Use to have big speakers: Carver Amazings, large ADS, etc, and moved to a smaller space and replaced with Focal 907Be speakers and needed woofer to finish the project. Purchased several sub woofers at lower cost and was never happy until I got this unit, and am totally happy with this on all music as well as movies.
b

Pretty much everything. It looks good, sounds good, and I don't regret spending extra money on a much better subwoofer considering the years of enjoyment I'm going to get out of my system.

I do have a few complaints, but they have nothing to do with the physical unit. First, Velodyne's overly restrictive policy regarding their 'anti-internet sales.' If you want one of their subs and it isn't in stock (like the SPL II/HGS/DD lines) they WON'T ship the sub to you even if you order it through one of their authorized dealers. What a bunch of hooey. They only deliver to the dealers. This is especially a pain in the butt to people like me who live an hour away from the city. I don't want to drive 2 hours round trip just to pick up my sub. This is an absurd anti-customer policy and is part of why I only gave them a 4 for value. The other reason is that their warranty is a little lean. For a company that purports to stand behind their work and with such a steller reputation, for them to only offer a 2 year warranty left a bad taste in my mouth. It should be 5 years minimum. If you want their sub and want the meager warranty honored, you have to buy the sub from an authorized reseller. Being paranoid about any sort of problem and since I'm not able to buy a second one in the near future, I decided to buy from ASL in Tucson (great customer service) and pay an approved price so that I could be covered by the warranty. I've seen the SPLII for $999 on the internet, but I didn't want to take that risk and get a bad or compromised sub even though in all honesty I doubt that I would get a bum unit.

First things first, this is a review of the SPL II 12" with 1000 watts RMS, not the old SPL 12" that had 750 watts. There is no page dedicated to this new sub yet. Whomever monitors these review pages needs to create that page for this new subwoofer that is replacing the original SPL line. I have been waiting for this sub for a long time. I really wanted the HGS sub, but when I heard the SPL at an audio store in Dallas side by side with the new DD sub, I didn't hear a significant difference, especially one that warranted dropping twice the price just for saying I had the top-o-the-line Velodyne. Velodyne SPL II is an awesome product. I just purchased a 7 channel setup and now I have the .1 to round it out. My setup is a Denon AVR 3803 (which I reviewed last week - love it!) with Infinity towers, a Polk center channel and Polk surrounds. I was already impressed with the 3803 from the minute I turned it on, but now with the sub, my house really and truly sounds like a great theater. My house is adobe so it is solid as a rock (no floating floor) but still the sub shook everything. Of course I ran through some great sub testing materials to see how well it went low and stayed low and loud(The intro battle scene in Lord of the Rings, the new Indiana Jones THX DVD scene out of Raiders of the lost Ark where Indy steals the little gold statue and then gets chased by the rolling rock, then the intro scene from Last Crusade and the train chase, plus a really cool feature on the Indian Jones box set, which has a nice, basic THX system setup for audio and video (even though my reciever isn't THX certified, it still helps). The audio test has a bass tone sequence that goes from 200Hz to 20Hz. Wow!) Then I switched to some TV material that wasn't Dolby Digital/DTS encoded. The reciever switched automatically to DTS Neo 6.1 surround, and that sounded cool from my sub too. I watched a few rap videos that had some very low bass, and it held together pure, strong, and most important, clean. I was in heaven. Now, for those who really want to know the merits of a woofer, pure ground pounding bass isn't all that there is to a sub. The best subs play clean, sweet and musical at all volume levels, and especially for multi-purpose systems such as mine (tv/movie/music) you want a sub that can do musical bass as well as spaceship exploding bass. So I listened to a variety of music. Perfection. At least to my ears and my acoustically imperfect listening room. It hit the notes it should and did it without intruding on the main speakers. It blended very well with the main components and the bass didn't appear localized. I only wonder what it would sound like with a better listening space. I liked the look of the cabinet, and the cone was impressive too. I got the piano black gloss, and that looked sharp. The sub really is small and will fit just about anyplace. Also, it is magnetically shielded (not the 8" version, just the 10"and 12") so I might move it over by my tv.

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Polk 50 watt RMS sub

Great, tight bass. More than enough power Small size.

Poor reliability on my unit. A tad on the expensive size, but worth it (besides the fact that I have problems with it)

Note.. I paid 1500 CDN, not US $. Where do I start... I initially got this sub and it worked flawlessly. I could not believe the bass that this little box can emit. The bass is very very tight. The bass it produces is energetic , and musical. The sub never seem ti drown the speakers as it complement them well, even when using the speakers at it's full range. The speakers I have are the Energy C-4's as mains, and AC-300 as center. I'll be upgrading these to Totem Model 1's and Twin model 1 for the center. The battle scene in The Fellowship of the Ring was amazing with the sub. The rumble was felt throughtout the whole room. This sub can perform in a large 12x30 room. The bass was never tiring. I have to say that I did not know what I was missing until I got the sub. Musically the sub performed better than I expected. As I mentioned, bass was tight, and energetic. Never was I tired of hearing the bass. Unfortunately, I question the manufaturing quality of this sub. After 4 months of normal use, the amp let go. I had it repaired, but on return, the autoswitch is defective. Whenever it auto-on/off, I hear a loud "toc" sound, and the auto-on does not trigger at moderate volumes.. so back to the shop for a second time....Please let me know if you had experienced this problem, I would like to know if it is common. I would rate this 5, but because of it's reliabilty , I would have to rate this 3.5

