I measured 10 subwoofers.

[Haskil]

Wahou ! thank you !

 

[DanielT]

Hi, it's been a while!
I would like to thank the people who made this project possible on a scale never before imagined in South Korea. I measured a total of 10 subwoofers, including my own DIY subwoofer(L26RO4Y), and measured them to the CEA-2010 standard using a Klippel TBM module. Below are photos and a list of the subwoofers I measured.

View attachment 321682

(In order from left to right)

- Arendal 1961 1V

- Arendal 1961 1S

- Neumann KH750

- Bowers & Wilkins DB4S

- SVS SB-3000

- SVS SB-2000 pro

- SVS SB-1000 pro

- Polk audio PSW111

- My DIY Subwoofer

- SVS 3000 micro

This is officially the first time CEA-2010 has been measured in South Korea.
So there was a lot of trial and error, which took a lot of time.
And for the products that were not loaded enough, I did a second measurement under slightly harsher conditions with the owner's permission, and added data.

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With that out of the way, let's get down to business, releasing data starting with the SVS SB-1000 pro model.
All subsequent data will be presented in the same format, with the only difference being the product name.

As I'll explain later, there are a lot of variables in active subwoofers, so it's not possible to compare products on a fixed basis.

SVS SB-1000 pro


View attachment 321683


-21.2dBu means that we measured with an input of 80dB SPL@2m (100Hz) and an output of 80dB SPL@2m (100Hz).
(I state this because it can vary depending on the volume and gain knob settings on the product).

THD
View attachment 321684View attachment 321685View attachment 321686View attachment 321687

Group delay
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ETC
View attachment 321690

Measure the attenuation level for 100ms after the peak (0dBFS).
Higher attenuation is considered ideal.

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Now it's finally time to measure the TBM module. First, let's take a moment to explain how the TBM module works.

The TBM module measures a preset frequency, one cycle for each voltage, gradually increasing the voltage. If the THD value of the measured signal exceeds the threshold, it moves on to the next frequency. In other words, if you measure 20 Hz and the THD crosses the threshold, you move on to the next measured frequency, 25 Hz.

This is where the start voltage and maximum voltage settings become very important. The reason for this is that if you make the measurement too harsh, you risk damaging certain products, and if you make it too soft, you lose discrimination between products. Unfortunately, since I had to measure 10 subwoofers in one day with a lot of trial and error, I couldn't find the optimal measurement level for each product.

Therefore, I only set the minimum input gain and SPL for each product, and then replicated the rest of the conditions and measurement module settings.
So keep in mind that what may seem like an advantage for some products may not work for others.

However, please understand that we had to take this conservative approach because protecting the product is our number one priority.

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The following introduces the THD thresholds for each frequency in this module.

According to the CEA-2010B standard, there are different THD thresholds for each frequency.

The two thresholds above indicate that,
If you don't intuitively understand what this means, it means that there are different values of acceptable THD for each measurement frequency!

In other words, at lower frequency measurements, we're more forgiving, but as we move to higher frequencies, we get stricter about THD.

And this applies as follows

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If the THD of the measured signal is all below the threshold, the corresponding frequency measurement is PASS!

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If any of them touch the threshold, that measurement will FAIL!

And if it fails, then we just move on to the next frequency measurement,
We have a threshold level, called [Neglect Threshold Below], that determines if we should try to resume the measurement with a higher voltage.

For this measurement, it doesn't matter much because I mostly set this value equal to the maximum voltage.
In other words, even if it fails, it tries to increase the level unconditionally up to the preset value.

Peak Value
View attachment 321692


If you've never seen this plot before, you might be confused.
Basically, the more closely spaced the frequencies, the better the effective bandwidth, and the straighter the line, the better the output.

However, each subwoofer has a different preset output value from the manufacturer, so it's not a perfect comparison.

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Looking at this data, you should see some of the PASS! and FAIL! we discussed earlier.


The orange ones at relatively low voltages are the ones where background noise has crossed the THD threshold, so if you see green values at higher outputs, you can ignore anything below that.
(This is where the sophisticated 'Neglect Threshold below' setting comes in).


