As requested, a photo of the REL Carbon Special installed in my Main System in my Lounge Room.
I’ve spent the last 3 days setting the REL up for both Music (my main reason for getting the REL) and Movies with the added benefit for 5.1 Music.
STEREO MUSIC
The REL is connected to my Lumin Stereo Power Amp using a Mogami Hi-Level Connection Cable (which as Dan advised is far superior and with much bigger conductors that the REL cable that comes in the box) and no hum detected with all equipment switched on in idle mode.
I used my Tidal Playlist which I use for Music Equipment Demo’s and also compared Tidal to the CD and Hi-Res Blu-ray discs I have of the same tracks and found I did not need any further tweaks to the Subwoofer settings between the three sources, with the CD’s and Blu-ray’s sounding just that little bit better than the Tidal CD and Hi-Res Quality Tracks.
The tracks were previously chosen for good bass lines, deep bass and fast bass to test HiFi Gear so well suited to the task of setting up the Subwoofer.
I had been reading quite a few articles online about setting up a Subwoofer for Music, and quite a few suggested setting the crossover at 10Hz above the Main Speakers bass performance, so based on that I initially set the REL crossover to 50Hz as my Focal Electra 1038Be’s go down to 33Hz. With the REL crossover dial; 20Hz = 7 O-Clock and 120Hz = 5 O-Clock so 12 O-Clock is 70Hz therefore 50Hz was at 10 O-Clock.
From this point I adjusted the Gain dial to tune in the Subwoofer and I found an optimum setting of 1030 O-Clock, which I felt was about 85-90% perfect. The next day I re-ran all the listening tests with the crossover reduced to 45Hz = 9.30 O-Clock and found the bass was improved with a cleaner, more defined and more articulate bass sound, which indicated the setting was more integrated with the bass performance of my Main Speakers and based on this I increased the Gain to 11 O-Clock which sounded excellent and felt that it’s now about 90-95% perfect.
I will leave the settings now for a few weeks to listen more and allow for the Subwoofer to fully break-in, but, it’s a HUGE overall improvement to my Stereo System’s sound quality performance.
Tidal Tracks Used Were:
The Cure - A Forest
Daft Punk - Giorgio by Moroder
The Beatles - Come Together (2019 Mix)
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Sting - Brand New Day (My Songs Version)
Sting - Desert Rose (My Songs Version)
The Rolling Stones - Terrifying (2009 Remaster)
The Rolling Stones - Mixed Emotions (2009 Remaster)
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
Seal - Crazy
Seal - Killer
Underworld - Born Slippy (Nuxx)
David Guttea featuring Kid Cudi - Memories Extended Version
Safri Duo - Samb-Adagio
MOVIES
For movies, I connected the REL to my Denon AVR-X4700H AV Amp (Subwoofer Crossover set to 80Hz in the Denon which is the Dolby and THX recommended crossover setting for Movies) using my existing Chord Epic RCA LFE Subwoofer Cable (again no hum from the REL in idle mode with all equipment switched on) into the LFE/.1 connection on the REL and chose four 4K Blu-ray movies with deep bass, fast bass and general action movie bass soundtracks:
Interstellar
U-571
Black Hawk Down
Terminator 2
Listened to the movies and then selected various action scene’s from the movies and dialed in the LFE.1 Gain, which resulted in a setting of 9 O-Clock, which I found optimum for serious but not too over the top bass presence across all movies.
5.1 MUSIC
The final set of tests, once the Music and Movies had been set up was to test to see how 5.1 Music response performed and I listened to the following Blu-ray concerts:
Roger Waters - This Is Not A Drill
Eric Clapton - Slowhand at 70
The Eagles - Live From The Forum MMXVIII
The sound quality performance on all three concerts was fantastic, due I think from spending so much time setting up the Music and Movies settings very well, so no need to make any further adjustments to the REL.
In summary, the REL is awesome and has made a massive improvement to the sound quality of my stereo and surround sound systems, I’m seriously very impressed and would highly recommend one.
I re-purposed my old Velodyne SPL-1200R Subwoofer into my Study Stereo System and have it connected using Chord Shawline RCA interconnects to the Subwoofer output of my Supernait 3.
I’ve set the crossover at 50Hz which is 10Hz above the bass performance of my Dynaudio Audience 72SE Speakers, it has also made a HUGE improvement to that system, but needs some fine tuning to get it set up perfectly in that room and system:
