How much Boom Boom do you like in your bass?

David Matz said:

I think it's a universal fact that hybrid electrostats can't integrate the bass well. I have not heard one that does it well until I heard the JansZen.

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Interesting. So the integration is even better than ML's? If it is as good as you have stated why have we not seen more of these speakers around or even talked about?

I am curious as to what speaker gets the bass right.

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Questions to think or ponder about concerning bass...

• What is considered "right"?? Live Bass?? What happens if the Live Venue is a bad sounding place - how does one know it is right or wrong?
• What is considered "right"? Measured Bass???
• Does one have to play a bass instrument to appreciate what the right sound is?
• When playing back a disc, record, etc how do we know the engineer got it right?
• Does it all come down to personal preference?

Finally, if you guys are enjoying your speakers' bass it's great. For me it's a weakness.

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What steps have you taken to address your weakness of your setup? What have you found to help or assist you down your path?

Dan,
You raise many good points. My ultimate goal is to build out a large, well treated audiophile room in the next 3 or 4 years when I expand my house. The room will house either the CLX, the SoundLab, or JansZen. Until then, there is no point upgrading my speakers, as I am not interested in intermediate solutions that will not give me what I want. As I mentioned above, for my room there is no other speaker than the Vantage at that price point.

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Your comments regarding the bass are excellent and right on. What is accurate is being discussed in Justin’s thread. However, I do know that the boominess experienced in a large well treated room is not accurate, and neither is the integration of the panel and woofer.
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As for JansZen speakers, they are a brand new product that came out just a few months ago. Harry Pearson reviewed them very favorably in Absolute Sound in March or April. I do not want to speak for David JansZen, but as everyone knows things are very challenging economic times. Not sure what line of work you are in, but it’s a challenge to start a new business at any time, especially for a niche, luxury product at this time. Even those people who do have money, do not want to flash it – take a look at the dull, grey colored dresses that cost $4K in the couture clothing industry. My understanding is that David Janszen is building a distribution network of dealers so more people can hear the speakers. I think if people heard them next to an Avalon, a Magico, or a Wilson at that price point, the choice would be a no brainer. If you get a chance to hear them, you definitely should.

David Matz said:

You raise many good points. My ultimate goal is to build out a large, well treated audiophile room in the next 3 or 4 years when I expand my house. The room will house either the CLX, the SoundLab, or JansZen. Until then, there is no point upgrading my speakers, as I am not interested in intermediate solutions that will not give me what I want. As I mentioned above, for my room there is no other speaker than the Vantage at that price point.

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David...you have developed an excellent path for your system and where you want to be in the future. In 3-4 years it will be interesting to see if the products you talk about are still around, have upgraded/changed, or something even better (for you) is available.

Your comments regarding the bass are excellent and right on. What is accurate is being discussed in Justin’s thread. However, I do know that the boominess experienced in a large well treated room is not accurate, and neither is the integration of the panel and woofer.

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Agreed that boominess in a properly treated room is not right.

I have heard bad integration of woofers many times (in other products), so it is not just the hybrid thing going on. Personally I thought ML with the Summit and now the Summit X really improved their integration of the panel and woofer.

My understanding is that David Janszen is building a distribution network of dealers so more people can hear the speakers. I think if people heard them next to an Avalon, a Magico, or a Wilson at that price point, the choice would be a no brainer. If you get a chance to hear them, you definitely should.

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Starting a new business (what ever it deals in) or keeping one going in today's economic times is tough. I guess only time will tell if the product really is as good as it seems to be. Glad to hear you liked it and possibly found your path in the future to the sound you are looking for. That is what this hobby is all about - personal satisfaction.

the best rooms I have heard Logans in had high ceilings and where big and spatial and I thought the bass integrated well the freq just rolled from the highs on down until the bass made you feel as though you could fall into the floor
I think the woofer Logan uses has a soft and fast sound like their panels.I personally think the panel/woofer integration is nothing short of beautiful.

Im getting very intrigued with the JL Audio Gotham....

tonepub said:

Im getting very intrigued with the JL Audio Gotham....

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I do not have a big enough room for the Gotham, but the 110 and 112 would probably work great. I am trying my best not to audition them... :devil:

Honestly, I heard CLX's this week in an all Burmester system with a pair of Depth i's and for me, that's a perfect combination.

Just slightly less ultimate super deep bass, but perfect integration.

This was the best hifi system I've yet heard in a home situation. The guy had the room issues taken care of, great cables, good setup, power issues addressed and excellent setup. Everything done just as it should be for a system of this caliber, with no snake oil tweeks.

All the right ingredients for excellent sound. And it confirmed my theory when reviewing the CLX's that the Depth i might be the perfect "audiophile sub" for the CLX. Very close call between the Depth i's and the JL F110's.

We will be featuring this system in our next issue. it's the custom CLX's that you see on the ML site, so the system had style and performance.

Having lived with my pair of JL audio Fathoms f113 for about 6months now I must say that they are the perfect sub (to my ears) to integrate with my SL3's. When listening to older cd's (Fields of the Nephilim - one of the original goth bands from England) that are 10 years old, I can now hear low end subharmonics that I had not heard before all these years... It is more of a "flap in your pants" feeling that has to be felt, and that my older 18" Velodyne just could not produce. It just puts your music on a totally different level and just sounds right to my ears... I think we can all pretty much agree that the ML's do not do very well in the low bass and need to be augmented by a very good sub (or 2 or 3 or 4!). I think any of the JL's are perfect matches for any ML speaker as they integrate very well in the low registers and blend beautifully! They are truly a work of art as are all of the ML speakers! To me, I am a big fan of good bass, and music to me just does not sound "correct" if it my system cannot reproduce the lowest notes that are in the recording. I love the JL's so much that I had my car stereo shop build me a sub with a JL 113 in it (car version) with a 1,000 watt amp!
The JL subs do not necessarily give you boom, but very powerful low end extension in the deepest registers. Anyone looking for great subs to integrate well with the ML's owes it to themselves to give the JL subs an audition. No, I am in no way affiliated with JL! Just a huge fan!

