After my last blog on the rather lovely Advance Paris X-CD9 Compact Disc spinner, I found myself with an afternoon to kill and the urge to experiment. I had already setup the aforementioned valve CD player in the demo room, which I partnered with the equally delightful Advance Paris X-i75 amplifier and some rather great sounding Acoustic Energy AE500 loudspeakers sat upon the visually striking Solid Steel SS6 speaker stands. What happened next took my breath away!

I added two REL T5x subwoofers just to see what would happen…

Pushing Boundaries

I am all for trying to push the boundaries of performance versus cash outlay when choosing a hi-fi system. This little experiment involves the underused practice of installing double subs. Yes! You read that right! Two subs… one for the bass on the left channel and one for the bass on the right channel.

Hocus Pocus

Now the boffins at REL will feed you all sorts of scientific malarkey about pressuring the room and how the addition of double subwoofers will not only improve the deep bass but will also make the mid band open up and spookily will even make that top end sound sweeter and more succinctly detailed. I never used to believe this hocus pocus witchcraftery, but recently I have seen the light and become a bit of a convert.

It’s all down to fixing what’s going on down low so that all the harmonics are able to rise.

Stage Right Rel T5x and Acoustic energy ae500

Get The Balance Right

Experimentation with positioning was important. With the subs too far apart and close to the corners of the room the bass was all woolly and indistinct with a hole in the middle. With the subs placed near to and just to the outside of the speakers the soundstage really snapped into life. Careful dialling in of the crossover point and volume was necessary too, but it didn’t take too long to find the ideal settings to seamlessly integrate with the AE500.

Plugs And Wires

Wiring this system was simple. The REL subwoofers are supplied with all the necessary cables. The yellow and red cables are twisted together and connect in to the positive binding post and the black cable connects to the negative binding post. This process is repeated for the other channel. The left and right speakers are plugged in to the binding posts with the banana plugs on the ends of the speaker cables. The picture below will make this clear!

How to wire up two subwoofers at the same time

The First Rule Of Double Sub Club

Rule number one when using subwoofers for music replay in a stereo system is that they absolutely must be fed a signal from the loudspeaker outputs of the amplifier. If this does not happen then subs and speakers will be getting their signal from different places and will be significantly out of phase with each other to the degree that they will never be able to provide a cohesive signal.

Everything I played on this lovely little system sounded amazing!

REL are right. The little details at the top end become sweeter and more extended and are easier to hear against the background. The mid band becomes deeper and wider almost like the walls of the demo room are not there and music comes at you from three dimensional space.

Semi Permeable Men-Brain

The album that astounded me the most on the double sub system was the first album by Prog rock monsters, Diagonal. Released in 2006 this one is the first of four albums all of which merit investigation.

Information about Diagonal is hard to come by. They don’t seem to have a website and their Facebook page just directs you to their record company’s page on Bandcamp. Spotify’s “About” box simply says, “English Progressive Rock/Psych band – originally from Brighton”. Google hits are all about the line joining the opposite corners of a rectangle or the “diagonal band of Broca”, which Wikipedia says is “one of the basal forebrain structures that are derived from the ventral telencephalon during development”. Not very helpful.

Diagonal....look 'em up they are wonderful

The song that benefited the most from this system set up was the first track, intriguingly titled Semi Permeable Men-Brain, a ten minute long 21st century schizoid jerk off apocalypse with more weird time signature changes than even the Guards Of Magog could summon down from the skies. This track is a no compromise full on prog/psyche wig out of the highest quality and this system made it sound so huge that you could just fall in to the soundstage and fly away!

The Bit At The End

As you can tell I kinda quite like this system and I think that you might too. If your interest has been piqued even just a tiny bit then pop in or give us a call and arrange a listen for yourself. The kettle is always on and we usually have biscuits too!