And unlike many designs on the market, not a hint of low-frequency extension or output was sacrificed to keep their size compatible with today's living spaces.
The new models' proprietary, state-of-the-art high excursion bass drivers, first seen in the Signature SUB 25, were designed, engineered and manufactured by Paradigm in North America. The 12-inch driver in the SUB 12 and the 15-inch driver in the SUB 15 each include mineral-filled co-polymer polypropylene cones with RCR™ Resonance Control Ribs, powerful dual voice-coil designs (three-inch high-temperature aluminum voice coils and dual oversized spiders), multi-layer polyurethane-composite elliptical-shaped surrounds, large aluminum shorting rings situated around the voice coils, proprietary AVS™ Airflow Ventilation System cooling and large 35-lb FEA-optimized magnet assemblies.
Dual Ultra-Class-D™ Amplifiers deliver a small form factor that nevertheless generates big power. Designed, engineered and manufactured in North America, both amplifiers are housed inside a single cabinet. Each amp is attached to the side of a unique "T-shape" aluminum center extrusion, FEA-optimized for exceptional heat dissipation, which means less heat, more power, and no noise. The amps deliver 3,400 watts Dynamic Peak Power and 1,700 watts RMS Sustained Power (850 watts each amplifier).
Other features of the amps include switched mode power supplies, low-noise, high-power transformers, the highest-quality MOSFET transistors, noise suppression networks, advanced control circuits, full-bridge Ultra-Class-D design output stage, precision components and dual-sided military spec (FR-4 rated) glass/epoxy circuit boards, and advanced short-circuit protection. Their Paradigm-designed Digital Signal Processing means sophisticated mathematical algorithms "shape" frequency response to ensure accurate, consistent and musical bass performance.
Input and control facilities include low-level inputs (RCA and Balanced XLR), auto on/off and trigger on/off, subwoofer cut-off with bypass option, subwoofer level control, phase alignment, and a USB Port for future upgrades and for use with the optional Paradigm Perfect Bass Kit (PBK-1), which compensates for a room's negative sonic effects on a subwoofer's performance.
Low frequency extension in the SUB 15 is 12 Hz. In the SUB 12, it is 16 Hz.
The SUB 12 retails for $1,999 and the SUB 15 retails for $2,799. Both are now shipping with the full line of Paradigm Reference Studio Series v.5 speakers.
Human's cannot hear sound below 20hz and amps and receivers only do 20hz - 20khz..
So what the point of being able to do 15/16hz?
I don't even think the woofer itself can produce sound with such low hz rating. I believe they are doing some king trick with the port to get the low hertz.
High end professional subs from EAW, Electro-voice and RCF don't even go that low.
It's not about what you hear, but what you feel. LFE channels are increasingly carrying information below 20Hz, in order to transmit the full effect of explosions, that helicopter blade "whump", and other movie effects.
And you can hear below 20Hz, it's just that most amps and speakers aren't powerful enough to play them loudly enough.
http://www.rotarywoofer.com/howlowcanwehear.html
I worked as a DJ in big night clubs and also recording studios in my youth. Most professional subwoofers do not put out much amplitude below 40hz or so (except the Bag End subs, which I have never seen in action in NYC area). Of course there is still some output below that, but the output uniformity so non-linear that there is usually a big hump of output between 50hz to 80hz and the output for what is below is proportionally so much lower that it is not all that meaningful.
Professional applications require VERY loud sound pressure for LONG hours, and that most pop music recordings out there do not even contain such low frequency information (most pop recordings have a huge bump in the 50hz to 60hz range) that producing low frequencies below 40hz at equivalent volume is not practical and too power hungry and potentially risky for amplifier burn outs and voice coil melt downs... What is important in professional monitoring is loudness, low distortion, dispersion properties, and ruggedness. High fidelity sound is still attempted in design, but it takes last place behind all the above mentioned qualities.
In the old days when Technics 1200's turntables ruled the clubs, many clubs even add steep sloped filters to their systems so frequencies below 20hz are completely cut off, because the vinyl rumble can blow the entire system! Pop music does not sound that great with lower than 40hz frequencies emphasized anyway. Try it out with a parametric equalizer and you will see what I mean...
Professional application monitors have a completely different functional purpose and designed that way... So to compare professional monitors with quality home speakers is like comparing apples to oranges...
