Everything became more crisp, clear and felt more powerful. - Chad G.

https://www.avsforum.com/posts/63849664/

The following is a unsolicited review from our client Chad from Illinois. Click the link above to read the review in its entirety.

"As I was unboxing them I was just blown away by the absolute perfection and attention to every single detail paid to every single aspect of these units. They really are a pleasure to look at and touch. They are built and finished better than anything else I own.I got them hooked up and ran room correction and it was crazy...even the test tones sounded bad assed. The subwoofers are totally silent. I have experience with "hum” in the past and it is very frustrating to get to the bottom of.

Next I started listening to my favorite songs and I just couldn't believe it. I adjusted the gain to my liking and was just amazed and the sound and feeling I was getting from these things. The fidelity, resolution and impact is much better than I was expecting. It is one thing to read about and have LDLC explained to you, but please believe me when I say it is incredible to experience. I was expecting the typical tradeoffs talked about endlessly in every "which subwoofer should I buy, sealed or ported, and subwoofer comparison " thread I have read over the years. Imagine my disbelief when I realized that I had taken a substantial step forward in all aspects that mattered to me. I couldn't believe it. I finally now have the clean powerful, articulate and impactful bass I always wanted without any of the negative trade offs I thought I had to make. The dynamics and resolution are crazy, I mean the sound just starts and stops with such precision now. I immediately noticed and appreciated the lack of mechanical noise and resonances. Everything became more crisp, clear and felt more powerful. I really am hearing new details for the first time in my favorite content. I really look forward to the time I can spend enjoying my new and improved set up. It is hard to explain but, the room became so much quieter. I can still feel all of the tactile response in the suspended floor and on my body but there is no bloat. I had no idea a subwoofer could be so quiet reproducing subsonic frequencies. That goes double for room noise.

Two C18 subwoofers in a living room surround sound system.

I have now had about 6 months with my C18L2’s and my appreciation for the company and products has only increased. My only regret was not making the upgrade sooner.As much as I love good audio I have always had a difficult time with the technical side of calibration. I knew I would never be able to get ever last spec of performance from these on my own. Out of the box with RoomPerfect RC and adjusting the gain gave me very enjoyable results, but purchasing a product from Harbottle doesn’t stop there. Early October I had a Harbottle Audio authorized integrator come and do a calibration. The integrator was great to communicate with and a pleasure to meet in person after talking several times on the phone to find out what my tastes and goals were for performance. He showed up promptly and immediately got to work testing the subwoofer and checking that everything is running to spec. I mean EVERYTHING, all of the parameters, settings and performance specs. There are like 500 qc checkpoints on each sub. When I loaded up some of my favorite music and movies to demonstrate the changes I was floored. It is a very good feeling to KNOW you have the best subwoofer running at peak performance. My main speakers have never sounded so good. I was really surprised. I But wait, I have said this before…it even gets better. In addition to getting the peace of mind that comes from knowing everything is running optimally you also get an entire year added to the warranty! For me this was very reassuring. All of the tremendous amount of work that went into the sub, DSP and calibration get saved and stored with the company so if anything ever happens solutions can be found in the best way possible. I did not just buy two world class subwoofers, I got the entire world class package.

I have only owned ported subs in the past and have spent years on the forums reading and rereading that it takes 3 sealed subs to equal the output of a similar spec’ed ported subwoofer. I took it as gospel. Being as I was coming from a JTR CAP 4000 I was a little apprehensive.

When I read Michael Steven’s (Youthman) comment on Facebook “Harbottle makes great subs with similar performance as JTR they just cost 3 times as much.” I have to chuckle and wonder if he has ever heard a Harbottle Audio subwoofer. I mean on paper a CAP should smoke the C18 but that was not my experience at all. I understand he is a salesman/agent for JTR, but I have had them both in the same room at the same time, there is simply no comparison to be made on performance, build quality or engineering to me. The increase in dynamics and lack of compression and distortion is stunning. Please do yourself a favor and go to Harbottle Audios website and look around if you are considering an end game subwoofer. The website is chuck full of information documented studies and science based data. When you call Cody you get knowledge, science, and physics not sales pitch or hype so be prepared. I am always careful asking engineers questions about how and why things work the way they do, but he would always take the time to explain the physics and engineering principles completely in a way that I could understand (not as easy as it sounds. I have pages of notes from my interactions with him."