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Doing the bass(ics) right
Velodyne subwoofing.
By Max Christoffersen
November 2000
Velodyne CT 150 powered subwoofer. $2399
Ka-boom!
It was Saving Private Ryan that did it. My last sub died on the beaches of Normandy.
Another casualty of the phenomenal bass output on the DVD of SPR. I couldn't see the smoke but the smell of burnt electronics was everywhere. Yep, fried alive and died. Voice coils like toast and no hope for the amp either. I now had a BIG paper weight.
So, it's been a while between subs at my place. And I gotta say, I haven't really missed it.
Until now.
A Velodyne CT 150 recently joined the line-up of gear and you could see the look of fear on the importers face as he packed it up..."you did what to your last sub?"
It was hard not to feel a little like Sid from Toy Story - only I abuse subs to breaking point. Other subs were greatly relieved they weren't given the 'pleasure' of a demo at Max's place ("he tortures subwoofers just for fun!!")
Anyway, here we go again. Another sub in the house and time to see if it could take the heat better than the last one.
Introducing in the red corner the Velodyne CT 150, the top of the entry-level line of Velodyne's extensive range with a 15" driver and 250 watt amp. Big box, big driver.
On face value it seems nothing special. Outwardly it looks 'ordinary' with a vinyl cabinet finish with rounded edges and a driver that looks more shiny than the trad flat-coated paper of their up-market models. It may look basic on the outside, but in performance, it's far from cheap. And that was made plain about 10 seconds after turning it on.
To start, I fed this baby a dedicated bass test signal (the 35 Hz tone from the Yamaha A-1 bass test tone generator) lit the fuse and stood back. And lighting this one had the house joints, doors, windows and cracks shaking (house builders take note: if you want to find loose joints at your new place the CT 150 is a great tool to use) to downright dangerous levels.
Even the girls in the house wanted to know what the hell was going on down there as windows in the lounge some 40 feet away were rattling and the door was moving violently and uncontrollably.
"Ohh nothing, just doing some testing..."
"Well the sooner it's gone the better."
Aaahh, now that was high praise. I was on to something if the girls hated this one. The teenage son said 'sweeet! How much?' and the testing continued with a wide grin.
In short this thing rocked the house - more so than any other sub I've tried. The output was staggering and was really moving things around. There is real extension going on here and you can feel it.
But juvenile fun with subs is one thing, making it work well and somewhat 'transparently' in a system is another.
Bass is one of the great parts of modern film and music.
Done right it really can make the difference between believability and fiction. Done wrong and you get the boom-bada-boom thing that is more irritating than illuminating. Doing it right takes a lot of sound engineering and a bit of effort at home (and a bit of restraint) unless you are lucky with room placement, which can be a matter of inches between somewhere that works and somewhere that doesn't.
The Velodyne also has a bypass switch meaning you can run the speaker yourself with your own external crossover. And an abundance of speaker/amp protection devices (to ward off people like me) is included along with auto power on; phase control; and Velodyne's patented Servo Current Sensor designed to minimise distortion. Personally, I prefer front mounted volume/on-off controls, but that's splitting hairs.
Moving the sub into the corner where the last one died and it seemed to work best with a crossover point at 40 Hz and volume at about 10 o'clock and me sitting in the office!
Putting on some old faithful test discs including Chris Isaak, Sarah McLachlin, Eric Johnson and DVDs of The Haunting and Toy Story 2 confirmed what the tests had suggested: the bass output is staggering - full bodied with plenty of gut kicking substance. But be warned, The Haunting is not for the faint-hearted - it's dangerous (read SPR territory) and Toy Story 2 intro is surprisingly powerful.
It was now time to bring out the big guns. In my arsenal of test components is an AudioControl Phase Coupled Activator. It's a bass restoration device; in short it takes in the bass signal, digitises it and sends out the original signal and a frequency half it's input - so if fed a 40Hz signal it sends a 40Hz and 20Hz bass tone to the cone.
Hooking up the PCA to the Velo was the final piece of the puzzle - could the Velodyne handle true sub-bass? Not the wimpy 50-60Hz tones that even a midi system can do. I mean genuine, low-end, flap-the-jeans-on-your-leg-hit-you-in-the-gut-and-bowl-you-over-on your-ass SUB-bass. I mean live bass - PA bass.
Short answer: Hell yes!! When you have heard sub-bass like this you can never talk about subwoofing in the same terms again - most subs in fact do mid-woofing by comparison. Moving air at this level moves everything with it. And as the final test - it passed the Max-Torture Test without once shutting down or showing signs of strain!
Give it full points for surviving at all. And given I'm bassless again I'm going to miss this Velodyne - it is worthy of the name and a genuine sub-woofer!
And as smugly satisfying as this sub's performance was, you have to wonder what Velodyne's other subs higher up the pecking order can do.
Watch this space.
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