Rythmik sub?

Marbles · « **on:** 27 Oct 2009, 06:10 pm »

What are your thoughts on the Rythmik subs?

rtate · « **Reply #1 on:** 27 Oct 2009, 06:19 pm »

I have the 12" servo with their PEQ370 plate amp and I love it!!
I did the DIY sealed enclosure as per the plans on the website
Great product and great service.
I have integrated it with a pair of Dahlquist DQ10's and it blends seamlessly and has infinite adjustments...

Nuance · « **Reply #2 on:** 27 Oct 2009, 06:21 pm »

For music in small or medium sized rooms they are great. You'll need multiples for largish rooms, though. They are not SPL monsters, so don't expect SVS or JL Audio max output. However, the sound quality equals those manufactures at reasonable levels. Its when you push them to stupid levels that they show their weaknesses and the SVS and JL will outshine them. But hey, they cost less and aren't designed for that application anyway.

I give them two thumbs up!

saisunil · « **Reply #3 on:** 27 Oct 2009, 06:30 pm »

I had a chance to have them for a few weeks paired with Danny's Neo Monitors.
I could not find any fault with them. No, they don't have a remote or other fancy features.

They were extremely easy to set up and blended seamlessly with the fast Neos. The pair sounded more like high end full range and less like separate units.

They are fast and they go deep and loud enough for all music types ...

Above all they are a bargain ... as you buy them direct.

Cheers

floresjc · « **Reply #4 on:** 27 Oct 2009, 08:57 pm »

I'll let you know Friday!

Tyson · « **Reply #5 on:** 27 Oct 2009, 11:00 pm »

Only other subs I've heard that are as good for music are the VMSP Original subs.

laserman · « **Reply #6 on:** 28 Oct 2009, 05:12 pm »

Marbles,

You may want to locate this question in a general circle so more folks will see it (GR, Ascend, et al followers) and hopefully respond.

IMHO, if you like your music to have a "fast & accurate" lower end versuses "fat & boomy" lower end, then you will love what Rhythmik servo has to offer. I'm still not sure what the two PR's do (in Jim's design) with the overall output/quality? I am going to have to research that design aspect a little more. In my experience, a 12" sealed GR/Rythmik w/NoRez replaced a Vandersteen 2W with ease.

Lou

sfox7076 · « **Reply #7 on:** 28 Oct 2009, 05:24 pm »

I love my Salk Rythmik. It is accurate and goes deep enough for HT. It really shines with music because of the servo function. The only negative is the size of it. My not passive radiator version still weighs 100+ pounds.

Shawn

laserman · « **Reply #8 on:** 28 Oct 2009, 07:15 pm »

Marbles,
Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I had lost my mind and that you had them but wasn't sure based on your first post.

Lou

Quote from: Marbles on 28 Oct 2009, 06:38 pm

Quote from: laserman on 28 Oct 2009, 05:12 pm
Marbles,

You may want to locate this question in a general circle so more folks will see it (GR, Ascend, et al followers) and hopefully respond.

IMHO, if you like your music to have a "fast & accurate" lower end versuses "fat & boomy" lower end, then you will love what Rhythmik servo has to offer. I'm still not sure what the two PR's do (in Jim's design) with the overall output/quality? I am going to have to research that design aspect a little more. In my experience, a 12" sealed GR/Rythmik w/NoRez replaced a Vandersteen 2W with ease.

Lou

Actually, I have 4 of them and love them. I was hoping that Jim would post his impressions since he has built (and I hope heard) at least one of them.

The top 16 pictures in Christof's gallery are about my subs:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;area=browse;album=281

floresjc · « **Reply #9 on:** 28 Oct 2009, 08:18 pm »

Marbles\Laserman -

At least as I discussed subs with Jim, it is my understanding that the passive radiator design is a "best of both worlds" type of deal within a reasonable expectation. For example, you can get tight, musical bass in a sealed configuration at the loss of some output. You can get more output and more boom with a ported design. If you throw a Rythmik driver in either of those, you get more accuracy with the same basic characteristics (tight/boom). The passive radiator eliminates the port noise (an advantage of sealed subs) and allows more air to be moved for increased output compared to a similarly configured sealed sub (an advantage in the ported realm). This was really the kicker for me, very good output, and some of the best bass quality available due to lack of port noise and the Rythmik driver.

