[coke]

I sometimes like to watch / listen to music dvds.  One that I really enjoy is Rush in Rio, especially the Neil Peart drum solo O Baterista.

There is a lot of low frequency bass in the song.  My previous setup had a 15" dayton titanic sub with a 1000w RMS dayton amp and handled it easily. 

The other day I tried listening to this with my HT2-TLs (no sub) and they began to distort when I approached the db levels I used to listen to this song at 

I'm curious how the SS10s would handle this specific song.  Does anyone have any experience with both this dvd and the SS10s? 

This is really the only song I think I've ever had an issue with, so I thought I'd mention it specificially.

[jsalk]

Well, since I am the only one who presently has a pair of SS10's running, I am probably the only person who could answer your question.  But I don't have that particular recording.  So I can't be of much help. 

The woofer section of the SS10's can handle 500 continuous watts and 1000 peak watts.  So I don't think that would be a problem.  And they are tuned to about 21Hz so they would reproduce just about any deep bass in music. 

I don't know how loud you like to listen, but I have run a few cuts at levels that made everyone in the room a bit uncomfortable and there were no problems.

That said, none of these speakers were specifically designed for high SPL levels.  This is more the realm of pro drivers.  They don't play particularly deep, they typically have larger cones and the sound quality is not generally very high.  But they can move a lot of air rather efficiently. 

The HT2-TL's are tuned quite low.  The forces them to reproduce frequencies lower than they would reproduce in a typical ported cabinet.  But they must move a lot more air in the process and this requires more cone movement.  They handle fairly high SPL levels without any problem.  But if you force them to play too loud, they will reach their XMAX (limit of cone movement) and will distort.  If you cross them to a sub and relieve them of some bass duties, they will not reach their XMAX as soon.  So it would be possible to play them louder than you currently can, but you would need a sub to off-load some bass duties.

This would obviously not be the case with the SS10's or SS12's since they basically have subwoofer drivers in the woofer sections.

- Jim

[coke]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.

I like to listen to this song loud enough to "feel" the music, and distortion was expected when I tried it with the HT2-TLs.   

I was wondering if the SS10s would be able to play at that level without distortion, and it looks like you answered that question.

Thanks

[Nuance]

I can easily feel the music when listening in TJHUB's room when running his HT2-TL's full range.  His room is quite large, too.  How big is your room, coke?  Also, have you ever measured the in-room frequency response?  If you have to turn the music up that loud to "feel the bass," there may be a bass suckout at your listening position.  In TJHUB's room we can shake the house, and that's without a subwoofer.  We have also actually measured his room and there are no suckouts, so perhaps something is amiss in your room?

[TJHUB]

I can easily feel the music when listening in TJHUB's room when running his HT2-TL's full range.  His room is quite large, too.  How big is your room, coke?  Also, have you ever measured the in-room frequency response?  If you have to turn the music up that loud to "feel the bass," there may be a bass suckout at your listening position.  In TJHUB's room we can shake the house, and that's without a subwoofer.  We have also actually measured his room and there are no suckouts, so perhaps something is amiss in your room?

Agreed.  I'd suspect in-room response as the issue here as well.  I have yet to distort my HT2-TLs and I've been running them full range and at higher levels than I like.  There's no doubt a subwoofer would do a lot more, but Nuance is right, they can shake my floor pretty good and I could fool most people into thinking that my sub was actually playing.  Don't get me wrong, a larger driver dedicated to low frequency output would certainly perform better, but the HT2-TLs don't leave me wanting for much.

I don't have the track you're talking about, but I'll see if I can round it up and give some better feedback. 

[Jeff B.]

I would like to add - although the drivers in the HT2-TL's are state of the art bassmids, they are still excursion limited at low frequencies. Paul K. did a marvellous job of extracting clean, deep bass from them via his transmission line. But ultimately, if we are talking SPL's, there is still a limitation based on driver excursion capability that is going to play into this whether we like it or not.

The Soundscape series, on the other hand, as I mentioned in my article in Jim's blog, have drivers with extremely long linear excursions - on par with most high quality subwoofers available today. In addition the dual passive radiatiors have enough cone area to produce very high SPL's at their tuning frequency. Consequently, when combined with the high excursion woofers, the Soundscapes should be capable of keeping up with a pair of high quality, high excursion subwoofers in deep bass output.

As Jim said, these are not pro-sound speakers that can hit 130dB, but as home high fidelity speakers, a pair can hit 115+dB in-room with 500 Watts in the low bass.

Well, since I am the only one who presently has a pair of SS10's running, I am probably the only person who could answer your question.  But I don't have that particular recording.  So I can't be of much help. 

The woofer section of the SS10's can handle 500 continuous watts and 1000 peak watts.  So I don't think that would be a problem.  And they are tuned to about 21Hz so they would reproduce just about any deep bass in music. 

I don't know how loud you like to listen, but I have run a few cuts at levels that made everyone in the room a bit uncomfortable and there were no problems.

That said, none of these speakers were specifically designed for high SPL levels.  This is more the realm of pro drivers.  They don't play particularly deep, they typically have larger cones and the sound quality is not generally very high.  But they can move a lot of air rather efficiently. 

The HT2-TL's are tuned quite low.  The forces them to reproduce frequencies lower than they would reproduce in a typical ported cabinet.  But they must move a lot more air in the process and this requires more cone movement.  They handle fairly high SPL levels without any problem.  But if you force them to play too loud, they will reach their XMAX (limit of cone movement) and will distort.  If you cross them to a sub and relieve them of some bass duties, they will not reach their XMAX as soon.  So it would be possible to play them louder than you currently can, but you would need a sub to off-load some bass duties.

This would obviously not be the case with the SS10's or SS12's since they basically have subwoofer drivers in the woofer sections.

- Jim

[coke]

I can easily feel the music when listening in TJHUB's room when running his HT2-TL's full range.  His room is quite large, too.  How big is your room, coke?  Also, have you ever measured the in-room frequency response?  If you have to turn the music up that loud to "feel the bass," there may be a bass suckout at your listening position.  In TJHUB's room we can shake the house, and that's without a subwoofer.  We have also actually measured his room and there are no suckouts, so perhaps something is amiss in your room?

I think the room is 11x14 with vaulted ceilings.  There's a decent amount of volume, but it's not a very large room.


I've never felt that they lacked bass.  I don't miss my sub much at all, even when watching movies. It's just this one specific song.

My seating position actually seems to have more bass than most areas in the room. I haven't measured anything though.

Agreed.  I'd suspect in-room response as the issue here as well.  I have yet to distort my HT2-TLs and I've been running them full range and at higher levels than I like.  There's no doubt a subwoofer would do a lot more, but Nuance is right, they can shake my floor pretty good and I could fool most people into thinking that my sub was actually playing.  Don't get me wrong, a larger driver dedicated to low frequency output would certainly perform better, but the HT2-TLs don't leave me wanting for much.

I don't have the track you're talking about, but I'll see if I can round it up and give some better feedback.

Here's the dvd i was referring to.

http://www.amazon.com/Rush-Rio/dp/B000IOM0QA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1273759761&sr=8-2

Here's a video I made a while ago. I've posted it here before, but when you mentioned the speakers shaking things, it reminded me of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DQet-vtqeE