The below text is a transcription from the video.
So, let's introduce you to the S/550. There is something that is so beautifully elegant about the proportions and the scale of the S/550. From here on up, everything else in the line starts to get a little larger. This one is so precise, so almost delicate in its proportions and its scale. It will work in rooms that are much smaller than you might think. It doesn't suffer the same issues that big subwoofers have.
You try and stuff too large a subwoofer into too small of a room. You're almost always hearing the subwoofer. It tends to boom, it tends to overload the room modes - that doesn't apply to the S/550. It's so quick. It's so well balanced and it is under control at all times until you ask it not to be at which point all hell breaks loose. It is extremely potent and capable of playing extremely loud.
This is a great piece to do stereo pairs with. And if the mood should strike you someday, line arrays are absolutely magic. I lived with its predecessor for 3 years. Can't say enough about the experience. It was remarkable. This is better in every regard. It goes deeper. It plays louder. It's faster. It's quieter. It's a fantastic piece of kit.
So, let's jump into some of the core features of the S/550 that explain the differences, for example, between this and the S/510 and also just generally our philosophy around this. When we determined that we needed these to play louder, you have to examine your amplifiers, which is why we wound up with 600 watt instead of a 500 watt. And yes, we only claim 550, but that's kind of how we are. We don't over, you know, chest beat over our power ratings. It's incredibly crisp and precise, partly because we've shaved even more mass out of the moving driver, right?
We've taken the center third out completely and replaced it with carbon fibre, which weighs next to nothing. That piece probably weighs less than a single sheet of paper, and yet it's four times stiffer than the aluminium that it replaces. So, it's one of those instances where you get everything that goes up. The weight comes down, the precision of the driver improves, the stiffness of the driver, which is the ability to act like a piston, improves. We do it every time. You always start with the driver. You get that perfect and then you can find out just how far we can push it with the amplifier.
When you get the driver and amplifier happy, you start discovering that the passive can't keep up. There's a 12-in passive on the bottom of this 305mm in the metric world. That's a piece that had no problem keeping up with the previous generations Carbon Specials and S/812s. Suddenly, it's not enough. So, we had to go through a whole iterative process on discovering exactly what piece of metal our cone was slamming into and figure out how to extend the depth, the stroke of the downfiring passive. And the entire thing finally clicked together.
It's a system. You improve the amp, you have to improve the driver. You improve the driver, you reveal the weaknesses or the limitations of the passive. Once you get that done, you can push the limits without any reservations. So, we've got a more powerful piece that's crisper, brighter, deeper, faster, more delicate, more tonal. All of these things. The tonal colors come through better.
In many ways, this is the practically perfect subwoofer in this line. Why? It works in rooms that are smaller than you would think it would. Again, because it's so quick, it's so well balanced, and it's so under control.
Going to stereo pairs, yes, it will play louder, but that's not really the reason you do it. You will take the sound stage and just spread it out and allow it to resolve in three dimensions. You have the ability to tune the left side, for example, versus the right side completely differently because no room is ever symmetrical, sonically. So, you can get a perfect balance between your right side, your left side, and then if at some point you're fortunate enough to be able to move on to line arrays, you've got the basis of it with a stereo pair. You've got two of them there, and now you can just build upward from there. It's an amazing subwoofer. It is such high value and it does things that very few subwoofers in the world can do.
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