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Classic 98, Is it Right for You?
Helping You Make the Right Call
The below text is a transcription of the video.
This is a short little bit just to help you focus. You’re gonna see three products that are quite different in some significant ways from each other, all within our line, all under, let’s say, 1500 US or 1500 pounds. Understood, you could get confused. We’re here to try and help you un-confuse. With a Classic 98, you have a piece that is designed really for a sort of style, a genre and a kind of wistful, nostalgic quality to subbase that was very much present 25 years ago. It doesn’t play as loud as a modern REL, it doesn’t go as deep, it’s not as fast, it’s not as tuneful. It doesn’t have the clarity, it doesn’t have quite the sound stage specificity, all of those things. But it’s very, very good and actually more than capable of keeping up and leading those products that you would want to pair it with from that era or from these modern reissues.
Now with the T/9x, you have the practically perfect subwoofer. You have a piece that is a little bit more expensive than this, plays significantly louder, goes deeper, much, much, much faster, much more driven surface area. It has an active 10 and a down, down firing 10 that gives you sort of all the room built and all the fast attack coming off that active driver. It works brilliantly in 90% of the home theaters and in two channels, it really does it all. So don’t mistake what a Classic 98 can do for what a T/9x can do. They’re both great, but the T/9x is a much bigger envelope of performance available to that owner. Then you’ve got the specialist. We make an HT range. As you know, the Serie HTS have deadly output and very deep base for home theater applications.
The drivers have been tuned, the cabins have been tuned, the filters have been tuned, and the amps have been specially selected for the Serie HT. If all you want to do is reproduce the 0.1 LFE, the special effects low base channel that is really kind of a requirement to be in home theater. That’s your go-to. An HT/1205 MKII for far less money than this will play about 50% louder. It is a home theater beast, yet it’s very fast. You get attack, you get clarity, you get all these things that most modern theater centric subwoofers don’t even attempt to do. So that’s sort of how to help you understand what would be the best path for you. T/9x, if you want everything, costs a little more to be sure, but it does high level inputs. So you get really good support of high-end two channel.
It’s got a dedicated .1, it’s got a big 300 watt class A/B, amplifier plays louder than hell, goes deep. Nothing it doesn’t do, and it’s very compact. You go to this when you want that modern, retro vintage or you simply are in love with the walnut veneer finish. I’m getting one, no problem, but I understand why I’m getting it. I’m not getting it to replace a T/9x or my case, a Carbon Special. Right? It is a specialist. It’s a beautiful specialist. I can envision multiple REL owners just go, I don’t care. I just love the way thing looks. I’m gonna buy one. It’s just a beautiful pretty piece. That sounds really good. I’m, by the way, very proud of our performance envelope that we’ve managed to carve out of this. This is so much better than an old storm three for about 40% less in size and adjusted for price about 70% less. So this is a beast in a tiny envelope. That is what our mind’s eye thought 25 year old REL looked and performed like, but never did. And then the HTS are just devastating. If you want theater, if you want big hearted hitting theater, get yourself an HT, even if you’ve got something like a T/9x as your main sub in the system, great, fantastic. You’ve got all the high-level fill and you’ve got the 0.1 from that at a HT/1205 MKII, and I guarantee life will get better.
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