I really don't know that Jim spent much time with my particular sub (15" with 2 passive radiators) listening. As far as I know, he just completed it not long ago and packed it last Saturday. I would think he would've tried it minimally just to see that it worked, but seeing the products he's put out on the forum and the updates I got with respect to my system, I just don't know where he'd of had the time to really put it through its paces. But maybe he did, I don't really know.

TomS · « **Reply #10 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 12:31 am »

Quote from: Marbles on 28 Oct 2009, 06:38 pm

Quote from: laserman on 28 Oct 2009, 05:12 pm
Marbles,

You may want to locate this question in a general circle so more folks will see it (GR, Ascend, et al followers) and hopefully respond.

IMHO, if you like your music to have a "fast & accurate" lower end versuses "fat & boomy" lower end, then you will love what Rhythmik servo has to offer. I'm still not sure what the two PR's do (in Jim's design) with the overall output/quality? I am going to have to research that design aspect a little more. In my experience, a 12" sealed GR/Rythmik w/NoRez replaced a Vandersteen 2W with ease.

Lou

Actually, I have 4 of them and love them. I was hoping that Jim would post his impressions since he has built (and I hope heard) at least one of them.

The top 16 pictures in Christof's gallery are about my subs:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;area=browse;album=281

...and orphan'd Dymaxion #5 made it to my house

I love the sound and can only imagine what the Salk/Rhythmik 15 with 2 passives must be like.

jsalk · « **Reply #11 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 01:18 am »

Marbles, you drive a hard bargain. When I see a question like this, I want to take my time so I can provide an appropriate, thoughtful resonse. Then, a few months later when I finally find the time, I forget I was going to answer. So I'll take the time now to provide a few quick impressions before my memory fades.

I might point out, here, that we have only done a few Rythmik projects to date. Naturally, when we build them, customers would like them delivered rather than letting me take them home for an extended period. So my comments are based on rather limited time with the units we have built.

With that in mind, let me start by saying that I love the Rythmik drivers. It is natural that I should say this as they are obviously based on the original TC Sounds drivers (as far as I can tell) - drivers I have had a great deal of experience with and that I believe are some of the best deep bass drivers ever. In fact, Thilo may build these for Rythmik - I don't know. Rythmik simply adds an additional voice coil for use in a feedback loop with their servo amps.

When we built the first 15" Rythmik sub, we tested it against our SongSub. We set the crossover at about 80Hz and ran music and tones. The SongSub is a very low distortion sub and the two tracked very similarly to a point. As the bass went deeper, however, the Rythmik took over. Of course, it should have since it has more displacement - a 15" driver should move more air than a 12" driver, all else being equal (there is no substitute for displacement).

The nice thing was, this first Rythmik sub was sealed. So the bass should have rolled off much earlier than the SongSub and it did not. In this case, the servo forced the system to play deeper than it normally would. That is the good thing. The not so good thing is that the amp was almost wide open in order to get the same output as the SongSub with the gain set at about 30% of maximum. This is because the Rythmik amp is not as powerful in the first place and a good deal of power was consumed forcing the system to play deeper than a sealed system would normally play. But in the end, there was enough gain to mate well with a pair of stand mounted speakers. (I understand Brian is working on a higher power amp at this time and that will be a nice addition to the line.)

The sound quality was extremely good. With a little care, it was easy to set the system up to the point where you did not notice the sub was playing. The only way you could tell is that the system played much deeper than the stand-mounted speakers would have played on their own. That is the mark of a very good subwoofer - very tight, very accurate and very musical.

How would this system compare to a 15" driver in a cabinet with dual 15" passives and no servo control. I don't know, but it would be an interesting comparison. My gut instinct tells me that if the cabinet and passives were designed and tuned correctly, the results would be very similar. In that case, the servo would not be asked to do as much since the driver would play deep and fairly accurately on its own. But with the cost of the Rythmik solution, there really isn't any reason to test that hypothesis unless you need more power. The servo technology is just not that expensive to begin with so why not take advantage of it.

Now, to answer another question, why would we use passives? Well, to gain better overall performance, you would normally port the cabinet. This would extend the natural bass response. The problem is, when you try and play bass around 20Hz or so, port noise becomes a real issue. You could always increase the port diameter to deal with this, but with these drivers, the port length becomes EXTREMELY long EXTREMELY fast. It is simply not practical to try and cram an 80" long port into a cabinet that is already rather sizeable.

