Rythmik L22, yay or nay?

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aceinc

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Rythmik L22, yay or nay?
« on: 8 Apr 2021, 01:31 am »
Should I post this in enclosures? (Never mind, I see it did, I thought I was in an archived Bass forum).

I have a room which is ~15'x25'x9'. My main speakers are Magnepan 2.7 QRs. I have them running in parallel (speaker level input) with 2 GR Research dual 12" OB W-style woofers. At present I also have a ~15 yo Rythmik Audio 15" aluminum servo sealed sub. When I play music I do not use the 15" sub but I do when running HT. When I run HT I run the fronts (Maggies & OB woofers) full range.

Someone in my area has a pair of Rythmik L22 subs for sale. My thought would be to replace my long in the tooth 15" sub with the L22s. This would provide something similar to a "swarm" type system based on my understanding.

My questions are;

The L22s are supposed to be "budget" subs, does anyone have them? Do they have a budget sound? What are their pros & cons?

Would this be an upgrade? Overkill? Downgrade?

What should I offer for a pair of  L22s less than 2 years old?

jpm

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Re: Rythmik L22, yay or nay?
« Reply #1 on: 8 Apr 2021, 01:51 am »
I have a pair of L12's which handily outperform anything else I've tried and I'd imagine the L22's are essentially the same but "more". I didn't have much luck getting a sense of the difference between the L subs and the F subs from Rythmik when I enquired, so when mine came up in the right finish at the right price I just decided to give them a try - happy I did. I've seen L22's advertised recently and been tempted, but the shipping costs were a bit extreme for the pair so I passed - if they're the same ones you're considering (in FL) and the shipping isn't an issue for you, I think the asking price is very fair.

With my HT setup, I recently added two extra "surplus" subs (four total) and despite only two being the same the difference in overall performance was well worth the experiment. At some point I'll probably get a bit more serious about these, but for now I'm content to enjoy the improvement.

Hope this helps.

aceinc

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Re: Rythmik L22, yay or nay?
« Reply #2 on: 8 Apr 2021, 02:34 am »
I have a pair of L12's which handily outperform anything else I've tried and I'd imagine the L22's are essentially the same but "more". I didn't have much luck getting a sense of the difference between the L subs and the F subs from Rythmik when I enquired, so when mine came up in the right finish at the right price I just decided to give them a try - happy I did. I've seen L22's advertised recently and been tempted, but the shipping costs were a bit extreme for the pair so I passed - if they're the same ones you're considering (in FL) and the shipping isn't an issue for you, I think the asking price is very fair.

With my HT setup, I recently added two extra "surplus" subs (four total) and despite only two being the same the difference in overall performance was well worth the experiment. At some point I'll probably get a bit more serious about these, but for now I'm content to enjoy the improvement.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. I was pleased with the 15" Rythmik, but I have had it 14-15 years, it is down firing and I think it isn't behaving as well as it used to. Brian Ding mentioned to me that downfiring these woofers can cause issues with the suspension.

I did a sub only comparison (no other speakers on) with one of the OB woofers, playing a bass guitar solo from Youtube and the OB woofers sounded more like a bass guitar where the 15" woofer sounded muddled. I had the crossover freq set about the same on both.

Before someone starts talking about how a bass guitars have much higher freqs than the sub will do, I understand this, and was really just using it for an A/B comparison and tried to normalize everything.