Audiocontrol Epicenter - is it that much better with it?

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

I'm wondering if they can really make that much of a difference with today's high-quality subs & amps, not to mention most headunits have separate bass processing, Q and "width" and all that jazz? They need to see a full-range signal in order to work properly and some headunits don't even output full-range through their subwoofer outputs.

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[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

they work when hooked up properly

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

I never liked them myself.

 

[skmfkr 5,000+ posts]

I never liked them myself.

iirc i remember you saying it had an unnatural sound to it which is true but imo it really isnt that bad considering how much output you gain. i always tell me it works awesome for rock and country but if all you listen to his rap then dont bother with it. below is a video using my epicenter iirc it didnt turn it up until the end when u see the numbers go up

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

These are NOT to solve equipment shortcomings. Really if you don't have a beefy high excursion sub I'd steer clear anyway. The point of these is to add low frequency material in older recordings in which the audio mix filters out subsonic programming. Remember up until pretty recently your average woofer had x-max of about 3mm (or whatever....the point is not much) so most recordings just rolled off the bass at around the frequency where the average album or 8-track owner wouldn't really reproduce anyway.

Similar principal to when radio first became popular you'll notice most of the singer's voices are around the same tone which happens to be easily reproduced on the earliest radio loudspeakers.

I found the effect of these nice with stuff recorded in the mid 80's and earlier (stuff that's been digitally re-mastered is often fine without) most new music it doesn't work well at all with.

 

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

I listen to almost everything but when I listen to "softer" music I want it to sound like the way the artist intended to sound like - because it'll be weird to hear Hotel California with massive bass.

I got an Epicenter from a friend and wanted to try it out, now isn't it kind of like a line driver too? It can be set to have 10v preamp outputs.