Wiim Ultra with REL T/x series subwoofers

[Promso]

Hi Guys!
I bought Wiim Ultra and pair of active speakers with integrated amps.
Think to order now REL T7X subwoofer, but I found in manual that they highly recommend to connect the sub as an inactive speaker for best quality. Screenshot from manual attached.

Anyone tried to connect such sub to Wiim Ultra? Which connection method you use? How is the quality?

I’m thinking that maybe it will not perform as well as it should if just connecting through sub out on Wiim and then maybe not even worth to overpay for this nicely sounding sub and just order something a bit cheaper.

 

[Smartplug]

At least what I read today in some audiophile discussions - If you don't want high volume and room shacking bass, just much higher quality with your sub, people do not cut any frequencies on main speakers, only cut on sub high frequencies, but I believe Rel is doing even something more that they sound so well integrated. Probably leaving something in high frequencies as well, that would explain why they want to connect to these ports.

Integrating sub and main is tricky business. Many audiophile just want main no sub. I program my system rc with both with sub and without sub. I’m not sure if John Lennon imagine go down to as low as 20hz. As personal preference I like soundstage as big as monument. If I crave for even higher, I fire up Yamaha DSP to give me 360 soundscape. I know many don’t like dsp. I like the sounds of concert hall in Europe. There’s even a church dsp where @Wiimer live in Japan.

 

[slartibartfast]

People are saying it is much easier than other subs to blend them. And they asking to place it in the corner differently than other which is very convinient. Price is ~1100-1200 eur and its only 200w amp which makes them quite expensive in my opinion, of cours not only amp cost money in their design.

I paid around £300 for a BK sub which is probably very similar to an REL. BK used to make subs for REL. The people saying it is easier to blend them don't have bass management in their amplifiers.

 

[slartibartfast]

At least what I read today in some audiophile discussions - If you don't want high volume and room shacking bass, just much higher quality with your sub, people do not cut any frequencies on main speakers, only cut on sub high frequencies, but I believe Rel is doing even something more that they sound so well integrated. Probably leaving something in high frequencies as well, that would explain why they want to connect to these ports.

REL are not doing anything special.

Subwoofer high-level input - any advantage?

Hi folks, I was wondering if there is any objective advantage in using 'high level inputs' to connect a subwoofer to a stereo system. Some subs (like REL, or my ancient REL-built Rega Vulcan) have the ability to be wired to the same power amp's output terminals as the main speakers. The main...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[harkpabst]

I cannot leave all the work to @slartibartfast, so here we go:

But it is clearly written that you should use high level terminals to get that best speakers matching performace which is their secret technology.

REL are talking nonsense. No secret technology. No improved performance using the high level inputs. They make reasonably good subs but they don't work any better using the high level input. Period.

REL did not update their manuals in 10 or 15 years. Back then, very few stereo amplifiers (or preamplifiers) could provide the high pass and low pass filtering that is now standard with the WiiM Utra (and WiiM Amp and WiiM Amp Pro). REL totally missed this development.

So if I loose that quality while not able to use their crossover, why I should pay more..?

You won't be losing any quality by not using their crossover. Quite the contrary. The digital crossover in the WiiM Ultra is vastly superior.

At least what I read today in some audiophile discussions - If you don't want high volume and room shacking bass, just much higher quality with your sub, people do not cut any frequencies on main speakers, only cut on sub high frequencies, ...

Yes, that's what stupid people say and do. The AE1 Active are small speakers. They will greatly benefit from not having to reproduce low bass. The less the woofer cones are moving, the less distortion (harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion and Doppler distortion) they will generate. Applying a high pass filter will always improve the sound quality - not just at super high volume levels.

People are saying it is much easier than other subs to blend them.

And this is simply not true. The smoothest integration between mains and sub can be had with high pass filtering for the mains and low pass filtering for the sub all controlled by a precise digital crossover as provided by the WiiM Ultra. The Ultra also allows to delay the signal to the mains to make sure the signal of the sub and the mains arrive at your listening position at the same time. This is currently a manual process, but it's far more precise than any phase knob on the sub (in most all cases).