The first thing to look at is the top green value for each frequency.
That's the maximum output of that subwoofer, at least for the current measurement.

But that's not all.

Each measured signal increases by exactly 1 dB,
There are many instances where the actual measured SPL value is less than 1 dB, even at frequencies where a passing score is achieved.

In other words, the THD didn't touch the threshold in the 2010B standard, but it was already eating up compression in the lower range.

This is where you need to be proactive in your interpretation of each product.

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The maximum voltage that the product can accept in the current measurement setup.
(More precisely, the voltage it can take within the limits of its normal output.)


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THD% at the PASSed point for each frequency.

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THD% by output.
Each frequency is color coded.

I hope you enjoy these measurements.
I'll leave you with the data for the remaining nine subwoofers in order, along with their names.

What an incredible job! Hats off, thank you very much.

Can you draw any general conclusions from your results?

Anything that surprised you? Something you didn't expect?

Have you got lumbago?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Fascinating, thank you! The Arendal 1961 1V looks impressive!

 

[Nuyes]

What an incredible job! Hats off, thank you very much.

Can you draw any general conclusions from your results?

Anything that surprised you? Something you didn't expect?

Have you got lumbago?

Hello!

As I mentioned in the text, comparing the performance of subwoofers (especially active ones) under the same conditions is a very complex and difficult task.

But nevertheless, if you ask me for my personal opinion, I will be cautious.


The big winner of this event is probably Arendal Sound.
They really showed off their design prowess with a great performance for the price.

Bowers & Wilkins did an amazing job of getting their money's worth.
That's a significant advantage over some of the premium manufacturers who are just putting on a show.

Neumann really surprised me with its performance for its size.
Despite its 10-inch size, it performs well enough and has the ability to stop with a snap.

I was hoping for an upset with SVS's 3000 Micro, but no such miracle occurred.
If you're willing to give up some space for a subwoofer, it might make sense to buy the 2000 or 3000 series rather than the SB-1000.
(The performance difference seems more reasonable than the price difference).

 

[DJBonoBobo]

This is the table you're looking for:
View attachment 321910

It shows at different frequencies the maximum SPL before distortion becomes too high, acc. to CTA-2010-B.
The standard is explained here and can be downloaded here.

Edit: Nuyes also plotted that data in a graph:
View attachment 321911

Thanks. If i compare for example the SVS SB-2000 with the Neumann KH 750, i see a little advantage for the SB-2000 in the area around 40-80 Hz and a disadvantage above 100 Hz. Because the Neumann is a 10 inch and the SVS is a 12 inch, i understand why this is a surprisingly good achievement for the Neumann, i think:

But what does this graph mean - i think the Neumann looks much better overall, but don´t understand it. Does it mean one has to be more careful how to connect the SVS to a preamp, while the Neumann is more "tolerant"?

 

[asov87]

Many many thanks for your efforts getting us these stats

 

[totti1965]

I am not qualified to interpret all these data. But am I right if I say „The Neumann KH 750 seems to be pretty darn good!“ ?

 

[Gadgety]

Thank you, a lot of work has gone into this! Great to see.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

I am not qualified to interpret all these data. But am I right if I say „The Neumann KH 750 seems to be pretty darn good!“ ?

Trying to understand the measurements, i think the Arendal 1961 1S is better overall (although bigger). But is has not a linear FR, like the Neumann. So the advantage is limited to the range that is most important. The Neumann has the advantage of reproducing up to 700Hz linearly, but this should be meaningful only for a few use cases. Because the Arendal 1961 1S is cheaper and not much bigger, it may have a better value than the Neumann, if you don´t need the sub´s FR to be linear. But the Neumann has on the other hand the proprietary DSP, which makes it particularly useful in Neumann setups.
Do i interpret this right?
I think the Arendal 1961 1V is in a different class than the others, because it is much bigger.

 

[uwotm8]

Is it even legal to make such perfect products as Neumann does?
Aslo impressed by B&W, almost as good - their speakers are... what they are for a pourpose it seems. "In-house sound", yep.

