Got myself a Strata III at a v.nice price!

I officially bought my most expensive bit of hifi ever today! A nice Rel strata III in real wood cherry finish-the quality of the cabinet is second to none! it was reduced from £800 to £500 but i haggled abit and gotit for £450 brand new boxed! theres only the display model left now which is also in cherry-noticed liamf fancied a new sub, that could be the 1 for him!

I was sold pretty quickly when i heard this sub. They had the Q150e mkII for comparison. Only used 1 disc( Kanye west college dropout) and the audition was pretty short. When i 1st heard it i didnt even notice the sub was on! tried skipping tracks and it felt the same. The salesman asked me to come back in 30mins so he could set it up nicely. Did that, came back and WOW.

Ive never heard a sub that was this agile and clean! It wasnt in ur face monotone boom but clean textured bass that was genuinely deep. its hard to describe how it sounded but i was very impressed and at that price i just had to buy it!

Theres so many bloody knobs on the back which makes setup tricker than usual, havent actually played with it yet as my friends have been round. Ive hooked it up via the high level neutrik connector to the marantz.
sounds OK at the mo but i feel the depth that this sub is capable of and sure its gonna sound fantastic when setup properly. Its just plonked beside my speakers at the mo, is corner placement recomended?

If any 1 owns this sub or another ST series 1 please share some tips on setting this baby up!

Cheers

Ultra

 

IMHO, yes definitely.

You will probably need to set it to its lowest possible rolloff frequency. Then ideally you need some test tones and a sound level meter and set it up so that the frequencies below 30 Hz average out at the same level as those in the 40 - 60 Hz region (ignoring any room peaks). If doing it by ear, turn it up so that it is obvious and then turn it down bit by bit until it stops being obvious.

Then play 'Meltdown' by Orbital or 'Storm 3000' by Leftfield at full volume or something from The Prodigy or Massive Attack or any live recording and then sit back and enjoy!

 

OK Ultra, where'd you get it from?

Liam.

 

As I'm still playing around with the placement of my own sub, can I ask why corner placement is often a good idea? My reason for confusion is I'd have thought that might be more likely to excite room mode frequencies, making these even more dominant over others? At present I find the limiting factor in setting the gain in my sub is ensuring my first room resonance at around 45Hz isn't too dominant/boomy. I will certainly try this whatever when I get time, but I was just curious as to the logic behind it?

 

A couple of things that I found with my own REL unit:
1. Go experiment with some concrete slabs. I had major problems integrating the timing of bass with my main speakers until I found the right combination for my system, which turned out to be a slab under the sub, and none under my floorstanders.
2. The REL unit has a slam/depth switch. Whilst not recommended, I found the "slam" setting integrated better for music.
3. Get the bass response of your existing speakers sorted before messing around with your sub. In my old flat I had a big standing wave at 40hz with my Linns. Just how do you setup a sub to integrate well with a completely uneven bass response for speakers??? It's not easy.
My new flat doesn't have the same problem, and the sub is much easier to deal with.

I think the key point is to experiment.

 

My thread on HFC-abit more in depth than my post on here:

Hey guys, got my 1st serious sub yesterday and at a bargain price! Was reduced to £500 due to the release of the strata 5 so i haggled abit and got myself a cherry veneered beuty for £450!brand new boxed!
It was sort of an impulse buy, probs dem'd it for 15mins MAX, i initially went in to listen to the Q200 (£650) as i was plannin to get 1 of those BK elec thingys which are said to be virtually identical. Also listened to the Q150E mkII. All these subs were superb-being Rel they should be 8) but it was the strata that really took deep bass to the next level. The Qseries subs seemed to dig deeper initially but after a few tracks it became obvious that the strata simply provided much cleaner bass with no overhang at all. The Q subs seemed abit monotone in comparison but still loads cleaner sounding than most other subs ive heard.

I was also very impressed with the fit and finish of the Strata-super solid cabinets and precise control knobs on the back with plenty of flexibilty when it came to fine tuning.

The most impressive bit of the amp is how deep it goes-some subs claim to hit low frequencies but dont state that the in room sound level heavily decreases which means they dont go that deep at all. The strata III claims to go down to 18hz and to my surprise it does and to great effect! Not claiming its the best sub around but for sensible money in a small room its hard to beat!

Ive never really bothered with a sub for my 2 ch setup but fancied givin it a go with a quality sub. Didnt have much time to play with it last nite coz m8s were round-thought id b sociable instead of hiding behind the sub twiddling with the knobs

Had a mini listening sesh with it today-theres definately loadsa room for improvement. Ive tried it for both movies and music. The salesman said it isnt really designed for movies but MY GOD does it sound good! The level of depth and slam on off really does make u question wether the amp is really just a measly 100watts. It is sounding awesome at the mo, in fact as im typing this ive got Final Fantasy in the background to run it in.

