SVS PB16 Ultra vs JL Fathom 113 vs ???


Looking for a high output high sound quality sub.  Read as must be capable of adding tons of clean low end for bass heavy music.  

Looking to keep it under 3k new or used.

yukispier

@fiesta75 --

"Just a question; Isn’t SPL (output) related to air movement? With a minimum of 3 inches of cone travel and very large surface area, they move a lot of air. Am I missing something?🙃"

That kind of cone travel isn’t desirable if distortion is to be kept low, which is the whole point in having more displacement area (and high eff.). If that’s what you have, in addition to high efficiency (which translates into very large boxes), and you’re firing off with 3" of excursion in a home environment, you’re after some serious-level single digit infrasonics to make them worthwhile. Displacement can also be amped up via the classical front loaded horns acting as a force multiplier, and so the horn itself is doing the heavy lifting - quite smart. Woofers in appropriate tapped horn pairings have excursion minima at the tune (which is not the case with the FLH where excursion minima sits above the tune, since the driver hidden inside is placed in a sealed chamber), and this makes it even more obvious how the enclosure relieves the driver; its cone movement may be barely visible, but the bass is nonetheless viscerally felt throughout and immersing the whole listening space quite forcefully (imagine the output with the driver moving a cm or two..). That translates into very low distortion and a very effortless reproduction, and the bass presentation here is also differentiated in how the cone travel couples to the air via the horn. At the very opposite end of the scale, efficiency-wise, is the sealed enclosure with a direct radiating driver.

I have SVS and like them. But I would not go for their 16".

I would go for two of the 13" PB-3000.