[vinyl_lady]

I've had a pair of Lou's BOWs for going on two years. I have been promosing Lou I would post about my experiences with the BOWs in my system and I'm finally doing it. One of our Daedalus family talked to Lou about adding a pair of subs to his Ulysses and he wrote me asking about my listening impressions. This is what I told him:

"Lou's subs are amazing. They definitely help fill in the lower bass frequencies and add weight, but what I really notice is the highs and midrange notes are more coherent and focused. To me the BOWs add foundation to the music. They add to the "in the room" illusion without dominating. I've listened to some systems where you immediately know there is a sub in the room. With the BOWs, they just blend in and the only time you really know there is a sub in the room are on the very lowest bass notes. They give the music a seamless foundation from top to bottom and bottom to top. Little top end details are more apparent and they are as tonally accurate as Lou's main speakers.

I was without them for a couple of months as Lou, Dan Wright and I worked to solve a buzz hum that developed when I repositioned my equipment on the new racks Lou made for me. Without the BOWs, I noticed the music seemed a little thin. It wasn't as solid or as full. It was still pretty good, but it didn't have the same foundation I had become accustomed to. It was like something was missing, and something was. After solving the hum issue and the subs were back in my system, the music seemed complete again.

I power the subs with a 250W per channel Bryston 4B ST. I bought two BOWs and they were pretty easy to integrate into my room and system. I started where Lou suggested and fine tuned from there. I made a few adjustments over the next couple of weeks until they seemed to blend seamlessly.

I think you would fall all in love with your system again if you added the BOWs. I know I'm not giving mine up."

I welcome other thoughts by BOWs owners. They definitely take the music coming from your system to the next level. Highly recommended.

[fwinston]

I'm the Daedalus Audio family member with the Ulysses speakers and want to thank Laura, again, for taking the time to respond to my questions about the BOWs.  Much appreciated!

[forzainter]

Hi vinyilLady, I am a lucky  owner of Daedalus  Ulysses V2  (driven by  SET DHT 300B monoblocks) + 2 Bows (driven by 300W/4ohm solidstate monoblocks) .
I  share the same experience and findings about the Bow's that you just described. Adding the Bow's to the Ulysses is really
an added value to the whole presentation and musical balance (not only on the low frequencies; it is an incremental addition
to the overall tonal balance on the entire frequency spectrum).  The only thing I could add, based on my experience, is that the right positioning of the Bow's  is key to succesfully integrate the very low frequencies with the Ulysses.
Actually I found out the best result in my room by  inverting the absolute phase on both Bow's (positive vs negative on the amplifiers taps).
It is worth to give it a try to find out what works the best.
Hope this helps a little bit, Ugo

[Daedalus Audio]

Thanks for the comments Laura and Ugo!!

btw Some amps invert phase and it is always important when introducing subs to check the phase by ear. It is not subtle

[figcon]

Lou made a pair of Maple BOW's for me, but with two 12's per cabinet, instead of the one. My room is pretty large and mostly concrete, so bone ratting low frequencies were hard to come by.

Not so, any longer.

I use them with both a pair of Maple Ulysses Ver2, as well as my own homemade 15" coaxial speakers and the ability to pressurize the room is amazing with both pairs of speakers. Imaging is also definitely better with the BOW's than without.

For what it's worth, I bought a pair of Emotiva 500 watt per channel into 8 ohm monos to drive them, but have had much better sound using a Plinius SA 102 running in Class AB for this purpose. They sound much better being driven by the Plinius amp, so if you go with BOW's, don't scrimp on the amp to drive them.

[audiotom]

I love the natural low end of my Ulysses but am curious about the BOW fleshing out the sound

Pardon my ignorance
As my only sub is in my ht room with a sub out option

What is the configuration of the external crossover and application

I was confused reading the DaGoGo article

Is it one preamp out - crossover rolls off above the subs then signal goes to a Low end amp
High freq bypasses The crossover and goes full freq range to the main amps then speakers

Or

 Crossover handles low cut off the main speakers
Or this is done by a passive crossover post amplifier?

[Daedalus Audio]

I love the natural low end of my Ulysses but am curious about the BOW fleshing out the sound

Pardon my ignorance
As my only sub is in my ht room with a sub out option

What is the configuration of the external crossover and application

I was confused reading the DaGoGo article

Is it one preamp out - crossover rolls off above the subs then signal goes to a Low end amp
High freq bypasses The crossover and goes full freq range to the main amps then speakers

Or

 Crossover handles low cut off the main speakers
Or this is done by a passive crossover post amplifier?

the active crossover we make is a low pass for the subs, usually the mains are run full range.
best is if there are two outputs at the preamp and one goes to the active crossover while the other goes to the main speakers power amp.

[audiotom]

Pardon my ignorance Lou
I understand band passing the low freq out going to the main speakers and this opening up the top end

If the mains are Running full range how is the power / load available for the mids / tweeters different?
Is it because you don't need to play it as loud with the additional sub output handling the main power below?

[Daedalus Audio]

Pardon my ignorance Lou
I understand band passing the low freq out going to the main speakers and this opening up the top end

If the mains are Running full range how is the power / load available for the mids / tweeters different?
Is it because you don't need to play it as loud with the additional sub output handling the main power below?

Very good question!  It would seem that with the more extended foundation the imaging is improved in the sense of being more "right".

I did not expect that as there did not seem to be any power related reason for it and I was surprised at the improvement in imaging, which btw is subtle and a 'different ' type of improvement than the usual. More of a greater sense of 'rightness' than just image placement. Everyone with the BOW has experienced the same thing, so I don't feel this is room dependent.

[vinyl_lady]

Very good question!  It would seem that with the more extended foundation the imaging is improved in the sense of being more "right".

I did not expect that as there did not seem to be any power related reason for it and I was surprised at the improvement in imaging, which btw is subtle and a 'different ' type of improvement than the usual. More of a greater sense of 'rightness' than just image placement. Everyone with the BOW has experienced the same thing, so I don't feel this is room dependent.

What Lou describes is what I experienced among the other benefits I described above.

[steve f]

What is a BOW?

[vinyl_lady]

What is a BOW?

Sub woofer. BOW stands for Bass Optimization Woofer. http://www.daedalusaudio.com/BOW.html

[steve f]

Thanks.. I wasn't sure if it meant bow (as bow down) bow(bow string) or Big Onery Walrus.

[Daedalus Audio]

 

Thanks.. I wasn't sure if it meant bow (as bow down) bow(bow string) or Big Onery Walrus.

Yep Big Onery Walrus  it is!