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Velodyne CHT, Energy, M&K

just the right amount of punch great at low and high volumes good deals are out there

no remote

Having owned two other subs , a Velodyne F1200R and a SVS, this sub is best for my particular taste. The older Velo I owned was great and I loved the remote. When it came time to upgrade, I took many friends' advice and bought a SVS 20-39 CS. Don't get me wrong, it almost blew my windows out of my house, but was absent when I was listening to music or anything below high volume. (I have a sub because of having in-wall speakers and wanting to fill the gap left by their narrow frequency response.) I also have it to blow the windows out when the occasion arises. So, I returned the SVS (they told me I was the first to do so for that particular sub - who knows) and went shopping for another thinking that Velodyne was surely outdone by some of the newer sub makers since the last one I bought in '95. After reviewing almost everyhting out there, the SPL1200 is perfect for me. It is great at low volumes, silky smooth, and tons of power when you need it. I also like the front firing feature so I can put it in a wall enclosure to hide it.

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F1200R SVS 20-39 CS

Power!!! Blue indicator light. Great for H/T Good for music. Small footprint.

None yet.

I really couldn't be more happy with this sub. It does every thing I want it to and more. I prefer it with movies over music but it is still a good musical sub. Fast and tight bass response to down near 20Hz. More power than I will ever need. I have not had this sub above 5 on the (volume) level yet and probally never will. Sometimes with music it seems I have to turn it down a bit because it seems to over ride my mains A bit. If you like hard, loud, tight bass this is a great sub that can be had for less than $900 on line. Give it a try.

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First real sub.

Small footprint. Inconspicous. Thunderous room shaking tight bass. No boomieness. Good looking, not like cheap swapmeet-bought looking Hsu subs. Only tested on few DVD.

Priced at 1200 dollars it's no chump change. Maybe you can pick one up for 800ish like this guy below.

I think previous posters already said what needs to be said. I'll just repeat. Bass has very good kick to it. Suffice to say it has like mondo wattage going into the 12 inch woofer. Package itself is very attractive and compact which is a good plus. It's about half the size of Hsu VTF 3 yet it rivals and sometimes surpasses it but for 1200 bucks I'll build myself my own. Remember however, velodyne's the first and probably the best subwoofer company. I think the holy grail of sub design is to make the sub smallest possible yet at the same time make it sound like it's housed in 600L box like that monstrocity from SVS so called subwoofer authority. Anyway, once again, there you have it. Personally if the prices were all equal I'd pick Velodyne first. It's a very nice sub.

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SVS, Hsu, Velo, NHT, Paradigm.

Small cabinet, powerful

None

I bought this to replace a FSR-15R, because of space constraints. The bass is thunderous, it has 3x the power of the 15R! I love the small size, can put it anywhere. The only thing I wish it did have is a remote.

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FSR-15R, Yamaha sub (I forget the model)

powerful room shaking bass small enclosure 750watts rms 1500watts dynamic

critical placement

I purchased the spl 1200 a year ago and i am very pleased.The 1200 is a small powerful sub that performs as well as any sub on the market after placing it in a good location in your room,however its placement is critical and performance may suffer if its not placed in the best spot.The spl 1200 is a quick punchy sub that actually takes a quite sometime before its actually breaks in.My 1200 actually took about 3 months before breaking in the kevlar sub is very stiff and gets stronger the more its played.After the sub is broken in the bass gets stronger and deeper and the wife and neighbors complain more and more. The spl is a great sub filling my 20x20 room with deep powerful pants leg shaking bass.

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velodyne ct 120 and ct 150 mirage energy

Very small with great output. A amazing piece of audio engineering.

Price and doesnt have that big box feel.

I had the chance to audition one of these subs in my home. This sub is very powerfull, very quick and so so tight. Alot of bass for a small sub. I found this sub to be better suited to music than home theater. Not that the sub wasnt any good at home theater, but i felt that it lacked the warm enveloping feeling and excitment factor of a big box sub. It felt like it wanted to break free from it's small box. This sub is very punchy, kick drums sound great, bass lines are clear, very articulate and fast, i rekon i could even hear the bass strings vibrating after they had been plucked. The retail cost of an SPL 1200 in Australia is $3000.00 maybe a few hundred taken off with some barganing but just not worth it in my opinion.

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M&K V1250 THX, MX 125, MX 200, Yamaha YST 800

Size, great output and good extension.

Price, price, price

I took advantage of Sound Advice's 60 day money back guarantee to demo this unit in my home, which consists of Magnepan 2.7QR's Pair Bryston 7BST monoblocks Sony DVPS9000ES SACD/DVD Outlaw 950 pre/pro The Velodyne sub was impressive, great output and good extension, in a compact package, plus a cool blue light that complemented the one on the Sony 9000. But for the money, it did not make itself a permanent addition to my system. I returned the unit, purchased a passive Counterpoint Carlsbad sub and powered it with a spare Onkyo 150w/p/c amp, and had the same output and extension, for about $800 less. I also recently purchased a Titanic MkII passive sub system from Partsexpress, and am also running it off the Onkyo amp. In combination, and with a little experimentation with placement, the two subs define clean, deep, loud BASS! No standing waves either, clean clear bass throughout the room. I'm sure that 2 SPL1200's would also be great, but not $2000 great. The passive subs and Onkyo amp totalled less than $1000. I also like the fact that I can upgrade the sub amp at any time, and feel that an A/B class amp with a decent ca. 150 w/p/c output is easily a match for the digital (class D) amps built into the latest kilowatt powered subs that are the latest fashion. Hmmm, maybe another pair of Bryston's for the two subs... ;) The small size of the Velodyne was nice, but not a consideration in my situation.