Subwoofer Reviews

Widely respected in high-end mobile sound, JL Audio has only recently navigated into home theater waters. Domestic notoriety may come quickly, however. The new JL Audio Fathom f112 subwoofer has a high-tech 12-inch driver rated at more than 3 inches peak-to-peak linear excursion, mated with a digital amp said to produce "unclipped output voltages equivalent to 1,500 watts." Weighing in at a measly 115 pounds (less than half the mass of JL's largest sub), the f112 certainly has a big-bass recipe.

The f112's electronics include flexible low-pass filtering (though most will bypass this for the receiver's crossover) and an Extreme Low Frequency trim control supplying +3/-12 dB equalization over the bottommost octave. There's also Automatic Room Optimization: Plug in the supplied test mike, and the JL adjusts its single parametric filter to "tame the primary room mode." In many cases, this will yield at least somewhat smoother and subjectively deeper-sounding bass. In my room, with the sub in my proven spot left of my front-left speaker, it resulted in subtly tighter music bass.