Even if you don't believe it and want to try out running the mains full range (which I explicitly do not recommend as a starting point), the WiiM Ultra will allow you to do that. You're not giving up anything with your Ultra.

The icing on the cake is WiiM's room correction, which - at least correcting both main speakers simultaneously in stereo mode - will be able to iron out remaining inconsistencies.

And they asking to place it in the corner differently than other which is very convinient.

You can do that with any sub, not just REL. Corner placement can lead to overly pronounced bass response but room correction will take care of that and bring the level back to normal.

I paid around £300 for a BK sub which is probably very similar to an REL. BK used to make subs for REL. The people saying it is easier to blend them don't have bass management in their amplifiers.

And this is the real deal. If you reside in the UK, BK Elec subwoofers will provide exceptional value for less money than what REL is asking for. BK also provide high level inputs but they don't make a religion out of it like REL does. Products like the XLS300 or the P12-300 provide exceptional quality at a bargain price and are great companions for the WiiM Ultra. The XLS400 comes with an even better driver and more power.

 

[gazza1101]

I have had several subwoofers including REL, Bk and SVS infact the subwoofer I am using at the moment is a REL s510, my advice would be to connect it to your amplifier high level inputs and blend it in to your system, initially this takes a little time but it's worth it, you will find yourself tweaking it a little for a couple of weeks with the crossover and level especially when it has had a little use it will get a little more output.
BUT if you want you use the bass management of the Ultra use the the low level input, the T7x is a great subwoofer and in my opinion worth a little more than some others, and will still sound great on low level input, I do think that other brands may have more output for the same cost but I really like the REL sound.

 

[slartibartfast]

I have had several subwoofers including REL, Bk and SVS infact the subwoofer I am using at the moment is a REL s510, my advice would be to connect it to your amplifier high level inputs

The OP doesn't have an amplifier.

 

[gazza1101]

The OP doesn't have an amplifier.

Thanks, missed the important bit

 

[canard]

I cannot leave all the work to @slartibartfast, so here we go:

REL are talking nonsense. No secret technology. No improved performance using the high level inputs. They make reasonably good subs but they don't work any better using the high level input. Period.

REL did not update their manuals in 10 or 15 years. Back then, very few stereo amplifiers (or preamplifiers) could provide the high pass and low pass filtering that is now standard with the WiiM Utra (and WiiM Amp and WiiM Amp Pro). REL totally missed this development.


You won't be losing any quality by not using their crossover. Quite the contrary. The digital crossover in the WiiM Ultra is vastly superior.


Yes, that's what stupid people say and do. The AE1 Active are small speakers. They will greatly benefit from not having to reproduce low bass. The less the woofer cones are moving, the less distortion (harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion and Doppler distortion) they will generate. Applying a high pass filter will always improve the sound quality - not just at super high volume levels.


And this is simply not true. The smoothest integration between mains and sub can be had with high pass filtering for the mains and low pass filtering for the sub all controlled by a precise digital crossover as provided by the WiiM Ultra. The Ultra also allows to delay the signal to the mains to make sure the signal of the sub and the mains arrive at your listening position at the same time. This is currently a manual process, but it's far more precise than any phase knob on the sub (in most all cases).

Even if you don't believe it and want to try out running the mains full range (which I explicitly do not recommend as a starting point), the WiiM Ultra will allow you to do that. You're not giving up anything with your Ultra.

The icing on the cake is WiiM's room correction, which - at least correcting both main speakers simultaneously in stereo mode - will be able to iron out remaining inconsistencies.


You can do that with any sub, not just REL. Corner placement can lead to overly pronounced bass response but room correction will take care of that and bring the level back to normal.


