 |
|
---CONCLUSIONS---
In a nutshell, I couldn't be happier with my choice. Since I built it myself, it looks exactly the way I wanted my new subwoofer to look.
The
bass is smooth, clear and deep. Testing with the Avia setup DVD, it had no
problems reaching the lowest bass on the sweep tones (20Hz) with only a 2db
drop, not noticeable to my ears. With my computer's 
tone
generator I could feel it moving down to 14Hz. It's excellent for classical
music. All of my CDs and music DVDs sound better. I used to turn down the bass
to get rid of the mushy sound and get clearer midrange and high frequencies. Now
I find myself turning it up. Once again, at the risk of being repetitive,
the bass is solid, clear and quick. I've been driving it with a Carver M-400
cube amp at 500 watts. As a test, I connected my center channel amp, a PS Audio
- PS Model Two to the Shiva. I used only the amp's left channel at about 50
watts and the Shiva still sounded great. I know, it's a great amp and can do 150
watts in mono, but the point is that the Shiva was very efficient. You could
easily drive it with a cheap 100 watt amp or a good 40 watt amp and still get
all the dynamic headroom most people would want. I can't tell you how much it
did for Roy Orbison's 'Black and White Night' DVD. A word of
caution, though. DVD movies like U-571 will likely shake your listening room
quite a bit. I spent quite a while chasing down rattles and buzzes and using
cotton, electrical tape and double sided tape on many of our knick knacks.
Sitting on my couch listening to movies or music, I can feel the bass through
the floor, through the couch or pounding on my chest, depending on what I'm
listening to.
If you decide to build one yourself, contact Adire Audio and I'm sure they'll help you with any questions you may have. A quick tally of my cost for this project, including paint and stain, and it looks like I've got about $210 tied up in my new subwoofer. It just doesn't get any better than this.
GTX_SlotCar (Gary DeRoy)
August 26, 2001
