As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I live in a community of townhouses in east-end Toronto. My friend Rob lives at the end of a block of four units, so he’s essentially semidetached. My other audiophile neighbor, Ron, is two doors down. For the first installment of this saga, we’d placed two SB-2000 Pro subs in Ron’s place, backing up his LS3/5a monitors. A pair of SVS 3000 Micros went to Rob’s house, where they augmented his Focus Audio FP60 BEs. Everyone involved was having a ton of fun, with the possible exception of the unfortunate neighbor sandwiched between them. That said, Ron and Rob are well-liked in this group of nine homes, so I doubt there are any problems.
After the initial novelty of having almost unlimited bass had faded, we mustered outside Rob’s place, King of the Hill–style, and discussed next steps. As I had concluded in the first part of this series, it made sense to swap things around—put the big SB-2000 Pros in Rob’s larger room with his hefty standmounts, and move the compact 3000 Micros into Ron’s place where they would—so our reasoning went—integrate better with his smaller speakers.
About that last statement—when I had a good listen at Ron’s, I felt like I could hear too much of the subs themselves. At or near the crossover point, I could sense that there were two separate components to the music. Admittedly, I could have probably tuned it better, spending more time working with phase, EQ, crossover point, and volume, but Ron and I felt that effort would be better spent optimizing the smaller subs after our switchover.
Rob, on the other hand, was mightily satisfied with the 3000 Micros in his system. But now that he’d gotten a taste of how subwoofers could improve the sound, he was also keen to change things up.
So, it was time to do the needful. Rob and I did the grunt work, and we started off by tuning Ron’s system with the small 3000 Micro subs. As before, frequency sweeps didn’t unearth any objectionable peaks, so we began with the same settings we used on the larger SB-2000 Pros: a 75Hz crossover point with a 12dB/octave slope.
We fussed with the volume a bit and sat back for a quick listen. Right away, both Ron and I noticed that the integration across the crossover point was better—less audible, more coherent. Ron has the Qobuz streaming service integrated with Roon, and Cassandra Wilson’s Blue Skies is available there (the full album isn’t on Tidal). I cued up “Autumn Nocturne,” which has some very revealing runs up and down the neck of the double bass. While I had been aware of a discontinuity on some notes with the SB-2000 Pros, they were near-as-dammit seamless with the 3000 Micros in the system.
I’m not sure why the 3000 Micros fit so much better. Perhaps the bipolar radiation pattern? The smaller 8″ drivers being just a touch “quicker”? At any rate, this was the golden matchup. Crisp, deep, effortless bass, perfectly scaled to the music.
Just for the sheer hell of it, I threw on one of my favorite techno test tracks: “Purple Hat,” by Sofi Tukker. Tight, powerful waves of low bass rippled across the room. Ron rolled his eyes and decided this was the perfect time to go make a coffee, but I persisted. I actually started giggling as I rode out the song—it was a blinding descent into cognitive dissonance, hearing this huge music emanating from those shoebox-sized speakers.
Moving over to Rob’s place, we again set the crossover and slope to where they were with the previous subs: 45Hz and 12dB/octave. A quick run through the bass test tones didn’t reveal any objectionable peaks, which is strange, as the 3000 Micros had a big-ass peak at 30Hz. That same frequency was a touch elevated—maybe a couple of decibels—but certainly not 6dB-ish peaks we got with the 3000 Micros. Anyway, we got down to it.
Two of my favorite test tracks for low bass lurk in Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. “Awake on Foreign Shores” is a series of simple blasts from Stetson’s bass saxophone. I’ve heard him play this live, and it’s terrifying. The deep, rumbling, fundamental note is accompanied by incredibly dissonant overtones, and the end result makes me feel like I’m being hunted by aliens. With the SB-2000 Pros on point, it felt like the house was under attack. There was a coiling power to the sound: the foundation laid down by the SVS subs was superbly integrated with the reasonably deep reach of the Focus Audio speakers.
Jumping forward a bunch of tracks to “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes” reveals a simple but sad spiritual that’s twisted into an incantation to summon a demon. Shara Worden’s plaintive, almost spoken-word vocals are layered over Stetson’s drone-note, feedback-heavy bass sax, which he plays without breaks using circular breathing. I really, really want you to get the picture here, so that you’ll have some understanding of just how unsettling this track can be. The SB-2000 Pros loaded up the room in a way that I didn’t really expect. So tight, so low, the bass was almost visible. It felt like a long five minutes, and I began to feel almost physically ill, it was so intense.
After I’d decompressed—so to speak—I played a couple of jazz tracks to help set the levels a bit more evenly, then handed control over to Rob so that he could play some of his choices. Rob cycled through some metal tracks, sampling Metallica, Jane’s Addiction, Tool, Kyuss, and some other stuff I didn’t recognize. After a couple of minutes, Rob opened up the SVS app on his phone and shot me a sly look. The volume was set to about -10dB, and he slowly dragged the slider to the right, eventually pinning the level to full throttle on both subs. To my audiophile ear it sounded ridiculous, cartoonish.
