Equipment: Alpine DVA-9861, IXOS Optical, RCA’s, and wires, Alpine PXA-H701, and an ARC AUDIO 2500 XXK.
First impression: When you first look at the subwoofer the first word that comes to mind is beast. It is a man's man's sub. There is nothing dainty or delicate about this sub. It is very well made design with some over the top features. The first thing you notice is the surround, it is one of the stiffest I have ever encountered. The cone is the normal concave poly-pro design. The terminals are push type, however the tinsel leads are not sewn into the spider
They put little covers for slap protection though. The basket is stamped. The magnet is large and intimidating. The most eye catching design is the cooling vent below the spider on the basket. You can see through to the VC. This is another sub that looks like it could go for a $100 more.
Tuning and Installation: I wired the single 2-ohm version the only way you can. I am running the power from one channel on my 2500 for 525 watts output to the sub woofer. The speaker is enclosed in a 0.5 cubic foot, sealed MDF enclosure. The test box is sitting in my front passenger floor board. The box was damped on the mounting surface with B-Quiet Ultimate. The crossover on the H701 was set at 50 Hz. My mid-bass is very capable all the way down to 50 Hz, so why not let them do their job. The subwoofer level control was then blended to my usual reference level.
Listening: For listening material I went to my SQ disc wallet. Read above for what I have. In the days leading up the to Evaluation there were 35 hours of break in time. Prior to listening I put a 40 Hz tone on the sub for 20 minutes to warm it up. I spent over 2 hours of listening to form my opinion. For this test I will give examples of tracks from a few genres.
For Classical I took a trip through my John Williams Greatest Hits CD. There are quite a few heavy drum and low string bass movements in there. One thing that I noticed is there is some coloration on heavy string passages. It sounded a little heavy handed at times. I would have liked for it to be a little lighter on attacks.
For Hip Hop I have a few. When I played "Headsprung" by LL Cool J it pounded away like a happy little jack hammer asking for more. For "Born to Reign" by Will Smith it had nice extension as well. The SPL was very nice!!
For Jazz / R&B I like great bass guitar and nice snappy drum hits. Ramsey Lewis's "People Make the World Go 'Round" has very nice extended low electric bass. It sounded very life-like and imaged well with the lower midbass. Sade's "Lover's Rock" sounded nice and exhibited good control.
For Rock I look for nice bass guitar and drum as well. Heart's "Straight On" is a beautiful drum track example. The sub got a great work out and accented the lower midbass nicely. Breaking Benjamin's "Breakdown" has a nice low growl from the electric bass as well as some nice drum hits. The fullness that this track asks for was well executed.
For examples of music below 30 Hz I listened to Limp Bizkit's "Behind Blue Eyes", "The Vikings" from Pomp and Pipes!, Alicia Keys' "Piano & I", and the famous "Jurassic Lunch" from The Great Fantasy Adventure Album. The SS82 was able to give me loads of music with great authority. High marks!
I listened to the above tracks on the 9KV.3, so I want to reiterate that to keep an even keel I will use all of the same tracks for the remainder of the Challenge.
After listening I have come to the following conclusion; the SS82 is an excellent sub. It is very versatile, able to play all genres of music. It doesnt play all genre's equally well, but the high marks in some areas make up for the low marks in other areas.
So did I find the sub for my front stage? I don’t know on this one either. I want the sub that does it all. This sub was excellent, not perfect. Overall awesome sub with some minor musical imperfections.
