Changed my mind on subwoofers for music

[harley .guy07]

For the longest time now I have been of the opinion that subwoofers for music only cause too many problems to use for two channel listening. I thought that a subwoofer would smear the image and over presentation of the music. But with me not ready to move to larger floorstanders yet I needed to augment the low end of my Dyns since my new house has a listening room roughly twice the size of my last room. I could think none other than a subwoofer to do this, and some of you guys use them as well to augment smaller speakers or you Magnepan owners that need to add the few last octaves to your system. Well over the last few days I have been working on a new project to add some much needed low end to my system. I first wanted a Martin Logan Dynamo after hearing from people that they are very good for music, in fact some of you guys use one and I almost got one on Ebay last week when I discovered the evil side of Ebay but I won't get into that again. So I went on with life and the other day I got the Christmas add email from Parts Express and they had subwoofer DIY packages on sale, you buy the woofer and they will throw in the Knock down enclosure for half off, they also had some of their plate amps on sale very cheap so I thought what the heck I will give the sub thing another shot. I order the Dayton 8" HO subwoofer Knock-down enclosure package and a Yung 300 watt plate amp. I also got 2 pounds of poly stuff and speaker spikes and all the other stuff needed to finish it. All in all it came to a little over $300 for all of it, not bad for something that I just wanted to try to see how it worked. Over the last few days I have been working on the sub and got the enclosure put together, the Knock down enclosures that Parts Express sells are first rate, they have more bracing than any retail sub I have ever seen. I put a good sanding and paint job on the enclosure and last night i got the poly fill installed and put the woofer and plate amp in place. After setting it in the right spot and playing with the 3 volume, crossover, and phase knobs I got everything balanced and blended. All I can say is wow, they have came a long way with driver technology since my days in car audio and this thing shows it. It is not even starting to get broke in yet and it is putting out very tight bass and is easily keeping up with the Dyns speed wise. I know most people would think an 8" subwoofer would be too small to be usable but this thing is built well enough that that does not matter and the driver is one of the best I have heard for music in a sub. There is no smearing of the image or soundstage, there is no issues blending with the Dyns. So far I am very happy that I took a chance and tried this, I think I have changed my views on subwoofers for music. If they are set up properly and dialed into the system they can be a very good addition in order to get you the last few octaves of bass. I tested the sub and while the bass is very tight and controlled it hits 25 hertz without issue and probably lower which is surprising for an 8. here is a picture of it setting next to one of the Dyns