Rob was totally into the music and the sound, so I did a Jedi mind trick and let his thought process invade my mindset. Crunching, guitar-heavy, distortion-heavy metal isn’t an audiophile category. You don’t hear it at audio shows. So what should it sound like? It should sound like the end of the world, like an ocean storm, like an earthquake. And it should have bass, I guess. Lots of bass.
Channeling Rob’s ears, I descended into a hedonistic pool of hot bass—felt it moving the hairs on my arms, pushing my eyes in odd directions as my lizard brain tried to determine the origin of the threat it detected. Despite the level being so absurdly high, the SB-2000 Pros kept it listenable. They were tighter than a fish’s ass, so the sound didn’t descend one bit into boominess. Rob likes tons of bass, and the SVS app gave him the ability to dial it in to his preference. Strength and honor, Rob. Audio should be fun, and this experience reminded me that we shouldn’t let audiophiles suck the joy out of it.
Back at Ron’s place, his initial enthusiasm for my Hegel H90 was waning. “The bass sounds way better, but I don’t think the Hegel is working well with my LS3/5a monitors,” he said. “They’re a 16-ohm load, and fairly inefficient, you know. Might not play well with the lowish power of the H90.”
It’s funny how things work. The next week I headed over to SoundStage! founder and publisher Doug Schneider’s house in Ottawa to install a cartridge on the Denon turntable he had in for review. “Do me a favor, if you don’t mind,” Doug asked while I was there, “and take this Hegel H400 integrated amp back to Toronto and hand it over to Jay Lee so that he can review it on his YouTube channel, Jay’s iagi.”
On my return, I immediately shot an email to Jay asking if he’d be OK delaying the pickup of the H400 so that we could try it in Ron’s system. Jay was amenable, so I unloaded the Hegel at Rob’s so he could install it at Ron’s place.
My audiophile neighbors have musical households, in both consumption and creation. Rob builds Fender replicas to a high standard, and Ron does the final setup. Ron has a bunch of guitars, with the most exciting being his ’62 Gibson ES-330TD. There’s no shortage of good props for photos.
The H90 was sitting atop Ron’s Audiomat integrated tube amp. The H400 is a much beefier amp than the H90, so Rob boxed up Hegel the Younger and moved the Audiomat behind the couch. The H400 looked sleek and elegant flanked by the two 3000 Micro subs, a minimalist’s dream. The two vintage speakers on their brushed-metal stands, the two gloss-black subs looking futuristic and malevolent, and that businesslike Scandinavian nuclear power plant squatting stoically in the middle—it was a supermodel’s runway fashion show.
Ron played with the Hegel H400 for a few days before I checked in on him. “Much better,” he proclaimed. “A better amp all round, and the DAC is very, very good also.” I sat down for a listen, and we played some of the same tracks we’d originally used to evaluate the 3000 Micros. Sure enough, there was much more clarity through the midrange—more punch, a better sense of openness. The midbass also sounded more coherent, right down through the crossover region.
Having the ability to evaluate these two types of subwoofers in two different rooms has revealed several facts that I wouldn’t have expected, had I simply reviewed them in my own listening room. First off, I discovered that subs are an answer, not the answer. While the addition of the SVS subs made great improvements to both Ron’s and Rob’s systems, it brought the crossover region into tight, audible focus, and room matching proved more important than I’d anticipated. At the start, the only real concern was output level versus decor friendliness. Rob and I had hoped that the smaller and less intrusive 3000 Micros would have sufficient output to fill his room.
The baby SVS subs sure did have enough slam to satisfy Rob’s head-banging needs. Had we not also tried the SB-2000 Pros, he’d have been simply thrilled to stick with those subs. But after we’d swapped in the big boys, mother of twelve bastards, did that change things for the better. Sure enough, his bigger room totally benefited from the increased capabilities.
The inverse lesson held true for Ron’s system. Smaller room and smaller speakers meant that the smaller subs worked better. But if the 3000 Micros hadn’t been available, Ron would have been exceedingly happy to stick with the SB-2000 Pros.
Decor matching was fairly important in both houses, given that these systems were in the living rooms that Ron and Rob share with their better halves. However, this ended up being a nonissue. The gorgeous piano-black lacquer finish of the SVS subs rendered them almost invisible. Neither family uses their fireplace, so placing the subs right in front didn’t hinder functionality. Ron’s wife, Marilyn, simply rolled her eyes as this SVS experiment transpired. As the wife of a longtime audiophile, Marilyn is of the sensible mindset that realizes audiophilia is greatly preferable to gambling or strippers as a hobby.
Rob’s partner, Jing, was similarly unfazed by the appearance of two additional large but well-finished boxes in her living room. According to Rob, she actually liked the somewhat imposing look of the SB-2000 Pros, even with the grilles removed, which was Rob’s preference.
Jing and Marilyn are not the archetypal audiophile-hating spouses who are famous for yelling “I can see the wires!” They’re normal, well-adjusted adults who happily tolerate their partners’ hobbies. And here, right now, I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart for tolerating me and allowing me to invade their households with this side project of mine.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
