A very wise man and engineer, Tom McCauley, taught me that you need to close your eyes and simply listen to the music. Don’t start thinking what’s in the box, how many drivers, rubber surround or cloth, Neo or Ferrite, whatever. How did it sound? Does it really matter how many drivers and what size is in the box? Did the box attain it’s design goal of output level and frequency response? Did it sound good? This conversation came about after a lost sale due to a certain high excursion woofer having a santopreen surround. All this talk of the numbers, measurements, yadda yadda, are fine. Good, do the testing. The real test is my ears. The first thing they teach you in Smaart class is to use your ears as the final judge of the sound regardless of the measurements.
The subwoofer shootout was organized by me because I personally wanted to see who was the best in distortion, response and output. It was good to also have the smaller boxes participate, they fill a very important segment of the smaller gigs and installs.
Years ago, I experienced BASSMAXX for the first time. I was blown away. For many years, I’ve witnessed other people as well as competitors dispute the specifications published by David Lee. I’ll admit, there are some speakers on the market that also have some pretty good looking numbers, the Adamson T21, Meyer 700-HP, Danley Sound Lab cabinets and the EM Acoustic Quake come to mind.
On a personal level, I need to own and offer my customers the very best in low frequency. With all the claims and testimonies that “ours is “better” than yours”, I had the need to do a real, full on head to head comparison. Good thing that other sound guys wanted to do the same, a sub shootout would really suck if I was there alone. As it turned out, many others wanted to know the answers to some of my very questions. Day one had forty guys show up!
The Adamson wasn’t available, they opted not to participate. I would hazard a guess that they would rather not put their big gun sub up against anything in a head to head shootout. Remember the first sub shootout where EAW was spanked? They’ll never do a shootout again. I have an install in NYC with a quad stack of 700-HP’s. Loud? Yup. Good? Sure. For the money spent could the customer have done better? You betcha, as well as using just two of something else. Then again, front loaded dual 18 subs seem to have a limit set by nature and physics on how loud they go and how low they’ll play regardless of design or power. The Danley cabinets look really good. They sound really good. Tom has certainly done his long division. The EM’s? Well, I’ve been hearing that they are the baddest of the bad. If any of these cabinets were better than my over rated BASSMAXX boxes, I’d have to jump the fence to that brand.
As it turned out, my Z5000 boxes, while very good, aren’t the “best.” I would actually say in shear output, the EM Quakes were better across the low frequency bandwidth. I know the measured numbers said the Z5000 was louder, the Quakes seemed to be louder at a lower frequency. We'll see when the numbers are posted. Again, I'm going by my ears. Perhaps the Z5000 sounds better because the Quakes are a horn sub design and sound like, well, a horn sub. The Z5000's certainly have this strange cancellation behind them that I’ve never heard before. As a reminder, I’ve never heard these boxes in the quad 10 configuration with the sealed sides before the shootout.
On to the Trips. Wow, I’ve never realized that they were this much better. The venue has a pair of Trips installed upstairs, a few of those at the event saw them. Going head to head was the true test. The Quakes were loud and pounding. They were obviously driven to their absolute limit, they did die trying. Two dead drivers. If anything, the max SPL on the Quakes attained at the shootout was beyond their safe operating range. Perhaps with 3 less DB, they would survive. The Trip cabinets out performed the Quakes by a wide margin as well as going lower in frequency. They survived the test, they are now in another venue on a demo. While being louder and lower, they just sounded better, more like a front loaded box than a horn. The Quakes still sound like a horn with all the coloration and peaks that horn subs are known for.
In my conclusion, my six Z5000 cabinets are for sale. I have several offers. David has the Duce cabinet, two thirds the size of the Trip with two drivers. He’s working on a high power, high excursion Neo driver that will handle like 3,000 watts. Given the (proven) accuracy of David’s claims, I’ll say they will handle the power. With these drivers at the right power level, the new Duce may have the same or almost the same output as a standard ferrite Trip as we’ve heard them. He’s also going over to light weight ply for the cabinet innards. I’ll be ordering these cabinets. I simply cannot haul around the Trip boxes and the Duce is the answer. I can see myself using two or three Duces per side for a 5,000 person show. That’ll be along with three QSC Powerlight 9.0 amps.
I’ll be posting more as the readings are shown and the discussions proceed.
Again, a big thanks to all that attended, sent gear or provided test gear and their time and expertise. This was a giant world wide group effort, we all did it, I just got the ball rolling. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ll never do another shootout!