by Nyal Mellor
January 22, 2012
JL Audio, the manufacturer of the superb Fathom F110, F112, F113, F212 and Gotham subwoofers showed their new E112 subwoofer at CES. I have seen this sub before, at CI Expo, a custom integrator event that was held in Berkeley this year. But this is the first time I had my camera with me to take some photos!

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by Nyal Mellor
May 13, 2011
Recently I have become aware of a new class of product: two channel amplifiers WITH bass management AND room correction. Why is this cool? Well until this new class of products came out the only way to do this type of thing was with a home theater receiver or a separate preamplifier such as a DEQX or TacT and a power amplifier. Two channel systems benefit just as much from subwoofers and equalization as home theater systems. Many two channel speakers, even high end ones, cannot reproduce low bass below say 30-40Hz with low distortion. A JL Audio F112 can play down to 19Hz at a -3dB point! Using subwoofers also allows for cunning room mode cancellation and avoidance of speaker boundary interference.

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by Nyal Mellor
February 25, 2011
Soundstage Network have published a photographic tour of the JL Audio facilities in Miramar, Florida. JL Audio make nearly all parts of their fabulous home audio subwoofers in house and have fanatical attention to detail, as can be seen from the shots taken in different parts of their factory.
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by Nyal Mellor
February 16, 2011
Velodyne announced their replacement for their premium Digital Drive subwoofer line towards the tail end of last year. The original Digital Drive subwoofers are now getting a bit long in the tooth and with the recent barnstorming entrance of JL Audio into the home subwoofer market an update was definitely required.
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by Nyal Mellor
October 29, 2010
This article continues the theme of the last two blog postings in whic we outlined some ways in which subwoofers can be used to improve sound quality. Last week's installment 'Using Subwoofers to Improve Sound Quality: Part 2 Room Modes' outlined a technique whereby two subwoofers are positioned within a room to destructively drive a particular room mode, nullifying its frequency response peak and time domain ringing. This week we introduce the Welti / Devantier and Geddes multi-sub methodologies. Both involve using multiple subwoofers as a way to smooth bass response and reduce the impact of modal resonances.
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by Nyal Mellor
October 26, 2010
Room modes are caused by perfect constructive interference between a sound wave traveling between two boundaries. This article provides a high level overview of room modes and their impact on sound quality. Two examples of how to use subwoofers to reduce the impact of these modes on sound quality are explained - placing the subwoofer in a pressure null and destructively driving a mode with two subwoofers.
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by Nyal Mellor
October 19, 2010
Deep nulls in the frequency response in the bass region can be caused by phase cancellation between the direct sound wave from a sound producing device and the indirect sound wave that has reflected from a nearby boundary such as the floor, ceiling or walls. This phenomenon is called speaker boundary interference or SBIR for short. This article introduces SBIR and explains how these deep nulls can be ameliorated through use of a subwoofer.
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