Testing
Movies
Action and Sci-fi movies are excellent tests for subwoofers and it gives me a good reason to watch my favorite movies again without the girlfriend getting angry!
Saving Private Ryan
The opening D-Day beach landing is an excellent segment of the DVD and it gave us a pretty good indication of what this subwoofer is capable of for HT usage. The explosions offered layered sounds that shook the floor but didnt bottom out the subwoofer. The subwoofer just seemed to improve the battle tracks adding more power to the weapons and explosions. The thunder tracks were also reproduced superbly by this sub. What we listen for when testing subs is washout, bloat or bottoming out. The EP 125 sub woofer produced our test movies in perfect style and we were half way through a movie before we noticed were were supposed to be testing and not enjoying so much!
Music
As many of you may know, I am an audio nut and I love clean, clear balanced music. What I cannot stand is systems that offer washed out, woofy bass that is monotonous. A great example is some teenagers car where no matter what song they play the bass line seems to always produce the same bass line!
For our music tests we used various genres such as metal, house and rap and obligatory bass solos by Geezer Butler, Les Claypool, Michael Anthony and Billy Sheehan. We also threw in some tracks from Outlaw Bass and THX. The sub delivered a hefty driving beat, without washing out the lower mids in the music tracks. Bass solos are used to test articulation; to test if the sub can produce quick changes in level, frequency and rhythm without choking.
The Outlaw Bass and THX tests were just to hear what the sub was capable of when pushed to extremes. The neighbors probably hate use for shaking the floor of the suite but it is all in the name of science!
This subwoofer puts out a great deal of power for its size that has me wondering where that large amount of bass is coming from.
Gaming
Being hardcore fans of FPS, we got lucky with the recent release of BF3 and COD MW3, we put this subwoofer through quite a few battles and extreme campaigns.
Adding some moderate volume to the system produced excellent rib shaking bass during explosions and loud weapon fire. FPS games are so much more exciting and immersive with good audio offering clean hard hitting bass and the Axioms definitely provide that.
Note on listening tests: Judging just bass is a hard task to accomplish; basically we are looking for issues and overall reproduction quality. Products are also used for day to day work in the audio lab prior to the dedicated listening tests to get a better impression of what this unit has to offer the readers.