You're living in the 50's,...the human ear can hear all the way down to 3 hertz,...until recently we've only started making instruments that can actually make these frequencies loud enough for the human to hear below 20hz...Explosions,...thunderstorms,...and earthquakes...big trucks driving by,...big organ music...all produce frequencies down to 3 hz,..but the point is if a subwoofer can produce frequencies way below 20hz then it can produce 20hz and above that much easier without strain...and if you really do read specs....most amplifiers and receivers specs are 5hz to 100,000 hz now...especially digital receivers and amps...you don't change the crossovers from large to small,..you would blow most speakers in a short time...
Yep, I feel stupid.
Don't take it too hard... Anyone who can make a reference to Electro-Voice is OK in my book.
Can't feel stupid or otherwise when people keep making statements trying to sound like they know something...when actually they're completely off track...the so called professional equipment the dj at nightclubs thinks he is using is completely outdated analogue devices...this type of equipment if intentionally designed to bump up the mid-bass frequencies to make up for acoustics and alot of people...and speakers that do that are hardly professional...they're basically bad designed cheaply made speakers for commercial use...and frequencies below 40hz are very meaningful for bass with authority without the huge intermodulation distortion of analogue devices...with exaggerated mid-bass which Bose gets away with because they can't make speakers correctly anyway....not even close...Paradigm subwoofers produce bass below 10 hz for smooth accurate bass,...even much better than bag-end can do...speakers can produce frequencies beyong our normal hearing range can actually produce better sound in our normal hearing range without strain...so this argument about subwoofers or speakers producing frequencies we cannot hear being not meaningful is not correct...those speakers are better made....
I know this is nit-picking, but I would have hoped for some nice Torx or hex-head fasteners to hold the woofer in. I have had a few nightmares trying to remove large, heavy woofers from cabinets where the Phillips screw was impossible to remove, and one slip of your tool and you need to drill it out.
I've read stuff like that claiming you can hear below 20hz depending on circumstances, but I'm still skeptical. I don't doubt that having the frequencies there can be beneficial, as they can rattle the heck out of stuff around you (and you could feel them), but hearing not so much. I think more often than not, even on highend headphones or subs, you are hearing minor distortion, port noise, etc when you think you are hearing sound below 20hz. I guess I could be wrong though, as iIve never demoed one of those rotary subs.
I have heard the rotary subs and also very nice subs that measured to below 20hz. Yes, there are all sorts of distortions out there, including cone doubling, which when you feed it a 20hz tone, it will make lot of 1st & 2nd order harmonics, so you get 20hz + 40hz +60hz... A good way to test it is to obtain sine wave test tones of specific frequencies. If you feed it a 20hz sine wave tone and it sounds similar to a 40hz tone you fed it earlier, that is the cone doubling...
Having said that, yes you can hear below 20hz. I know this from testing great subwoofers with sine wave tones down to 16hz. Some of the subwoofers that can do this include the Epik, HSU, SVS, and JL Audio subs. There is bone conduction at these frequencies so it does not "sound" or "feel" the same as the usual 40hz or 30hz tone. You have to "hear" it to understand it.. And you cannot hear the same kind of bone conduction of very low frequencies with headphones. Headphones, no matter how well designed, is limited at delivering super low frequencies.
I have the Servo-15, and it's absolutely astounding.
As pointed out, it's not just about what you hear, but about what you feel. Literally, you can feel those light sabers in your chest. And Amidala's ship coming in at the beginning of Episode 2 absolutely shakes the room. It's a very satisfying sensation... audio feels much deader withou the sub engaged.
And this is actually an age-old debate, which started when CDs came out. Audiophiles felt CDs were "dead" sounding because they subsampled, and didn't produce the full range that analogue did -- and apparently it's been proven that though we can't *hear* outside 20hz to 20Khz, the other ranges effect *how* we hear. (I don't have a citation, sorry. But ask Neil Young!)
And with Blu-ray, the LFE channel has gotten even better, far smoother and cleaner response. Iron Man gives me distortion free theatrics.
I know one thing for sure, when I replace my 5 full-range speakers, I'm most likely going Paradigm given he performance of the Servo-15!
-Pie
Actually most of the "audiophile" are incorrect as well. We can hear below 20hz due to bone conduction, but we cannot hear anything above 20khz, and that is a very optimistic figure at that... Teenagers can easily hear above 16khz, but most adults past the age of 35 cannot hear anything above 12khz to 14khz. Older adults start to drop their hearing at the range of below 8khz. This was performed with double blind A/B comparison tests by Bell Research Labs. Ask any ENT MDs and audiologists, and they will verify this as well....
