LAB
REPORT
Readers interested in a full technical
appraisal of the performance of
the Velodyne CHT-12Q Subwoofer
should continue on and read the
LABORATORY REPORT published
on the following pages. Readers
should note that the results
mentioned in the report, tabulated
in performance charts and/or
displayed using graphs and/or
photographs should be construed
as applying only to the specific
sample tested.
Australian Hi-Fi
|
41
Australian Hi-Fi
|
41
lowest bass of any available musical recording:
‘Big Notes’ (DMP CD-454). You have to like
Flim and the BBs, but if you do, about five
minutes into
Funhouse
you’ll hear a note at
5Hz.
My favourite deep bass movie is still Jurassic
Park, and I can confirm that when listening
through the Velodyne, T Rex really stomps!
Yes, Maria, the earth truly does move… but
it’s not just the depth of the bass, even with
movies that don’t have extended bass, the
Velodyne’s performance was such that it
always provided a superb foundation for car
crash scenes, explosions, special effects… all
manner of cataclysmic events. Throughout it
all, I have to say that with rare exceptions,
no matter what preset I started on, I always
gravitated back to Preset 1 when watching
movies, and most of the time, the Preset
remained on 1 even when I was listening to
music.
Conclusion
Music or movies, Velodyne’s CHT-12Q is a
great little subwoofer that will always have a
place in my heart as the subwoofer responsi-
ble for converting me to the joys of remote-
controlled subwoofing.
Paul Cameron
on the top of the front panel because in my
listening room the sub sits directly below my
screen, so I would otherwise have found the
bright blue glow more than a little distracting.
However I also appreciated the fact that the
display was so large and bright when I did
want to read it, because I found it easy to read
from clear across the room, even without my
glasses!
I thought the most important test I
could make first-up was to establish whether
Velodyne’s high-tech circuitry actually made
a difference to the sound. So to evaluate
this, I first listened to the CHT-12Q set to
Jazz/Classical when it was fresh out of the
box, using the ‘factory’ setting, then without
changing anything at all, I equalised it for
my room and then listened again. Right from
the get-go, it was immediately obvious that
the sound had improved. It wasn’t, perhaps,
quite the earth-shaking difference I thought it
might be, but then again I thought the CHT-
12Q sounded very good straight ‘out-of-the-
box’ and my listening room is a particularly
subwoofer-friendly one, being of good
proportions and equipped with properly-
positioned bass absorbers.
Having established the CHT-12Q’s high-
tech credentials, the next step was to listen
to see how well it delivered its bass. I quickly
discovered that its bass response extended
further towards single-figure frequency figures
than was necessary for any of the CDs or DVDs
I have in my collection. By way of example,
one of my all-time favourite CDs, Enya’s
‘Watermark’, digs down to 27Hz, which may
come as a surprise to many of you. (Those of
you with similarly discerning musical tastes
to my own will be able to check this out by
replaying your own copy: it’s Track 10—
The
Longships
). Another surprise can be found
on jazz pianist Warren Bernhardt’s album
‘Reflections’ (DMP). Listen to
Stone Ground
and you’ll hear a sustained synthesised note
at 23Hz! Then again, maybe the deep bass
on this disc isn’t so surprising, because DMP
also makes the disc that I understand has the
switches between signal-sensing activation
and ‘On.’ (There’s also a 240V on/off switch,
located adjacent to the fused three-pin IEC
socket.)
Velodyne provides a full set of inputs and
outputs on the CHT-12Q, with low-level L/R
inputs and L/R outputs via RCA sockets, with
the left-channel RCA input doubling as an LFE
input. High-level (speaker-level) inputs are
via banana/screw terminals. These terminals
have a fixed high-pass filter that turns over at
120Hz for the pass-through signal.
Last, but not least, there’s an IR input. This
enables you to run a wire to a remote infra-
red relay sensor, enabling you to locate the
subwoofer in a cupboard, or somewhere else
that would normally be out of range of the IR
signal from the remote.
Listening Sessions
I have always viewed remote controls for
subwoofers as superfluous to requirements,
simply because setting subwoofer volume is
usually a ‘set and forget’ operation, because
once you have correctly matched the vol-
ume against that of your main and surround
speakers, the subwoofer automatically ‘tracks’
whatever volume you set using your AV re-
ceiver, so there’s no real need to control vol-
ume remotely.
However, seeing that the CHT-12Q offers
so much more than an ordinary subwoofer, I
found the remote almost indispensable. And,
once I became accustomed to using it, I have
to admit that I found it very handy indeed,
to the point where I found myself fiddling
around with the volume far more than I ever
have with any subwoofer I have ever owned
or reviewed that didn’t have a remote control,
and finding that there were benefits in doing
so. I confess that whenever I watched a movie,
I also switched across all the presets, to make
sure I was getting the best impact from each
soundtrack… and even this switching became
more than a little ‘more-ish’. I did appreciate
the fact that you can use the remote to switch
off the rather large and rather bright display
•
Auto - Eq
•
Very small
•
Remote control
•
‘Backwards’
Lo-pass filter
Velodyne CHT-12Q Subwoofer
Brand
:
Velodyne
Model
:
CHT-12Q
Category
:
Subwoofer
RRP
:
$1,399
Warranty
:
Two Years
Distributor
:
Revolution Technologies
Address
:
30 Miller Street
Murarrie, QLD 4172
T
:
(07) 3902 8051
F
:
(07) 3902 8050
E
:
W
:
www.revolutiontechnologies.com.au
