Page 1 of Subwoofer bargain - £199 sub for £80 odd

Right, some may say this should be in the hardware forum, but this is bargain, so here we go:
If you`re in the market for a cheap subwoofer, get a copy of the April What Hi. The Richer Sounds ad has the Celestion S80 for £79.95 (usual Richer price (i.e. not the "original selling price") £199 - as seen on the website).
Just got one for myself - the sales staff hadn`t seen the offer yet, and nearly had a heart attack.

It`s not going to beat the big boys, but after a short play it`s certainly up to the job, is nicely made and comes in either black or dark apple (a mid brown - quite nice). Not too huge - just under 18" square, with 100W RMS amp. Downward firing driver, twin ports. Auto standby, variable phase adjustand crossover frequency, low and high level inputs. Unfortunately spring clips for speaker cables in and out should you want to run it that way.

It`s the spring clips that is the killing point, I cna`t put any decent cables or banana plugs in it.

Do you want to run your speakers through it, then? I`m just running it on the subwoofer line out from my av amp, so I can avoid the spring clips.

Means that the amp is doing the crossover work when not using DD5.1 or DTS soundtrack (as the .1 channel will just go straight to the sub then). As I`m using the system for mainly HT, this isn`t a problem to me.

Has anybody seen a review of this amp so I can compare it to some others that I have been looking at?

No, I searched for a while to find something on this sub - only real mention was someone in the home cinema forum who had bought it from Richer (at full £199 price) after comparing with the Paradigm PDR10 and PS1000. It will take me a week or so to get it settled in to have some decent comments on it, but initial impressions are good.

Did you buy it from one of the shops, and if so which one. The one near me never has stock of anything!

Rich - or anyone,

How much of a difference would a seperate subwoofer make to my system?

My dvd player is sending the DD5.1 signals to the 5.1 ch. inputs on the back of my technics hi-fi. The front speakers have built in subwoofers to provide the .1. Would I see a big improvement in the quality of the sound produced if I went for a seperate sub? Money is tight at the moment but if this sub is a steal at £80 then I`m willing to go into further dept to pay for it :)

My room is quite small also.

[EDIT] - Rich you say its a 18" square, RS have its dimensions as 370mmH x 320mmW x 320mmD. Could you confirm which is correct. The RS dimensions are perfect for where I want to put it, should I decide to go for it.

cheers
r8sso

PS. Do RS have a 14 day cooling off period if I decide I dont want?

This item was edited on Friday, 15th March 2002, 15:45

R8sso:

The dimensions ARE 320W x 320D x 350H - I read the dimensions off the box before (must be the dimensions of the packaging too!)

Re will it make a difference - here`s a quick test if you have Jurassic Park 3. On the intro, when the Amblin logo comes up, and you get the ripple shake, do you get a deep THUMP at the same time?

By "The front speakers have built in subwoofers to provide the .1", do you mean the speakers have 2 drive units - a big one (woofer) and a small one (tweeter)? If so, then I`d say yes, it will make a difference - a sub woofer is different beast entirely. Have a look in your manual, and see what the quoted frequency response is. The quoted frequency response of this sub is down to 35Hz - in a room, you will usually find it ends up going lower than that. Much lower than the majority of full range speakers.

I have a Yammy A5 AV amp, with Mission M71 speakers - I thought they were quite good at handling bass, but this has made a massive difference. I think it has also opened up the sound of the whole system, as the fronts now only handle the top to mid range frequencies.

Re which Richer branch - Watford - I have always found the staff there to be absolutely excellent. Internet site has it as £199.

I called them up, and they said they had one in, so I bombed over the next morning, forgetting they don`t open til 12. I turned up at around 10:20 am, and they were unloading a massive delivery - they said they`d see what they could find (turned out I thought they had it in stock, in fact it was coming in on that delivery). I offered to help unload (rather than sit in the car), and that turned it - out one popped in 5 minutes, and they fired up the tills specially for me.

Cooling off - yes, they mentioned that when I called them, saying I wasn`t sure about how good it was, or how it would go in my system.

HTH, all!

This item was edited on Friday, 15th March 2002, 19:09

Do I take it you`re not planning on building one now Richard? Looks like you got a bargain there, well spotted.

Dave

r8ss0_2

Not sure if you have the same technics stereo as me but I am running a Wharfdale M5 dvd connected to the DD5.1 inputs on the back of my Technics SA-EH760.

I too was worried whether it was worth my while purchasing a subwoofer as the speakers for the technics stereo are tri-wired and gave very good bass already.

However when I managed to pick up an Eltax sub at a bargin price for my local technics/panasonic shop I couldn`t resist. I need not of worried, the sub has made all the difference, not only to watching movies, but also to listening to music/cd`s.

The sub gives an amazing realism when watching movies, its almost as if you can`t hear the sub but more feel it, myself and everyone who has watched a movie in my house all agree that a sub makes the whole experience more impressive.

So I would say go for it, although I can`t recommend the above Sub as I have no experience of it, I would definately say a Sub is worth the money, with my set up anyways.

Hope this may have helped, let us know what you decide.

Leeder

This item was edited on Friday, 15th March 2002, 18:04