Hearing is a very complex and multi-step and multi-factorial phenomenon. It not only involves the source, listening environment, listening condition, your hearing apparatus, and psycho-acoustics and acoustic memory. The last factors make human hearing the most unreliable as compare to other machine measurements because we are known to have very poor acoustic memory and our sensitivity to various random variables such as frequency spectrum, over all amplitude, frequency and amplitude proportions are notoriously non-linear and easily fooled. Direct A/B comparison double blind tests of sine wave 440hz tones even showed most people cannot distinguish a 5% change in pitch (that is a difference of 22hz) or 3bd in amplitude variation. Most people cannot even tell the difference between a looseless file with its counterpart MP3 sampled at bitrate of 320kbs. Our apparatus cannot hear above 20khz and that is a fact, otherwise we can hear like dogs and cats, and our world would be a totally different experience.
Therefore what "audiophile" clams to hear signals above 20khz is just what they mistakenly misinterpreted of changes below that frequency. It is entirely subjective and easily proven inaccurate with double blind A/B comparison tests. Some speakers do have extended response above 20khz, but then again, regular CDs with Red Book looseless files are cut off at 20khz sharp, nothing above that mathematically. How the speaker sound different than another that does not go above 20khz is the characteristics below 20khz for kids, and adults, below 14khz or so... Do you hear ultrasound devices operating when you go to a hospital??
Try do the audio test yourself...:
http://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_index.php
Just to add this clarification... We can hear by bone conduction or air conduction. However, how the auditory nerve fires is still the same as any other nerve conduction, in all or none manner, where a certain threshold has to occur. I am not going into the different hearing apparatus in the outer, middle, and inner ears but if the auditory cilia hair cells attached to the crystals in your inner ears are not moving in response to a sound frequency, they do not fire... Loud enough lower frequencies (how loud and how low is another debate) can do this by bone conduction, but this is not the most efficient way to transmit higher frequency sounds. So if sound frequencies, no matter at what amplitude, is not stimulating these hairs cells to fire, your brain is not going to register that there has ever been a signal present, period.. So, no, we as human being cannot hear above 20khz...
I'm sorry,..but it has never proven been we cannot hear beyond the 20hz to 20khz frequencies,..but actually proven otherwise....and when cd's first came out and even still today people with their old analogue equipment cannot get their cd's to sound the way they should because their analogue equipment was never full range...not even close....it makes me laugh when people buy tube amps and analogue equipment and think they are actually audiophiles...only if you love extreme intermodulation distortion and narrow frequency range which puts you in the category of Bose-a-philes....or otherwise known as infidelityphiles....
This is an ancient thread at this point, but given the new reply, I see I needed to pipe in earlier...
I NEVER said you can *hear* above 20hz. I said frequencies above that range effect HOW WE HEAR. There's some kind of "interference" (though in a *positive* way) that ultra high frequencies have on either the ear or other frequencies (sorry, no citation again, since now it just doesn't seem worth the time looking). That is the claim that I've seen made, and I believe one of the things of which Neil Young is a proponent
So replying "you can't hear about 20hz" does not at all address what I said, or what I believe the audiophiles claim these days.
-Pie
Ancient or not,..whether you're just eating pie or should be eating crow....alot of you here are suggesting things that just aren't true and fancifying your words so you can change your meaning to something contradictory to what you're actually saying...but all of you are purposely confusing the facts and suggesting things to sound more intelligent than what you really are...how we hear things...what affects our hearing....they're all excuses for misinformation for those who really want to know the facts....so some of you have read a few things how our hearing works what your friends say and what Bose-a-philes still today defend the worst speaker in the world....because amar bose was a doctor....maybe he should have been a proctologist and turned his rear drivers toward a mirror and get a Direct/Reflection of his brains like alot of other mis-informed people masquerading as audio-know-it-alls and actually just audio-phony-a-philes....but Paradigm does make great speakers...even though Michael seems to think you buy those from a brick and mortar place....tootles...
Here is my original quote for your perusal.
"...and apparently it's been proven that though we can't *hear* outside 20hz to 20Khz, the other ranges effect *how* we hear. (I don't have a citation, sorry. But ask Neil Young!)"
