NHT SW12 review (1 Viewer)

[Jack Gilvey]

Ed Mullen doesn't pimp himself enough here, so I'll point out that he's got another great review up over at Secrets:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...er-3-2005.html

Looks like an ok performer, not the top of the class...but it sure is pretty.

 

[Mike^S]

Yup, I read it the day it came out. I wonder what happened to his Polk 505 review.

 

[Craig Chase]

Ed's reviews just keep getting more informative. If he ever stops, it would be a HUGE loss.

 

[Ilkka R]

Great review Ed! Too bad that the subwoofer itself wasn't very interesting... Still waiting for that ACI Maestro.

 

[Mark Russ]

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[Edward J M]

Thanks for the props, guys - pimping isn't my style, but I do very much appreciate your kind words.

While the SW12 wasn't the absolute best performer I've tested, it did better than average down deep, and really raised my eyebrows in the 50-80 Hz region.

This is a stout woofer, and actually this sub is begging for dual 3" ports and a slightly larger enclosure to accomodate the longer vent length.

Regardless, I think we have to keep in mind that the priorities and perspectives of readers will vary greatly. While many of us place a premium on performance, others will place the same premium on things like looks/WAF, size, weight, certain features, etc. Overall, I think the SW12 does a LOT of things very well considering its relatively small size and weight.

Oh, and I think Illka was going to publish some waterfall charts for Blade II. That would be good timing for this report.


We published a bunch of Polk stuff recently, so JJ is simply waiting a bit to publish the 505 review to balance things out some. Nothing more insidious than that - sorry the gestation period is really long on that particular review.

 

[terence]

Ed great job as always!



I have been waiting on see this one ploted, cannot wait!

 

[MikeNg]

Ed, great review.

I wish I would see the level of detail in reviews from mag's I have to PAY for.

Mike

 

[Ilkka R]

Check the waterfall thread. It's there!

 

[Edward J M]

I write my reviews the way I would want to see a review written if I were shopping for a subwoofer.

There is so much BS, misleading information, and inconsistent test formats and methods out there, we don't know what to believe half the time as potential consumers.

Tom Nousaine said it best - how flat, deep, clean, linear, and loud defines a subwoofer's performance - all the rest pretty much falls into place after that.

 

[Edward J M]

You could also repost them in this thread (if HTF allows it) since you already have them uploaded to your website. I'll have to use your waterfall charts in future reviews - with credit of course.

They look really great Ilkka - a huge amount of work and they are totally awesome. We knew all along Blade II was hot - lots of information in the 15-25 Hz region.

Not a ton of pink (except in the House of Pain), but a LOT of dark red spread out over a wide bandwidth.

Notice House of Pain is mostly pink along the 50 Hz region - right where the SW12 really excels at playing loud/clean. That's why it impressed me so much on that scene.

I also like that nice continuous 22 Hz line as the Blood Donation room scene builds to a climax.

Thanks again, Ilkka - you'll have to train me on how to generate these - I think they really add value to the review - correlating subjective impressions with the objective waterfall chart.

Ed

 

[Ilkka R]

Blade II (PAL R2 DTS 6.1 Discrete)

Jared Enters Stairwell


Blood Donation Room


First shootout


Second shootout


Motorcycle Crash


Extended Fight Scene


Door opens


House Of Pain


Copyright Ilkka R

 

[Ilkka R]

Here they are! This was kinda difficult movie to plot, because first of all, it's so freaking dark! I had to adjust gamma and brightness of those screens so you would see anything. Second, there is a massive amount of bass played all the time, so picking up the good screen spots was a very difficult job. Hope you like it. Also I only plotted those few scenes from the beginning. There are much more... I posted one extra chart in the original waterfall thread.

Doing these is not very hard, it just takes a lot of time if you want to do it properly!