Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, "Keith" <keith@k...> wrote:
> Ed,
> 
> I am impressed with the Logitech and have not heard any distortion
> from it yet, and it goes pretty loud.  The reason I chose it was 
that
> it uses a sub-woofer which, while a little smaller than the Yamaha
> one, is claimed to be a proper 6th order design.  I spent a lot of
> time looking at speaker design for Hi-Fi a while ago and decided 
that
> a well designed sub-woofer can give seriously good bass.  It is what
> Bose have been using for years (and I thought they had patents on 
some
> designs).  I am dubious as to the design pedigree of some of the
> keyboard speaker enclosures.
> 
> Yesterday at the end of my drum lesson I cranked up the volume and 
let
> the drum teacher have a play and he seemed impressed, particulalry
> with the floor tom sound (Room1 Lo).  Still no distortion.
> 
> There is a sub-woofer adjustment knob on the wired remote which is
> useful because in my small room the bass resonates a bit if it is
> turned up too far.  It helps to balance out the midrange and bass 
as well.
> 
> I cannot yet compare with a keyboard amp but when I get chance I am
> hoping to get round to meeting John Allsop who is local and has the
> Behringer KX1200.  I was planning on buying one of those but it got
> the thumbs down from 'er indoors when she saw a picture and the
> dimensions!  The Logitech is also half the price.

Keith,

It sounds impressive for computer-system performance. Bose holds the 
patent on dual-chamber 6th-order design. Though this design is said 
to increase efficiency and decrease audible distortion, it apparently 
is a bitch to construct and puts the driver at risk for damage unless 
the build quality is extraordinary or some serious means of negating 
the limits on driver excursion enter into it. I've never heard a 
reputedly high-quality Bose subwoofer in action, but the scuttle is 
that Bose's transient performance isn't too good, and the overall 
effect is more suited to something like sound reinforcement than 
accurate musical reproduction. I've been a high-end audio enthusiast 
for a long time--listening and reading, anyway--and Bose usually gets 
short shrift, if any, in the press. But there apparently isn't a 
subwoofer design in existence that doesn't have its drawbacks--the 
most obvious being a tradeoff between punchy and deep. Of course, if 
money and size are no objects, the odds of a more complete success go 
up considerably, but who has the money or the space? I suspect that 
many of the pro audio designs are maximized to protect the elements 
from heavy abuse rather than to optimize fidelity. Personally, I 
don't like boomy and indistinct; I like my toms and kick to have snap 
and at least a reasonable frequency response. A home theater 
subwoofer that doesn't have to meet the needs of critical music 
appreciation could easily thrive on high efficiency and a bottom end 
of 40Hz or so, even if it really plays only one note. Given that 
dipoles have become an important part of the THX home theater 
environment, especially in the surround channels, a subwoofer of that 
type might be right at home. Since E-drum kicks and toms aren't note-
specific either, ballpark accuracy in the bass frequencies could 
suffice there as well, as long as the elements were able to handle 
the huge demands placed on them.

Ed