 

[dzerig]

The DIY seems to be outstanding for music, not bad for video too.

 

[Penelinfi]

I was looking at group delay, multitone and impulse.
I did notice the Neuman seemed to have higher multitone than some others, though doing well in other regards.
The diy sub seemed great, though perhaps the bass falloff improved the multitone and group delay specs.

 

[dualazmak]

Just amazing, I deeply thank you for your hard work and great efforts!

 

[mash]

Great work!

Not to be greedy......but, one thing that you might want to consider is adding a post on "How to Read Subwoofer Measurements". Take one set of measurements and put a paragraph under each graph explaining what it is showing, why its important and what you want to look for in a "good" subwoofer. You do this on your first post to a certain extent but some additional detail would be greatly appreciated. I could follow most of the charts but there were a few that had me scratching my head wondering what to look for.

 

[SSS]

Interesting great work. For me the outcome is that subwoofers have very high distortion and many of them bad step response. So for what useful?

 

[Boxermotor]

I knew that if Amir posted this in his Reviews section that it had to be good - and it didn't disappoint! This was such a deep dive with so much to absorb that when I finally go to the end I had to remind myself that I wasn't living in my mom's basement - high nerd factor .

Heading back to the top for a re-read...

 

[TheHighContemplator]

Incredible effort and results from the hard work. Cheers! Makes me think the KH 750 + KH 310A combo would be a perfect for a medium sized room for music listening.

I've been very interested in the L26RO4Y driver for a long time, with it being used in the Linkwitz open baffle speakers and the Kingro4y MKIII DIY kit 3-way sealed speaker. This helps me understand why it gets used and why the people who own them really love them..

Cheers!

 

[noel_fs]

so many graphs is this heaven?

 

[Nuyes]

Great work!

Not to be greedy......but, one thing that you might want to consider is adding a post on "How to Read Subwoofer Measurements". Take one set of measurements and put a paragraph under each graph explaining what it is showing, why its important and what you want to look for in a "good" subwoofer. You do this on your first post to a certain extent but some additional detail would be greatly appreciated. I could follow most of the charts but there were a few that had me scratching my head wondering what to look for.

Exactly!

First, if I want to do a detailed comparison with other reviewers' data, I probably should have adopted CEA-2010-A.

However, I couldn't even start this project without the help of members of the Korean audio community, so I discussed the whole process with them (or some of them).

We ended up adopting 2010-B, focusing on the various usability aspects of the product.

It would have been great to measure every case like Erin did, but we didn't have enough time, money, and batteries.

Collecting nine subwoofers from scattered members, dragging them out to a vacant lot with no reflections, and then measuring them is not an easy task.
Especially in a country with densely populated private residences like South Korea.


So we had to venture out, and I had to leave everything behind to give back to the members who had supported us so generously.

That's what these data are.



I tried to visualize almost all of the data I could get with the Klippel TRF module, including the TBM module (CEA-2010B).

Most measuring instruments are not made for internet reviewers like me.

So to process the data, starting with learning how to use the TBM module, I needed to know more than I already had, and I studied.

Trimming data to a consistent standard, or even to something that looks good, is both enjoyable and painful.
Especially when I'm the first to do it.
I have to figure everything out on my own.


In particular, the various peak value plots (dB, Voltage..etc) and ETC plots are all processed from my experience and intuition.

That was a long rant...
It would be very complicated and difficult to explain all of this with any kind of standard.

But nevertheless, if enough people want it, I'll try.

All I can do is recognize my own limitations and try to provide as much data in as many different forms as possible, with objective and consistent criteria.
Because as long as you understand the measurement process, how the data was obtained, and what the plots show, you can take it in your own way.

 

[DanielT]

Interesting great work. For me the outcome is that subwoofers have very high distortion and many of them bad step response. So for what useful?

We are not so sensitive to distortion in the sub-bass area. But okay sooner or later the distortion becomes audible. It is very individual how one perceives or experiences distortion. You have to listen to find out where your personal acceptable distortion limit is.

It is possible to get better at detecting distortion. If you feel like getting good at it, that is.