The solution is passive radiators. With the help of Jeff Bagby, we determined that two well-tuned 15" passives would provide the performance of a ported cabinet without any port noise at all. The system would play plenty deep without putting any exsessive demand on the amplifier. And I think the results worked out very well. The 15" Rythmik with dual 15" tuned passives required far less gain than the sealed version we originally played with. I was very pleased with the results even though I didn't have a great deal of time to play with the resulting sub (Josh was waiting for his speakers to ship).

As for my personal sub project, I am just putting the finishing touches on a new subwoofer system for my home theater. It consists of a pair of HT4 woofer cabinets tuned to 18Hz for in-room repsonse into the mid teens. For those not familiar with the design, these cabinets feature a 12" driver of the same type, combined with a pair of 12" passives. I will set it up with a Velodyne SMS1 and a pair of 1200 watt amps. I susect the results will be very good - servo or not. But we'll see...

I wish I had more time to organize my thoughts, but that was off the top of my head with no time for editing. All to make Marbles happy...

- Jim

sfox7076 · « **Reply #12 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 11:51 am »

Jim made the first Rythmik 15" sub that he tested for me ( i think anyway). The sub does have to have the amp turned up to almost 3/4. I cross over at 60Hz. I have considered 80Hz, but have not gone that as of yet. I didn't have the room for 2 subs and wanted accurate, not boomy bass. This sub was the answer. I have not rebalanced the gain since the Sub has been used for over 200 hours. I may be able to back off the gain as the woofer has broken in more. No, I don't think the Amp had to break in, but it is likely the woofer may have had to.

Shawn

Nuance · « **Reply #13 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 06:39 pm »

Quote from: Marbles on 28 Oct 2009, 06:38 pm

Quote from: laserman on 28 Oct 2009, 05:12 pm
Marbles,

You may want to locate this question in a general circle so more folks will see it (GR, Ascend, et al followers) and hopefully respond.

IMHO, if you like your music to have a "fast & accurate" lower end versuses "fat & boomy" lower end, then you will love what Rhythmik servo has to offer. I'm still not sure what the two PR's do (in Jim's design) with the overall output/quality? I am going to have to research that design aspect a little more. In my experience, a 12" sealed GR/Rythmik w/NoRez replaced a Vandersteen 2W with ease.

Lou

Actually, I have 4 of them and love them. I was hoping that Jim would post his impressions since he has built (and I hope heard) at least one of them.

The top 16 pictures in Christof's gallery are about my subs:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;area=browse;album=281

Those are yours? Oh my - they are awesome looking! I bet they sound good too.

oneinthepipe · « **Reply #14 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 08:19 pm »

Quote from: Marbles on 28 Oct 2009, 06:38 pm

Actually, I have 4 of them and love them.

Yes, but are they bubinga?

My humor might only be humorous to me, and I apologize in advance to anyone that thinks my post is sarcastic, offensive, distasteful, rude, reprehensible, indicative of a character defect, etc.

Those subs look great, BTW.

Nuance · « **Reply #15 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 09:24 pm »

^ LOL! Hilarious!!

topround · « **Reply #16 on:** 29 Oct 2009, 11:27 pm »

I love the smell of Bubinga.

I have a surprise for you guys soon, a Salk surprise, an olive branch so to speak.

mike

topround · « **Reply #17 on:** 30 Oct 2009, 01:00 am »

God, I wish you guys could come to a rave!!
you would so get it!!

One of you Salk guys has got to commit to a rave, I would love to get Nuance to a rave... he would have a blast

see the humor..and the fun.
it's just audio

Mike

Nuance · « **Reply #18 on:** 30 Oct 2009, 01:37 am »

Aren't raves a place where kids just get high and dance to weird music?

I would have a blast playing borderlands or L4D2 with you.

sfox7076 · « **Reply #19 on:** 30 Oct 2009, 11:58 am »

Well, anyone who wants to hear my sub is welcome to come over. I just need some notice to clear it with SWMBO. I do, however, live in NYC. I upgraded my speakers and my electronics planning a move to Brooklyn that hasn't happened yet... Sigh.