Review: Velodyne SC-600 Subwoofers and SC-602 Amp Page 3

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PERFORMANCE

Fascinating as all of this technical inquiry was (for me, at least), it ultimately didn't matter. As I've found in the past - In my listening room and others - simply putting two subwoofers in the corners does so much to improve your bass performance that EQ often isn't all that necessary.

I noticed the benefit of the dual subs most on music with melodic, wide-ranging bass lines, such as Steely Dan's "Aja," jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine's "Salt Song," and even Kiss's classic (to my ears, at least) "Cold Gin." No notes in these bass lines particularly stood out - except when the bassists approached their instruments' lowest note, the 41-Hz low E, which corresponded with my room's most pronounced resonance. The evenness of the bass response really helped get these tunes grooving; "Aja" sounded better than I've ever heard it with one sub, Velodyne's own DD-15 excepted. (The DD-15 has an SMS-1 built in.) 

Subwoofers are at their most efficient when placed in the corner of a room - and the dual corner-placed 12-inchers pumped out devastating lows when I played my bass torture tests from DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The impact of Senator Amidala's spaceship/yacht blowing up at the beginning of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones hit me with almost as much punch as I've heard from bulky supersubs like the SVS PB-12 Plus.

Like many other Velodyne subs, the SC-600 system comes with a remote control that accesses four EQ presets: Jazz/Classical (the "flat" setting, which is the one I used most), R&B/Rock, Movies, and Games. The only one besides Jazz/Classical that I found useful (for my taste, at least) was Movies, which gives the deep bass a few dB more kick. Personally, I'm a big believer in getting the sound right and leaving it that way, but the Movies mode was handy for getting a little extra oomph when I wanted it.

BOTTOM LINE

I can't say the SC-600 system gave me everything I hoped for; its auto EQ isn't powerful enough to achieve the nearly perfect bass response I've gotten using multiple subs with separate equalizers. But it's something the home theater industry has needed for a long time: a reasonably priced, easy-to-install dual-subwoofer package that can be completely hidden from view. 

 

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