Recently I felt compelled to upgrade the subwoofers in my main setup (prompted by audible chuffing during loud, heavy sub-bass material), and I ended up ordering a pair of Monolith 15" V2s a couple weeks ago as they were temporarily made available at a very appealing sales price. I was finally able to put them through their paces over a lot of very loud music and movie material earlier today. The "listening area" for these is not large at roughly 2000 cubic ft, but one side of the room opens to a large basement, and the floor is a concrete slab sitting under medium thickness carpet. So while it's not bad, it's not exactly the most friendly subwoofer environment in existence.
Subjectively, these Monoliths sound exceptionally good. I have yet to notice any audible signs of distortion, strain, mechanical noise, or port chuffing under normal use. They present as extremely clean, short of the multitude of creaks, rattles, and buzzes that they bring out of the house at high volumes. Yes, I can drive the ports into noticeable turbulence by running sub-20Hz sinewaves, but in normal music / movie material that contains strong amounts of ULF content, it's essentially (if not completely) inaudible, which is in happy contrast to the 15" subs that they replaced. Below is their summed response after positioning them and running Audyssey XT32 (I've not brought out the MiniDSP yet as I haven't felt the need). As you can see, they are reasonably neutral and flat to nearly 10Hz in-room prior to dialing in any sort of house curve.
Output wise, for music specifically, they appear to be far more capable than my needs and preferences require. If anything, it's often helpful to tone them down for music rather than the opposite. They integrate very well with my mains, and issues with the room/house itself not withstanding, I don't think I could be much (if at all) happier with their music performance in this space.
For home theater use, I am similarly thrilled, and again, run them with plenty of headroom in the tank. For reference, each sub is sitting close to +6dB on the gain knob (this is well below max as the Monolith's analog gain is logarithmic and scales up rapidly towards the higher portion of the dial), with trim levels maintained around -9.0dB on the Denon AVR. They are approximately 10-11ft distant from the MLP. Among many other things, I watched some scenes from the Dune 4K Blu-Ray. Spinning up the volume close to reference during some of the heavy bass scenes was ridiculous. The pressure from the sub-bass and punch from the midbass was something else, and I felt quite disoriented when I stood up (in a good way, of course!). For me, as much fun as this was, and even though the subs did not appear to be at all phased by the situation, pushing the volume even further was causing things to get legitimately uncomfortable. The house was making sounds that I had never heard before, and my body hasn't been rattled like that since riding in stupidly loud competition sub cars many years ago. I could never sit down and simply watch a bass-heavy movie at that sort of output level, and I'm someone who is generally happy to watch a full-length film at volumes that could potentially incur an OSHA fine for lack of hearing protection.
So, while it sounds like I am here to simply give the Monolith 15" V2s a positive review (and I enthusiastically do), the primary purpose of this is to ask...given the multitude of bigger/badder subs out there (and the many owners who happily load up their rooms with them), what's left for me to gain in my space? Specifically, the Monolith 16" subs went on sale earlier this month at a crazy low price. I'd have likely jumped on the deal had the 15s not already been enroute and if I had some readily available means to get those 172lb monsters down the steps and into the basement. Something like the PSA TV1813M is also bigger and much more powerful, and while it's costlier, it has the benefit of being about the same weight as the 15" Monoliths, thanks in large part to its MDF (versus HDF) cabinet. But, let's say I magically dropped a pair of 16" Monoliths or those 18" (or even the 21") PSAs into the room. What would I expect to hear/feel? I'm already not pushing the 15s to their limits, the in-room response and tactical feel are satisfactory, and distortion is presumably below audible levels. I'm truly curious. Help put my rampant FOMO to rest (or go ahead and make it much worse!). Thanks.
