Quote:
| rubbersoul wrote:
I to am curious as to your personal opinion on the JL Audio Fathom 113....I happened to buy one a month ago and recently as Dec 23rd actually got to calibrate it and use it and I was blown away. It has everything I think a sub should be.
Feel free to sendind a PM.
Merry Christmas to everyone!!!!
Frank |
Quote:
| tweakophyte wrote:
Now... was the JLA's distortion that audible? In other areas people have compared that sub to the Ultra... now I am doubting their ears  |
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Okay, so what do I think of the f113. I think it's an amazing subwoofer. It has the best performance/liter ratio I have ever seen when it comes to commercial subwoofers. It has very good user settings and a lot of very uselful and most importantly working features like the E.L.F and the wonderful crossover, though I wish that the A.R.O would have more bands, but it's better than nothing, and of course one can always add an SMS-1 or BFD to go with it. The build quality and the cabinet are the very best I've ever seen. It is truly a high end subwoofer. Of course it has its limitations due to laws of physics but still the performance is better than with most much larger and more expensive subwoofers. Other than maybe the price, it really doesn't have many weak spots. Bravo, JL Audio!
Then the distortion issue. The whole question "was JL's distortion that audible" is a bit strange because distortion is a multi-dimensional variable. It's not like "is 5 larger than 2", which only has one answer - yes. Distortion depends on both output level and frequency so there's no single easy answer to that question. Then there's also a so-called masking effect. If you look at the distortion measurements I took, you can see that the f113 is not the cleanest subwoofer out there when you push it close to its limits. But the ones that are cleaner, are either having larger or multiple woofers in a _much_ larger enclosures. Of course also porting a subwoofer lowers the deep bass distortion. At more common listening levels the distortion that the f113 produces is very minimal.
When looking at the very important "Harmonic Distortion % By Component" graph, you'll see that the distortion consists mainly out of second and third harmonics. The higher harmonics raise their ugly heads only at the low end, and even that happens only at high output levels. So when the distortion is like that, it's very heard to hear it because the fundamental masks anything that is very close to it. And second and third harmonic can be considered being 'close'. I've compared the f113 and the LMS-5400 sealed 100L in my own listening room, and although the f113 has quite low distortion, it can not match the ultra low distortion of the LMS woofer. It's not audible when using low to moderate levels but when really pushing them, one can hear that the LMS subwoofer stays cleaner, especially at the low end. Same goes to the SVS PB13-Ultra: it stays cleaner than the f113 at high output levels and when simultaneously inputting a low frequency content. No wonder there though, the other is a very small sealed subwoofer while the other is a much larger ported sub. But does this make the f113 a bad subwoofer? No way! It's one of the best subwoofers I've heard, and by far the highest performing _small_ subwoofer I've ever heard.