I agree with gordon on JL, I recently added a JL F112 to my 2- channel Vista system and WOW I get to rediscover all my music again! I tried my other PSB sub and also a Sunfire True EQ sub, the JL left them in the dust so to speak! It wasn't even close. I would also suggest a JL audition if you want an awesome sub!

gordonmenninger said:

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The JL subs do not necessarily give you boom, but very powerful low end extension in the deepest registers. Anyone looking for great subs to integrate well with the ML's owes it to themselves to give the JL subs an audition. No, I am in no way affiliated with JL! Just a huge fan!

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Gordon, and since you have really nice subs, and have already treated the room, the next step is apply some room correction.

Something like the SVS AS-EQ1

Trust me, it will improve things a fair bit.

Here's a before and after Audyssey picture of my sub. Remember, this is a big IB in a custom treated room, so Before (cyan) is pretty good (30 to 80hz decays in less than 240ms), but the Audyssey corrected (Purple) is much better (decays are under 140ms).

Untreated rooms would have much more dramatic diff's.

[note: response looks really lumpy because this is a one-position measurement with REW at my prime listening location. Averaged over four or so positions in the main area, it's much flatter]

Waterfall plot before (cyan) and after Audyssey (purple):

For more measurements and good description of how the Audyssey sub EQ performs in three separate rooms, read this:

http://www.svsound.com/products-parts-subeq_results.cfm

The description of how it corrects this wild ride, with 15dB swings, is pretty telling:

I'm a latecomer to this thread - just been on two weeks' holiday! Lucky me.

Anyway, we have a reference for bass and that is in the not so obvious midrange too! Most midrange instruments - for me, especially piano - have harmonics in the bass range. If your midrange (or any instruments for that matter) sound wrong, there is always the possibility that you've got the bass wrong.

Yes - we all love fast, punchy bass - but that is a side effect of getting the bass right. In order to get it right, listen in not so likely places.

Case in point - once I was listening to a flute solo and realised I had not turned my sub on!

JonFo said:

...Audyssey sub EQ performs in three separate rooms,

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Was the delay problem addressed by the SVS/Audyssey EQ system everyone seemed to be talking about? I thought I remember hearing about a 7ms delay between sub and mains.

Does the unit also offer complete user control to override the "auto" algorithms that will not work with some rooms and some setups? (I have not had time to read through the manual).

The problem is all of those digital processors and parametric EQ's completely butcher all the dynamic subtleties that you get with really high end gear.

Every DSP based system I've ever heard has been pretty lifeless.

tonepub said:

The problem is all of those digital processors and parametric EQ's completely butcher all the dynamic subtleties that you get with really high end gear.

Every DSP based system I've ever heard has been pretty lifeless.

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this is how I feel as well.I have not even close to the experience with the equipment that you have but what I have heard goes right along with this. it may be correct on your little chart but what it fixed does not make up for all the life that they seem to squash.

tonepub said:

The problem is all of those digital processors and parametric EQ's completely butcher all the dynamic subtleties that you get with really high end gear.

Every DSP based system I've ever heard has been pretty lifeless.

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FISH_MAN said:

this is how I feel as well.I have not even close to the experience with the equipment that you have but what I have heard goes right along with this. it may be correct on your little chart but what it fixed does not make up for all the life that they seem to squash.

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I think the advantages/disadvantages need to be weighed for every system. Those with horrible room acoustics and/or a badly integrated sub might find that computerized room correction yields a net improvement for them. I (like JonFo) am very impressed with Audyssey, and use it all the time in my Home Theater setup, and occasionally when listening to two-channel. Like everything else, YMMV!

yeah I do not disagree that these things can be helpful especially for a HT I myself use the Audyssey for my movie watching experience sometimes but for those that have an acoustically bad room just remember you can't polish a turd maybe form it into a different shape but it will never shine

FISH_MAN said:

just remember you can't polish a turd maybe form it into a different shape but it will never shine

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Fish, you have such a wonderful way with words

Gordon

FISH_MAN said:

this is how I feel as well.I have not even close to the experience with the equipment that you have but what I have heard goes right along with this. it may be correct on your little chart but what it fixed does not make up for all the life that they seem to squash.

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I think what Jonathan has done is alot more than just a few adjustments with audyssey, but rather combined both a well thought out treated room along with digital room correction. From what I experienced listening in his theater was an excellent marriage of old, time tested technology, with the new which sounded amazing. Of course if you could correct your room without any additional DSP then that would be the ultimate goal, but this is not always the case. Just like with anything in audio you can use a useful tool the wrong way and come up with a false conclusion. I'm sure it's easy to overuse such technology, but if used within certain parameters, it can sound wonderful. Such as the case in Jonathan's theater. While I don't employ this in my own two channel setup, I have no reservations about the technology as long as its used wisely. Jonathan seems to have a good balance of this and his system is a good model/reference when considering using room correction(Digital or Acoustic Treatments).

Glen

Gordon said:

Fish, you have such a wonderful way with words

Gordon

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I was thinking the same thing:ROFL:!