WHT BASS CLEF
SUBWOOFER

Our PR1, PR3 and PR4 are truly amplifier friendly loudspeakers both in terms of load and sensitivity. As they offer a vastly better performance in this regard than alternatives, something else was required to complete the picture.

With the Neo tweeter reaching 40 KHz we could only look at the lowest notes to add to the existing ability to perform recorded music. It was time to build a subwoofer. Why had we left this project to last? The honest response is, we truly hated subwoofers.

When matching speakers with the subwoofer, the bass is far more important than you would initially believe - any shortcomings here will muck up the midrange. It's surprising how often a change in the bass results in a perceived change of much higher frequencies. It's also the biggest challenge; it's very difficult to obtain clean high-level bass.

Every time we made an attempt to match a high end subwoofer with our speakers the result was routinely embarrassing for the subwoofers.

The subwoofers sounded slow and muddy no matter how we would place them or set them up. Disconnecting subwoofers from the system provided a great relief. Instead of increasing the scale of musical reproduction and adding energy the subs were simply destroying the sound stage. We have decided that no bass is better than a slow and artificial bass.

When beginning our first WHT sub test we reached for our high quality sound reinforcement system. With a 15 " Gauss bass driver, active crossover and 800 Watts modified ex-studio Harrison Mosfet amplifier we had an instantly impressive subwoofer ready for presentations. Finally, for the first time we were experiencing perfect interaction with the rest of WHT loudspeakers.

The 15" Gauss woofer was regarded as the "Rolls Royce" of the speakers. The voice coil was of the biggest diameter with edge wound wiring. The magnet was also enormous. From that point it looked easy, we just had to make a similar woofer and great amp and mount it into a great box. In the end, the total project took more than three years.

The main component in WHT Bass Clef is our own 15" paper cone bass driver. Super fast features, sensitivity of a whooping 102 dB and a long throat with a 4"diameter edge wound voice coil. The 15" has the biggest magnet and dicast aluminum basket. All these elements are required to provide the extremely quick, clean and articulate bass notes.

Here is the simple explanation why WHT subwoofer will behave better than any subwoofer currently on the market:

The woofers which competitors are utilizing for their projects are slow and of low efficiency (also 4 ohm impedance). All that is used to gain power from the subwoofer amplifier at the expense of double distortion. The low efficiency of the competitor's woofers is a result of the dampening woofers cone material used to make the product more bass orientated.

The cost here is a significant loss of efficiency. Such woofers will never react to a low level signal. They are also slower than conventional woofers so the cone won't return to the zero point on time with, for example, the performance of a rapid bass drum solo.

The WHT 15" dedicated paper cone downward-firing driver will produce bass notes with ease and speed due to an enormous magnet size with very light cone material. While the biggest voice coil used by competitors is merely 3" our 4" edge wound voice coil will produce far more accurate deep bass notes.

An 8 ohm operation and a 200 watts (first 10 watts class A) amplifier will provide much clearer and more musical bass than any class D or B in 4 ohm mode.

15" and 102 dB signifies that any micro or macro detail can be pick up by such woofer long before any 88db 12" or 10" will react to the low signal.

Internal lead treatment and 40 mm thick Bass Clef walls can only help in reproducing the lowest notes with proper speed and accuracy.