Internet reviews are a really good way to identify some of the best, most consistently good-value products in almost any hobby or field. If you look at this sub, you would think there are only a dozen brands in the entire hardware industry (I even made a meme about it).
There is so much great gear out there that you will never find reading reviews and forums. Not that there’s anything wrong with LS50’s and Schiit and Topping and SVS and Monoprice. But I think we would all do ourselves a favor to try to listen to a wide array of equipment, especially used equipment, which is often fantastic and worth 10x its cost in sound quality.
The audio subs on here do love to only recommend certain brands and, worse yet, parrot opinions they’ve picked up second-hand without any real world experience or otherwise good reason for doing so. Case in point, I recently picked up a 12” REL home theater sub that was on sale and basically every audio sub considers REL overpriced and dramatically worse than SVS, Rhythmik, Hsu, PSA, which may be true at the MSRP, but on sale I’ve been extremely pleased with it. Sounds drastically better than the Bic F12 it replaced and shakes the whole house if I want it to; don’t even need two like the majority of the home theater sub will tell you, at least not in a living room the size of mine.
Fact is, if you’re buying dedicated bookshelf speakers and an amp in this day and age instead of a soundbar or Bluetooth speaker, you’re already way ahead of the pack, whether that’s with Klipsch stuff you picked up at Best Buy on Black Friday or Sonus Fabers or Focals you auditioned at a showroom of a hifi dealer first.
I do think REL is overpriced, doesn’t have anything to do with what people here say, but more based on my understanding of speaker design. I don’t see any DSP in their subs which really puts it off my list of ever considering, and their is some data out there to show they don’t quite keep up with some cheaper options out there. For the cost you should really be getting DSP, which is damn near essential for actual good bass, I don’t mean “this sounds good to me” I mean actual flat low end without peaks and nulls. I also have a problem with how REL just uses audiophool BS to market their subs, like “fast drivers” and their suggestion of sub stacking seems to show they don’t really understand low frequency reproduction in rooms. It works though, because most people don’t know jack about room acoustics. See below.
This sub rightfully suggests multiple subs not for output, but because multisub is one of the best ways to get good bass response in a room. By placing subs around room the in strategic positions you can excite room modes more evenly leading to a much more even response with much better coverage in the room. REL’s stacking doesn’t work the same at all and it really is just a waste of output.