The below text is a transcription from the video.
So, the 212 Black Label is the last jumping off point for people who want just one or a pair of great subwoofers that can do it all. Can do it all.
So, what do I mean by that? Well, often you especially in the lower ranges of subwoofers, you wind up having to make a choice. Do I really prioritize high-end two channel? Great, we've got a zillion solutions for you. Do I want to have it do really, really badass theater? And then there comes a point where you go, well, can't I have it all? And the answer is yes, you absolutely can.
Everybody knows about our Line Arrays. They do amazing jobs of music and film. But this is what you get when you only need a sub that's not a tower, right? That doesn't have three elements to it that will do everything. It's incredible in two channel music. It is unbelievable in theater. It's just so incredibly dynamic.
The amount of power and pressure is 452 square inches of driven surface area of the drivers alone. You combine that with 1,000 and that's a very conservative number. Call it 12,000 Watts to be even still conservative. It is a beast. This thing plays so incredibly loud. It is dynamic which is the difference between loud and soft. A lot of big, heavy, ponderous subwoofers can't do dynamics.
This can do it all.
When you're sitting there thinking, "Okay, I can get away with something that's sort of a a medium height. This isn't a small subwoofer, but it works perfectly with things like Bowers and Wilkins 801's and 802s, KEF REF5s, you know, really big high-quality speakers. These are speakers up in the 20 - $30,000 price ranges. And yet, it's simple and easy to set up and dial in there. I have yet to find a room that it can't annihilate. I'm sure it exists out there. This is not a throw down the gauntlet kind of a challenge. It's just I've never worked in a room big enough to limit having a pair of these not just take over the room and do everything the customer wants it to do.
It's a great all-arounder.
All of the same things that we've talked about on all of the others of the Serie S, right? We replaced aluminium with carbon fibre, took out some mass, stiffened it immensely. Once we got the main drivers worked out, it was pretty easy to reconcile. We can now use effortlessly all the power that was in this big amplifier, these Linear Class D's that have a massive power transformer, Class A/B power supply and Class D outputs.
So, the thing is still incredibly efficient. And then the two passives, the one on the bottom is essentially a whole another driver. The only thing it doesn't have is the voice coil. It's incredibly potent and powerful.
And if you've ever heard our Classics, the small walnut ones, there is a concussive nature to downfiring subs that is truly impressive because it hits the floor and it just spreads out uniformly throughout the entire room and it makes you think you're listening to something even bigger.
Well, here you are listening to something really big and really potent and powerful. And all you need here is to have that foundation laid down, which is what the downfiring passive does. Again, we increased the stroke enormously over what was in there before. And then the one on the back is another one of the same driver, right? It's a full conical driver with carbon fibre on the back and the whole thing.
And it's the magic.
It is what gives you a little bit of the taste of what a Line Array does. That ability to project height and really resolve things that are in the third dimension up taller. Most of the time when you're using these, you're fairly proxemic to the corners. And what this rear firing passive does is it crawls into the corner, goes up the corner, and resolves back out into the room. It's the height. It's that specialness where you're listening to dimensionality. You've got left, right width for sure. You've got front, back depth. Now you're able to hear some of that that third dimension, which is the room wrapping up over you like it does in a concert hall.
This is an amazing, amazing piece.
And again, some of the things I said about the other black label piece, the Carbon Special Black Label attached to this as well. There's so much beauty and little subtle details. Just take in the beauty of the carbon fibre bezel with this black lined top badge. These gorgeous little crowns on the side, these suede lines.I had Ryan drop into it because I wanted your eye to hit it and go up and find the crown. So, there's just so much going on with this thing. It's just eye candy for days.
So, 212 Black Label. It's an incredible piece. It's the best all-in-one. If you just can have one and you're going, I just don't either have the budget or the size, you know, to have a stack that's maybe this tall, that's okay.
212 Black Label will do that for you. And it does everything you could ever want to do at home. Very much like the Carbon Special Black Label, although this one is an option, we wanted a grille that was as high performance as the subwoofer itself.
So, what we learned years and years ago, 20 years ago, easily, was that cloth grills always suppress just a little bit the microdynamics, the clarity, the ability when you get into subwoofers, the ability for this thing to breathe, right? You've got 216 square inches of driven surface area, moving a lot of air. And so, what we did here was not only is it gorgeous, but it is really a higher performance grille. It allows more air to express itself without any resistance whatsoever. And it just gives that sense of breath and air that you demand.
Most people would just take the grilles off. The guys that are really into the performance of it, now you don't have to.This is the closest you can get to no grille at all. It looks fantastic. It's beautifully constructed. Oh my goodness, the fit and finish on this piece is incredible.
But it started with a desire to have higher performance but with a grille on because so many times and we see this in stores all the time. They take the grilles off because the customer wants to see the driver. New customers, what's the first thing they do? They get it home, they set the thing up, they take the grille off because they want to show how cool the driver is.
Great. And after a couple of days, believe me, you'll want to put the grille on. And with these, you can put them on. Often it's the prettiest thing in the room, but also it's there originally intended as a pure high performance adjunct.
It just lets air flow through it effortlessly.
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