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Comparing T/5x and Tzero MKIII
Which Compact Subwoofer is Right for You?
Hi, John Hunter from REL here. We get this question far too often, so we thought we’d answer it for you. We got the baby of the line, the Tzero MKIII, and the question is, how does this compare up and how do I make that decision between that and the T/5x. Very different pieces, even though they’re both relatively compact. So how best to think of these? A Tzero is a phenomenal piece for things like studies, libraries, relatively small rooms.
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And if that’s what you’ve got, fantastic because we’ve got you taken care of. When you move up to a 5/x you’re talking about something that can fill sort of an average suburban living room. Something along the lines of a 14 by 18 foot living room or even larger. Where I live, which is an open floor plan and it seems to fill even that space. I mean, gosh, you must have thick end of 1200 square feet on that floor and it’s all communicative and yet it works just fine.
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So, this is a much bigger, more serious piece that fills much larger spaces. It also works with different kinds of speakers. You’re really better off with the Tzero pairing that up with relatively small speakers. Why? A six and a half inch, even when designed to really do deep bass will go up and reach better with a small speaker. So there are all kinds of speakers that use four, four and a half inch mid woofers and a tweeter that doesn’t go deep enough, really to connect up with something like a 5/x.
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So this one will go literally up, pretty clean nature, to about 55 or 60 Hertz. That’s very different than a 5/x, which wants to see a crossover somewhere probably in the 40, 45 Hertz region. And so, strokes for folks, right? You have something designed for smaller rooms designed to really perfectly couple with much smaller speakers that themselves don’t go down and produce much of any real bass. And you have a 5/x, which is a really proper state of the art subwoofer designed for smaller and medium-sized spaces.
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In terms of the speakers that would partner with. This piece works well with speakers up to probably the two to $3,000 range. Here, you’re probably best left at a thousand dollars and below in terms of having it mate properly. That is a broad assertion, filled with all kinds of gaps. What we don’t want people doing is, is buying this because they’re looking at a little tiny thumbnail on our website or whatever and imagining the two of these are kind of sort of very similar because thumbnails don’t allow you to see the size. So we’ve made it a point that you can actually see both of them side by side and realize just how much more substantial this piece is.