Jamo Sub360 vs

Klipsch R-115SW

Introduction

Measurements taken 2018-10-02

I wanted to improve my HiFi setup in my living room. My Jamo sub was already getting old (not really as it's only 4 years or so) and I knew I was missing the ultra low frequencies. Initially I wanted to purchase the SVS PB-1000 but I was unsure if it would be sufficient for my living room, so I was thinking about the PB-2000. A local store offered me to try out the SB-2000 and I did, but could hardly notice any difference from the Jamo. In addition it looked like the expensive SB-2000 was working really hard to get my room pressurised while the Jamo didn't seem to have any difficulties. I returned it and told myself to purchase the PB-2000 when it was on stock (SVS is not a common brand here). After waiting for several weeks I found out the Klipsch R-115SW was on sale, making it a bit more expensive than the PB-1000 but much cheaper than the PB-2000. I googled it and came to the conclusion that I was stupid if I wouldn't buy it, so I purchased it and it's a beast. It outperforms both the SB-2000 and the Jamo Sub360 by miles, no competition. But, what do the measurement graphs say?

Equipment & Room info

See Living room.

Measurements

I initially ran and saved the Jamo Sub360 measurements. Then I moved the furniture, replaced the Jamo by the Klipsch R-115SW, moved the furniture back, rerun the measurements several times to manually dial the amplifier to roughly the same volume the Jamo had, let Audyssey re-calibrate and finally ran the measurements, visible below against the initial measurements.

Subwoofer

Purple graph: Jamo Sub360 LFE channel

Blue graph: Klipsch R-115SW LFE channel

Front Left Speaker

Green graph: Front left speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Jamo Sub360)

Red graph: Front left speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Klipsch R-115SW)

Front Right Speaker

Blue graph: Front right speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Jamo Sub360)

Green graph: Front right speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Klipsch R-115SW)

Center Speaker

Red graph: Center speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Jamo Sub360)

Purple graph: Center speaker (MAB2) with crossover at 80Hz (low frequencies produced by Klipsch R-115SW)

Overview

Top graph: All frequency graph with Jamo Sub360 subwoofer

Bottom graph: All frequency graph with Klipsch R-115SW subwoofer

Result description

The low frequency response is extended by about 20Hz, which is a lot in this region.
The low frequency response is also much flatter. Where the Jamo has sharp peaks at 50Hz and 70Hz, the Klipsch is relatively flat except for some dips.

Questions / unclear findings

There is a dip at roughly 16Hz, I don't care much about it as it is out of hearing range.
The dip at 42Hz, however, is something I want to pay attention to in the future in order to improve it as it is definitely an audible frequency. The dip is visible in both subwoofer graphs so it probably is a room mode.

Conclusions

The replacement of the Jamo Sub360 by the Klipsch R-115SW is definitely an improvement below 80Hz.
I consider it a huge improvement below 50Hz.
While I cannot back it up with measurements, my experience is that the Klipsch R-115SW also performs much better than the SVS SB-2000 I tried for a week.
In my opinion the upgrade to R-115SW is definitely worth the money.

(Added notes: Note that this subwoofer is huge, that your neighbours will not like it and you should watch out for ear damage with this monster.)

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