Wide-bandwidth goes wider still
By Roy Gregory
When I reviewed the dual-driver but crossover-less EJ Jordan Greenwich loudspeakers, a compact stand-mount that manages to produce a claimed 44Hz to 18kHz bandwidth from a pair of Jordan Eikona wide-bandwidth drivers – to impressive effect – I mused on the possibilities of adding an active sub-woofer to the equation, a step that would extend the bass while avoiding the evils of a passive, subtractive network. You can read the original review here – https://gy8.eu/review/the-ej-jordon-greenwich-loudspeaker/. But, in the meantime, those lovely folks at Focal have fronted up with one of their Sub 1000F active sub-woofers for me to trial the proposition.
Choosing sub-woofers is a far from simple proposition. The ideal scenario – a pair of passive enclosures, an active crossover and the same amplification that drives the rest of the system – is one that’s confined to high-end solutions like the Wilson Subsonic or PureLow GR. At less exalted price levels the solutions are considerably more compromised by cost constraints and circumstance. In this case, with speakers weighing in at around the £6K mark, few people will want to spend more than £2K on a matching sub-bass solution. Fewer still will consider using a pair of subs, the approach that’s widely accepted to deliver the best results. They’ll also be looking at integrated units, with Class D plate amp and crossover packages built into the rear of their cabinet. Putting delicate electronics inside a low-frequency enclosure, even if you separate them from the same acoustic space as the driver(s) is never a great idea, but it’s an inescapable compromise imposed by market forces and convenience rather than performance considerations. Even Wilson, who championed the proper approach to sub-woofing for so long, have finally caved, replacing the superb WatchDog passive sub with the Submerge model, incorporating an internal amplifier and crossover package (the less said about the Loki, the better).
Bearing all of that in mind, I started the search for a mainstream product that would tick both the size and cost boxes. There’s no shortage of options, but the Focal attracted my attention for a number of reasons beyond price and size. As a company that builds not only its own drivers but its own electronics too, they are able to engineer a complete system. To that you can add their class-leading expertise when it comes to in-car systems, a field which demands considerable sub-woofer know-how. You can see the results in the provision of a dedicated drive unit, employing Focal’s clever and extremely impressive flax sandwich cone technology. You can see them in the engineering of the sensible electronics package, with its carefully chosen options (and lack of fashionable but useless facilities). At 400mm/side, the Sub 1000F is pretty much as compact as a 12” sub is going to get, while at €949, it opens the possibility of still using a pair of units within a reasonable cost (although I stuck to using a single unit, the most likely scenario). Finally, although it uses a Class D amp, it eschews the fashion for complex, highly configurable DSP equalisation or room compensation. In my experience, that’s a technology that needs to be handled with considerable care and more often than not, does more harm than good. Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. Besides which, it also introduces an unacceptable degree of latency into the signal processing, which is always going to complicate set up, especially in the context of a directly connected speaker like the Greenwich.
