Posted by hurdy_gurdyman [ 4.229.162.115 ] on March 29, 2006 at 10:19:25:
Just received a pair of Hawthorne Audio Silver Iris Augies. These are 15 inch woofer built by Eminence to augment the Silver Iris coaxial OB speaker. The Augies are designed for OB use and should work great as a bass augmentor for just about any fullrange driver or coaxial.
I hooked up the Augies yesterday afternoon. This morning, while my wife wasn't home, I used Stereophile's test CD's warble tones to balance everything close to where it should be. I'll give a few preliminary impressions, but I'll need to listen a lot more before reaching any solid conclusions. I un-hooked my Cerwin-Vega subwoofer (one 124D 12 inch dual coil woofer in BR box built to manufacturer's specs). I can make a few comparisons between the CV and the Augie, as well as my sonic memory of the multi-driver OB sub I was running a year or so back which consited of a few different woofers I had already, none of which were high quality.
First and most noticable is the tuantness and punch, both of which are superior to the CV subwoofer. Bass has more of that "whomp" and less of that "whoomph" sound (I quess those words are close). The bass is drier with the Augies. It actually sounds like they have less bass than the CV. However, the floor vibes more noticably with the Augies. I can feel the bass better. Both the Augies and the CV were measuring close to the same levels in room, so it's not a matter of one being set louder than the other. Both the CV and the Augies are very flat down to 31.5 Hz, and both are down around 8-10 dB at 25 Hz. Neither are "true" subwoofers in the sense that they don't do a flat 20 Hz. Now I know there is no such thing as "fast" bass, but the Augies definitely have a tighter, quicker sound that matches the SI 15 OB better than the CV. I can't say yet which bass augmenter will be best suited for movie use (the CV rumbles well for this), but I can say the Augies are much more impressive on music, sounding more natural.
The Augies are handling the bass below where the SI's seem to roll off naturally at around 45-50 Hz and go strong and flat down to 31.5 hz and is down close to 10 dB at 30 Hz. They don't seem to do anything to degrade the sound of the Augies (at least I haven't heard anything so far.
I'm driving the Augies with an older ss PA amp, a TOA with a preamp. This amp is rated at 120 watts into 4 ohms (mono). The Augies are wired together in parallel. As soon as I figure out how to boost the input gain of my harman-kardon citation 16 amp (200 watts per channel into 8 ohms) I'll hook it up and give a try. The old TOA has some noticable ss hiss coming out of the Augies I could live without nicely.
More after I listen a few days. Need to hear a few impressive action movies now, maybe some pipe organ music, and anything else I have that has lots of deep bass.
Dave 
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