And this is the real deal. If you reside in the UK, BK Elec subwoofers will provide exceptional value for less money than what REL is asking for. BK also provide high level inputs but they don't make a religion out of it like REL does. Products like the XLS300 or the P12-300 provide exceptional quality at a bargain price and are great companions for the WiiM Ultra. The XLS400 comes with an even better driver and more power.

I haven't followed the many developments, but in terms of rel...their little old ones , not too expensive, had made people talk and were appreciated at the time because of a "closed" bias, not very demonstrative but interesting in hifi use, not in the idea of home cinema...and the high level approach corresponded well to this use of coupling to non-home cinema preamps amp...and more..hifi integred amp...without sub output etc.
a closed approach in hifi coupled with modern and efficient amplification, and a digital correction on this part of the spectrum and in linearization of such "clos" subwoofers makes things interesting

however, proposing advanced settings means that this must be done intelligently...and in the end often makes things not so easy to achieve...
not so easy finally... ;-)

 

[Promso]

I cannot leave all the work to @slartibartfast, so here we go:

REL are talking nonsense. No secret technology. No improved performance using the high level inputs. They make reasonably good subs but they don't work any better using the high level input. Period.

REL did not update their manuals in 10 or 15 years. Back then, very few stereo amplifiers (or preamplifiers) could provide the high pass and low pass filtering that is now standard with the WiiM Utra (and WiiM Amp and WiiM Amp Pro). REL totally missed this development.


You won't be losing any quality by not using their crossover. Quite the contrary. The digital crossover in the WiiM Ultra is vastly superior.


Yes, that's what stupid people say and do. The AE1 Active are small speakers. They will greatly benefit from not having to reproduce low bass. The less the woofer cones are moving, the less distortion (harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion and Doppler distortion) they will generate. Applying a high pass filter will always improve the sound quality - not just at super high volume levels.


And this is simply not true. The smoothest integration between mains and sub can be had with high pass filtering for the mains and low pass filtering for the sub all controlled by a precise digital crossover as provided by the WiiM Ultra. The Ultra also allows to delay the signal to the mains to make sure the signal of the sub and the mains arrive at your listening position at the same time. This is currently a manual process, but it's far more precise than any phase knob on the sub (in most all cases).

Even if you don't believe it and want to try out running the mains full range (which I explicitly do not recommend as a starting point), the WiiM Ultra will allow you to do that. You're not giving up anything with your Ultra.

The icing on the cake is WiiM's room correction, which - at least correcting both main speakers simultaneously in stereo mode - will be able to iron out remaining inconsistencies.


You can do that with any sub, not just REL. Corner placement can lead to overly pronounced bass response but room correction will take care of that and bring the level back to normal.


And this is the real deal. If you reside in the UK, BK Elec subwoofers will provide exceptional value for less money than what REL is asking for. BK also provide high level inputs but they don't make a religion out of it like REL does. Products like the XLS300 or the P12-300 provide exceptional quality at a bargain price and are great companions for the WiiM Ultra. The XLS400 comes with an even better driver and more power.

Thanks man for such an amazing work and so many advices. Will check if I can get here these BK subs.

Regarding Rel I still think there is something behind the fact that they want to get full frequencies into their crossover, cannot believe that they would be so lazy to just not update their manuals and my guess is that they want to use the sub also for some specific higher notes as well. Or just a marketing trick I asked them officially that I want to buy their sub, but can only connect to low input and asked to explain exactly what i will lose. Will be interesting what answer I will get, will share

 

[harkpabst]

and the high level approach corresponded well to this use of coupling to non-home cinema preamps amp...and more..hifi integred amp...without sub output etc.

Exactly. That was back in the day.

Subwoofers were mainly considered effect speakers for home cinema, not something relevant for stereo music reproduction. At some point the desire for smaller "living room friendly" speakers drove the interest into sub/sat systems. Unfortunately, this usually went hand in hand with the desire to spend less and less cash on Hi-Fi in general. The result often were mini or midi systems with passive subwoofers and satellite speakers, which almost never worked. *¹

Finally, active subwoofers became cheaper and more of a trend for stereo. Time alignment and matching the output levels (not only) around the crossover frequency remained difficult to impossible. There hardly was a well defined crossover frequency, because the main speakers were usually running full range, making it all an arbitrary mess, depending on room and speaker placement.

