Thanks Wayne. A Jolly good review and a number of points I'd like to back you up on.
A fellow member of AVForums in the UK asked me if I'd help him set up his new SB-12 about six months ago. Having spent a day with it at the UKs importer and being suitably impressed, I readily agreed.
First up, the demo day unit was a 'rosenut' (whatever the dickens that is!) unit and it was simply gorgeous. However, sjalloq's SB-12 was in the piano black finish and I wasn't prepared as to how stunning that finish was. If I weren't ugly, I could've spent a long time looking at myself in the depth of that gloss. Very, very nice indeed. I wasted a couple on minutes just pulling the grill on and off trying to make it miss-fit. I couldn't, and gave up.
Tuning. My fellow forumite doesn't run a room EQ device and was having trouble achieving a satisfactory performance in his room. His description of the SB-12s performance was at odds with the demo I'd/we'd had at the open day so the challenge was on.
I have a Velodyne SMS-1 (did I just swear?) and took it round to his, to use as a setup device. I wanted to use it's ability to run it's in built test tones and on screen display to optimise it's in room performance using, initially positional tuning and once happy, to use the SB-12s on board tuning.
After running AV setup 101 using a bog standard RS SPL meter (which made a big difference - why do people ignore the difference this can make?) we moved onto room positioning. The SMS-1 quickly showed several things things.
1. He had it on the wrong side of his room and the best point was about 1ft to the left of and infront of his left main speaker. It should be noted at this point that the SB-12 was being used in a typical UK room, which is indeed less than the 2400 sq ft max suggested by SVS. It also had a stairwell that could not be closed off, which always adds it's own challenges.
2. Surprisingly, he only suffered one major room peak. I figured that this should be relatively easy to tame using the SB-12s on-board EQ. The 'Large' setting (inspite of the small room) seemed to offer the best extension. I might have guessed that 'Small' or 'Medium' may have been nearer the mark, but like Wayne, I hadn't read the destruction manual and so based my settings on what appeared best on the SMS-1's display.
3. Boy, is the PEQ is finnicky. Come to mention it, so is the phase control. I'm pleased to see SVS admit as much. Maybe because I don't have Wayne's understanding of cuts and Qs, I decided that max cut was the deepest cut and turned it full up, to see what it did to the SMS-1s on-screen trace. Because I was leaning over it and couldn't see what was high or low, I then twiddled the Q to give the narrowest band of cut manageable. I then tried to target the problem frequency using, obviously, the frequency control and proceeded to adjust cut and Q to the minimum necessary to flatten the response.
It took me nearly an hour to do so. That surprised me, because I've plugged my SMS-1 into a couple of systems, beside my own and it never takes me more than ten minutes to get a pretty good flat response. The SB-12's controls eventually allowed me to achieve as much, but they were so non linear in operation, that I found that it was all to easy to completely overshoot the position you were trying to achieve. It was a case of nothing, nothing, nothing, EVERYTHING! I was using barely the lightest of finger touches to achieve significant setting changes and spent a lot of time 'touching' them back and forth to nail the point I was trying to hit.
Once I'd managed it, what a sweet sub this is! Sjalloq's neighbours were out (we live closer to people over here) and so we wound it up. Bearing in mind the smaller rooms we have, we never bottomed it and I tried
The WOTW demo sequences came very close to delivering the impact and depth of my Monolith (see Illka's tests) and it performed the sort of music sjalloq litens to, to a highly satisfactory degree.
I'd like to have one for review, to live with it and get a real handle on it's performance. I listen to a very wide range of music that my film loving chums don't. I personally feel a really good sub (like a truly good speaker) is only good if it does everything well. The same criteria that make a good movie/music sub make a good music/movie sub. I can't understand how people can separate the two without excepting a massive compromise - maybe that's why I've never warmed to M&Ks? That's another story for another forum.
However, I've heard a good few compact subs, that the average UK room seems to dictate, and I can state without reservation that the SB-12 is truly a king of it's breed.
The caveat is that it's extra features will require an SMS-1 or REW/BFD to get the full benefit. And that's the rub. The SB-12 provides these features so you DON'T need these other EQ devices, but you can't (in it's current form) use them effectively without them.
If space is a consideration, don't let it stop you buying one. REL et all, have nothing to offer in comparrison for the price.
Russell