This was misinterpreted as "Pie says you can hear above 20khz!" Which I obviously did not say, and clarified. I honestly do not know if the above statement is true (note the qualifier "apparently").
So you're totally off base by accusing me of "fancifying [my] words so you can change your meaning to something contradictory," -- when I was, as I said, *clarifying* due to misinterpreted.
Or "purposely confusing the facts and suggesting things to sound more intelligent than what you really are" -- when I began with the obvious qualifier "apparently."
Or "...they're all excuses for misinformation for those who really want to know the facts" -- when I made it clear I had no citation, nor proof that this was factual -- or even my own belief!
Or "so some of you have read a few things how our hearing works what your friends say and what Bose-a-philes still today defend the worst speaker." -- when I said *nothing* about Bose, though *now* I will say that after an A/B test years ago, I can't stand them.
So you did A LOT of conclusion jumping at my expense. What I repeated was very much qualified in my original post, and anyone with any real investment in this issue would research what I said before taking it as the truth -- especially since I *obviously* provided no citation, and offered only what amounts to hearsay. And all your follow-up assumptions about me (do you even know if I'm an "audiophile" or not?) were really unjustified.
Ironically, the original subject was about *low end* bass, which requires a damned good sub to produce even the audible 20hz portion of the spectrum -- and in my experience, when you get *really* low, you can *feel* it even if you can't hear it. And all this isn't even disputed!
Nor should it be disputed that Paradigms make them some great speakers -- and that we seem to agree upon! :D
-Pie
First of all, I doubt there's a port on these. That's going to cost you in terms of absolute output, and possibly depth as well. I was looking at Epik, eD, SVS and Paradigm (to match my Studio 100s), but eventually went with an MFW-15 from AV123. I've been very happy with it so far. I don't think you need to spend 'Paradigm' kind of money to get quality low-frequency reproduction. I run a 2.1 setup with a Stello DAC and Creek integrated amp. The quality and depth are phenomenal, especially since the addition of the Stello DAC. I had been using a Xitel HiFi Link USB audio device beforehand, and the difference became apparent when I played some Bass 305/Bach organ music using just the Paradigms. I agree strongly that you can't compare 'professional' sound to home hifi equipment, much less appeal to one as the objective standard. I know that I can hear well in to the 20-30 Hz realm, and I enjoy feeling effects below that. You can use a program like Tonegen or Audacity to test your own hearing by generating sine waves, be careful though. To reproduce a given sound pressure level, a driver must travel increasingly far for decreases in frequency below 60 Hz or so.
That said, with all this digital music, if you're looking for an increase in fidelity, one of the best places to find it is in ripping your legitimately purchased CDs to a lossless format.
Instead of posting how much I know (or think I know) about sound (I know plenty, thanks, don't reply to me with ANY technical remarks)...... I (or anyone else) could build a nice, rattle-free box for less than $20, plop in a nice Rockford sub from Crutchfield and call it a day. Hz is Hz is Hz. A frequency doesn't sound different because it cost almost $3,000 to hear it.
I already have two signature 15 subs working together in one room,..and they sound incredible running at the same time....I have one crossover at 100hz,..and the other at 40hz...works perfect....if that wasn't enough,..I'm now saving for the the new signature sub 25 with 7500 watts...I love good deep bass below 20hz and shake the foundation...when I have company over they can actually feel the driveway shake outside...experts actually say we cannot tell the difference in bass when we hear it or feel it....but more visceral bass always adds to the realism of movies and music....one of these days I'll go overboard and the house will crumble in ruins....oh well..it sounded great!..
This is a reply from one of the three comments about signature sub 25 which would not let me reply...that Mark Seaton could make a subwoofer at the 1/3 the price of the Paradigm and get 99.9 % of the performance....if that were true then Mark Seaton would be rich and famous beyond fairyland...but that comment by Smith is in fairyland....not one review of Mark Seatons subwoofers are from one magazine that I ever heard of...and I've never seen a review from magazines that we all trust....like Home Theater Magazine...but even Mark Seatons best subwoofer is not going to be as refined are as deep as or undistorted as any Signature Paradigm Subwoofer....I have several subwoofers by Paradigm and they are worth every cent....
Hz is Hz is Hz...a frequency doesn't sound different because it cost almost 3,000 to hear it...I think you're more than just a dead rebel...a little dead upstairs too....don't have to be technical to figure that out....