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As everyone—at least, every-

one who reads this magazine—knows, the

sound of a subwoofer in a room depends

not only on the subwoofer itself, but also on

the room and the placement of the sub-

woofer in the room. You can have a sub-

woofer that’s a sterling performer when

measured anechoically, but that perfor-

mance may not be realized in a given home-

theater setting. While some of us are in the

fortunate position of being able to build a

dedicated home-theater room of ideal pro-

portions, most of us are stuck with the

rooms we’ve got, which leaves subwoofer

position as a variable to be optimized.

There are formulas and computer pro-

grams that will suggest subwoofer position-

ing, but, in my opinion, these are not as use-

ful as they seem. The ones I’m familiar with

all use a mathematical model that assumes

a shoebox-shaped room with no openings

in the walls, and walls of infinite rigidity.

Real rooms may be L-shaped and have

doors, archways, closets, skylights, and

cathedral ceilings—variables that can’t be

plugged into the formulas. Real walls typi-

cally have rigidity that is considerably less

than infinite, which can affect the useful-

ness of the result in ways that are often

unpredictable.

One bit of advice that’s hard to argue with

is that the subwoofer should be moved

around until you find the position that pro-

duces the best bass—i.e., the greatest exten-

sion, the most output, the flattest frequency

response, and the smoothest integration

with the main speakers. Fair enough, but

even if you ignore the possibility that you’ll

have to make tradeoffs among the different

criteria of subwoofer performance (for

instance, the position that gives you the high-

est output might not produce the smoothest

integration), this approach assumes that you

have considerable flexibility in subwoofer

positioning. Again, the reality may be quite

different. The position that’s ideal for the sub-

woofer may be exactly where you have the

equipment rack, with no other convenient

place in the room to put the equipment. Or

the subwoofer might sound best when

placed in a position that will almost guaran-

tee that people will trip over it or its cables.

Equalization

One approach to improving in-room sub-

woofer performance is equalization: atten-

uating the peaks and boosting the valleys, a

process intended to produce an overall

more linear frequency response. Unfortu-

nately, there are several pitfalls to using

conventional equalization in this fashion.

First, boosting a frequency that corre-

sponds to a dip in the frequency response is

not advisable. A dip usually indicates

acoustic cancellation, and boosting the

level at this frequency is like feeding power

into an acoustic black hole. You’ll end up

pushing the subwoofer to high output lev-

els, with little to show for it, except possibly

driving the woofer into audible distortion.

Attenuating a peak might be effective,

Interlude IL120s ported active subwoofer

Driver: one 12" C.M.M.D. cone

Frequency response: 28–150Hz, ±3dB

Amplifier output: 500W (20–150Hz,

<0.1% THD)

Crossover frequencies: 50–150Hz,

24dB/octave, continuously variable

Controls: subwoofer level, phase (0°/180°),

crossover frequency, R.A.B.O.S. (see text)

Finishes: cherry, natural maple, onyx-onigre

Dimensions: 17

⁄2" × 17

⁄4" × 19

⁄4"

(H×W×D)

Weight: 45 lbs.

Price: $899; Bass Optimization Test &

Measurement Kit, $59.95

Manufacturer

Infinity Systems

250 Crossways Park Drive

Woodbury, NY 11797

tel. (800) 553-3332

fax (516) 682-3524

www.infinitysystems.com

SPECIFICATIONS

EQUIPMENT REPORT

Infinity Systems

Interlude IL120s

Robert Deutsch

SUBWOOFER

74 Stereophile Guide to Home Theater • November 2001

108-0111-Infin-p074-76,78x 1/24/02 1:32 PM Page 74

Summary of content (4 pages)

PAGE 1
08-0111-Infin-p074-76,78x 1/24/02 1:32 PM Page 74 EQUIPMENT REPORT SUBWOOFER Infinity Systems Interlude IL120s A s everyone—at least, everyone who reads this magazine—knows, the sound of a subwoofer in a room depends not only on the subwoofer itself, but also on the room and the placement of the subwoofer in the room. You can have a subwoofer that’s a sterling performer when measured anechoically, but that performance may not be realized in a given hometheater setting.
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108-0111-Infin-p074-76,78x 1/24/02 1:32 PM Page 75 PHOTOS © 2001 CORDERO STUDIOS INFINITY SYSTEMS INTERLUDE IL120S but, as work by Floyd Toole and his associates at the National Research Council in Ottawa has shown, the bandwidth of the sort of peak you’re likely to encounter with subwoofers is often narrower than the traditional third-octave Real Time Analyzer (RTA) measurement can detect, and correcting it requires attenuation with a correspondingly narrow bandwidth.
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108-0111-Infin-p074-76,78x 1/24/02 1:32 PM Page 76 INFINITY SYSTEMS INTERLUDE IL120S phase-reversal switch and a continuously variable lowpass filter that can be turned off if the subwoofer is used with a Dolby Digital/DTS surround processor-receiver. The IL120S’s sculpted front panel and grille are attractive, and the review sample was finished in “onyx-anigre,” which I take to be a term for a better class of fake wood.
PAGE 4
108-0111-Infin-p074-76,78x 1/24/02 1:32 PM Page 78 INFINITY SYSTEMS INTERLUDE IL120S around with the surround preamp-processor’s subwoofer-level control but couldn’t get rid of the boomy quality without making the subwoofer sound too weak. For the price, the performance was still good enough to earn a recommendation, but nothing to get too excited about. Once I felt I had a good handle on the IL120S’s basic sound, it was time to try R.A.B.O.S.