Music wise i still need to experiment with positioning and that. Because the Tannoys are soooo clean and fast the sub has alot of catching up to do. At the moment its slowing down the performance by a smidgen so im gonna try taking the sub out of the corner.

Does any1 else own this sub or another ST series? Can u please share some hints and tips about setting up?

cheers

Ultra


As to where i got it from liam- Hughes electrical on white lion gate-you'd be surprised by what they actually stock! They sell washing machines etc but in this particular branch, the upstairs has a few hifi and AV goodies-Primare, Exposure and Soneteer to name a couple-also Quad and monitor audio. Oh and REL

I might be snapping that remaining strata III up coz after reading bout subs online-it seems to is defo better than 1

But as im skint rite now you'll probs getit b4 me if u hurry

But even if it isnt from there i recomened the strata III whole heartidly- far superior to the Q150mkI/mkII and even the beefy Q200e

Clean deep agile bass

Still havent integrated it seamlessly with the 2ch setup but im sure that will happen soon! But with Av without any effor setting up it has produced shed loads of massive grin inducing bass :JPS:

Ultra(very chuffed)

 

Basically it's like this. Setting the sub to its lowest roll-off will ensure that it is doing almost nothing at 45 Hz. Placing it in the corner will allow it to reproduce frequencies down to 22 Hz (in the case of a Storm III) with no drop in level and down to 18 Hz at -6 dB. Without the corner reinforcement, the sub will not achieve this performance at the required level from what is after all only a 12 inch driver.

 

Most subs don't have a low enough roll-off setting to allow you to do this. The RELs do. Trust me on this. If your main speakers are -3 dB at 45 Hz, by the time you have added in room resonance, your main speakers will be dying out around 30 - 35 Hz. You really do want the sub rolling off from 28 Hz or so in order to integrate with the main speaker + room response to give a flat response (ignoring the room peak) down to 20 Hz.

 

It's nice to see someone happy with a new purchase. At least no-one has tried shooting you down yet...

Personally, I would not get a second one. Your system is a little imbalanced now, with a good (classic) front end and a good transducer line-up, but although the PM7200 is a good amp at its price, it would be the next thing I would move on.

 

Cheers, that makes sense. I did actually try lugging my sub into the corner last night to see what I thought, but didn't set the crossover as low as you're talking about (although I think it's possible). Trouble is for me I'd like my sub to be doing some work above the 45Hz resonance, as my main speakers still do very little here. With the crossover set accordingly I found I could obviously hear where the sub was with it in the corner, whereas placed just inside my left speaker as I had it before I found it integrated better. Obviously the sub won't be going as deep though (and yes, some new main speakers would be a good idea before someone points that out!). I'll experiment with the low crossover/corner placement scheme over the weekend though...

The idea of having a sub running from the first room resonance down, and with main speakers which only just reach this frequency really does make a lot of sense though, and being able to adjust a subs response could in principle enable a very smooth transition through this resonance. Interesting idea (which ignorant little me hadn't heard before anyway).

 

I'm not so sure it is necessarily a good idea - it depends on the sub I'd say.

Corner placement can be good because it will give you more output for less effort e.g. amp has to work less hard which may give lower distortion.

On the other hand, the accuracy of the bass produced may well suffer because of corner placement - I mean, you wouldn't dream of sticking a large floorstanding speaker in the corner as, amongst other things, chances are the bass would become all boomy and dominant.

So, by all means try it but don't automatically assume the corner is the best place for the sub to live.

Matt.

 

Had a play during the day yesterday and twiddled the knobs slightly earlier on. I think i must have gotten lucky coz ive achieved seamless integration already! It usually takes at least a week to tune and position! I tried placing it near the side but not in the corner+ right in the corner. Corner placement didnt effect the quality of the bass at all! It sounded much better in the corner-before it was obvious that the bass was coming from the left side of my room when it was placed in fornt of the main speakers but in the corner the deep bass sounds like its coming from the main speakers-very satisfying indeed but also spooky!

Its setup to roll off at 32hz and i found this gave me excellent integration. The whole sound is just so much more complete now and i also found myself listening at lower levels and still getting a thrilling performance. Its a truly awesome sub and for the money its a steal-the combined price of my tannoys+stands and sub is about a grand- i dont think many £1000 speakers can produce this sort of performance IMHO-true deep bass played flat to 20hz and the PRAT of the standmounts combined gives a very impressive performance indeed.

Not really looking to upgrade the pm7200-its doing a stellar job atm and i cant stop listening to music!

Ultra

Oh and its a belter with films too

 

I'll be getting my sub this coming weekend, although I doubt I'll have time to truly set it up until the following weekend. i'm getting one in the smae sort of price range, that is roughly £500 officially, but a bit cheaper in reality. Looking forward to comparing my results.