Instead of solving these real problems, parts of the industry decided to solve problems that didn't even exist: Sub integration doesn't fail because the subwoofer gets a different signal than the mains speakers, but because it does not. The signal for the sub must be time aligned and that almost always means the sub must get its input earlier in time than the mains. Bummer, that's impossible with high level inputs, so let's rather invent some marketing speech like "natural roll-off" or "timing cues". Running a sub only at the lowest frequencies (lower than what the main speakers can play) is generally one possible approach. It's just usually not the best one (exceptions might apply in very specific setups and rooms, but it's still generally true). A speaker in a room doesn't have the nice and clean lower boundary mentioned in the user manual. The effective acoustical steepness of its "natural roll-off" isn't always 12 dB/oct for closed boxes and 24 dB/oct for ported speakers. The room mainly dictates the response.

Nowadays we do have proper solutions for these problems. WiiM devices don't get us full flexibility yet (independent slopes and crossover frequencies for sub and mains), but the combined selection of crossover frequency and 24 dB/oct filters and delay settings between mains and sub are pretty much fine in at least 90% of all cases.

Finally, with active speakers there is no way to connect a sub through its high level inputs. If the speakers are set, there's no need to further discuss this option.


1: A well layed out bandpass subwoofer and exactly matching speakers could be made to work reasonably well as a passive system, but requires rather expensive crossover parts and flexibility in placement is very limited.

 

[canard]

It's a shame that the Ultra only has one sub output, rather intended for a 2+1 approach (but corresponds fairly well to its positioning in the range)... (moreover, the high level with all these intrinsic limits easily allowed two sub in stereo...)

 

[canard]

to modernize old machines there is something that has been little noticed,not new:

Dayton Audio - DSP-LF Low Frequency DSP Controller

DSP-LF Low Frequency DSP Controller

staging.daytonaudio.com

;-)

 

[slartibartfast]

Thanks man for such an amazing work and so many advices. Will check if I can get here these BK subs.

Regarding Rel I still think there is something behind the fact that they want to get full frequencies into their crossover, cannot believe that they would be so lazy to just not update their manuals and my guess is that they want to use the sub also for some specific higher notes as well. Or just a marketing trick I asked them officially that I want to buy their sub, but can only connect to low input and asked to explain exactly what i will lose. Will be interesting what answer I will get, will share

The REL subs like all subs have a variable low pass filter. They certainly aren't allowing specific higher notes through. If you don't have a dedicated sub out with bass management then using high level connection from a stereo amplifier makes sense and is fine, I used my BK sub like that for a few years with an Audiolab amp. It will be interesting to hear the reply from REL

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

I cannot leave all the work to @slartibartfast, so here we go:

REL are talking nonsense. No secret technology. No improved performance using the high level inputs. They make reasonably good subs but they don't work any better using the high level input. Period.

REL did not update their manuals in 10 or 15 years. Back then, very few stereo amplifiers (or preamplifiers) could provide the high pass and low pass filtering that is now standard with the WiiM Utra (and WiiM Amp and WiiM Amp Pro). REL totally missed this development.


You won't be losing any quality by not using their crossover. Quite the contrary. The digital crossover in the WiiM Ultra is vastly superior.


Yes, that's what stupid people say and do. The AE1 Active are small speakers. They will greatly benefit from not having to reproduce low bass. The less the woofer cones are moving, the less distortion (harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion and Doppler distortion) they will generate. Applying a high pass filter will always improve the sound quality - not just at super high volume levels.


And this is simply not true. The smoothest integration between mains and sub can be had with high pass filtering for the mains and low pass filtering for the sub all controlled by a precise digital crossover as provided by the WiiM Ultra. The Ultra also allows to delay the signal to the mains to make sure the signal of the sub and the mains arrive at your listening position at the same time. This is currently a manual process, but it's far more precise than any phase knob on the sub (in most all cases).

Even if you don't believe it and want to try out running the mains full range (which I explicitly do not recommend as a starting point), the WiiM Ultra will allow you to do that. You're not giving up anything with your Ultra.

The icing on the cake is WiiM's room correction, which - at least correcting both main speakers simultaneously in stereo mode - will be able to iron out remaining inconsistencies.


You can do that with any sub, not just REL. Corner placement can lead to overly pronounced bass response but room correction will take care of that and bring the level back to normal.


And this is the real deal. If you reside in the UK, BK Elec subwoofers will provide exceptional value for less money than what REL is asking for. BK also provide high level inputs but they don't make a religion out of it like REL does. Products like the XLS300 or the P12-300 provide exceptional quality at a bargain price and are great companions for the WiiM Ultra. The XLS400 comes with an even better driver and more power.

Full agreement with all of the above.

I have a BL XLS200DF (now superseded by the 300) and it's excellent.

It goes all the way down to 35Hz flat - doesn't drop off below then - and very little rock/pop music goes below that anyway.

Fortunately (for me) I have a nearfield set up, so I'm not straining anything, or I might want to go to the 400.

 

[rccarguy]

Hi Guys!
I bought Wiim Ultra and pair of active speakers with integrated amps.
Think to order now REL T7X subwoofer, but I found in manual that they highly recommend to connect the sub as an inactive speaker for best quality. Screenshot from manual attached.

Anyone tried to connect such sub to Wiim Ultra? Which connection method you use? How is the quality?

I’m thinking that maybe it will not perform as well as it should if just connecting through sub out on Wiim and then maybe not even worth to overpay for this nicely sounding sub and just order something a bit cheaper.

Ignore rel's advice. They don't have a clue.

Also with class D you can damage stuff using speaker level.

Use low level only.

 

[Smartplug]

Full agreement with all of the above.

I have a BL XLS200DF (now superseded by the 300) and it's excellent.

It goes all the way down to 35Hz flat - doesn't drop off below then - and very little rock/pop music goes below that anyway.

Fortunately (for me) I have a nearfield set up, so I'm not straining anything, or I might want to go to the 400.

Steve can you check if update is available on your ultra?

 

[rccarguy]

People are saying it is much easier than other subs to blend them. And they asking to place it in the corner differently than other which is very convinient. Price is ~1100-1200 eur and its only 200w amp which makes them quite expensive in my opinion, of cours not only amp cost money in their design.

LOL.

It makes no difference. Stop listening to Rel, the advice they give is 20 years out of date. They even recommend using high level with avrs setting speakers to large. haha

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

Steve can you check if update is available on your ultra?

My app tells me that my Ultra is up to date and on 5.2.639135.

 

[slartibartfast]

Full agreement with all of the above.

I have a BL XLS200DF (now superseded by the 300) and it's excellent.

It goes all the way down to 35Hz flat - doesn't drop off below then - and very little rock/pop music goes below that anyway.

Fortunately (for me) I have a nearfield set up, so I'm not straining anything, or I might want to go to the 400.

I have the same . When I bought it DPD managed to damage the first two delivered to me even though they were double boxed. They managed to bend the heatsink fins on the first one, I forget what was wrong with the second one .

 

[Promso]

The REL subs like all subs have a variable low pass filter. They certainly aren't allowing specific higher notes through. If you don't have a dedicated sub out with bass management then using high level connection from a stereo amplifier makes sense and is fine, I used my BK sub like that for a few years with an Audiolab amp. It will be interesting to hear the reply from REL

My god what a bargain are these BK subs And all wood colours, amazing.. And guys, they ship over all Europe! Could you recommend me some specific model instead of T7X Rel, I mean I want more quality than house shaking base. Room is ~40m2. But for such a price I can just order the most powerfull one Just a bit afraid that biggest driver will not be so quick to pair with my small speakers..