Produces all the tight, clean musical bass that you can handle. Great with both music and HT LFE. Comes with remote to power on & off as well as volume control. Nice gloss black piano finish.

Slight hum when powered, but inaudible from more than about 2 feet away. Largish box- about 22" square.

The HGS-18 is a heavy, well built speaker that weighs about 120 pounds and has a magnet that weighs about 24 pounds. The 18' speaker has a long excursion and can easily ruffle your pants leg from accross the room at normal HT listening volumes. I found my brand new HGS-18 with warranty on the internet for $1800 plus about $ delivery. Very musical with no hint of overloading or distortion at levels that rattle my room. Sounds equally impressive with cd's and especially music DVDs. The DTS DVD of the Eagles "Hell freezes over" will absolutely knock your socks off! The small remote that is supplied with the sub is handy to adjust the bass output for different levels to best match the source.
My prior sub was a M&K MX-350-THX. This sub also delivered good clean musical bass but could not shake the room or move the air that the Velo does.
My system consists of a Toshiba 3108 DVD with component inputs to a Denon 5700 AVR which inturn supplies the component inputs of my Hitachi 50" RPTV. My speakers consist of 3 M&K S-150-THX as LCR and the 2 matching surrounds. The HGS-18 is driven by the LFE output of the Denon. Although i was dissapointed by the M&K sub, I can't say enough great things about the S-150's. They are the cleanest, most neutral sound I,ve heard. Both music and HT sound great with these speakers. The dialogue is exceptionally clear and subtle nuances and ambient sounds are clearly heard. These speakers blend beautifull with the Velo. It's fun to turn the sub on & off via the remote to demonstrate how important a good sub is to the enjoyment of both HT and music. The Denon at 140WPC drives these 4 ohm speaker at all leves with ease with no signs of clipping.
My prior receiver, a medium range Yahama could not drive these at normal volumes without clipping.

In summary the HGS makes my system. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 5 STARS

Similar Products Used:

M&K MX-350-THX

Powerful bass with tremdous amount of energy to literary shake your house and neighbor's down.

The neighbors will HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!

This is an awesome sub. Mainly due to it's huge cone and powerful amp. Don't use this baby if you have senior citizens living near you!!!!!!! This baby can cause heartattacks within and 1 block radius. This sub is accurate, powerfull, deep, and full. Did I mention that this thing can rid your neighborhood of insects, pests, and stray cats??!!!! This is definitely a great sub for its price. I just love the black gloss finish with the blue LED light on the bottom. A VERY nice touch to it.

WICKEDLY INSANE LOUD

NO WEAKNESSES

VERY LOUD AND WILL SHAKE EVERYTHING IN A 500 FOOT RADIUS. I USE IT AND 6 OTHER 12" INCH SUBS, THE VELODYNE DOMANATES THE OTHER SIX TWELVES, IT GOES LOUDER AND DEEPER THEN THEY COULD EVER EVEN DREAM OF.

Musical and home theater accuracy.

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I don't understand all this HGS-18 bashing. My Stereophile mag rates the 18 a AAA and classifies the Energy sub as "not quite as musically accurate as the Velodyne...18." The Energy is rated AA. For whatever reason the Ruse is unranked. In any event, Sterophile writers do this for living and their writing is credible. So who do you trust, weekend hobiest or those who listen for a living, and whose integrity has gone unchallenged.

Similar Products Used:

Paradigm, Energy, Bag End Infrasub

It's big, It goes deep and loud.

Not exactly the most musical sub available.

This sub has great extension. Distortion is nery low. Dynamics are excellent. Used for home theathre, they're as good as it gets. However, in an system designed for music it's not the best choice. Models bye REL and the old Muse subs, although not as powerful, are FAR more musical than this Velodyne.

In REL's case, signal is drawn from the power amp, not line level. So nuances of a particular amplifier(even valve amps) are tansferred to the sub. There is no low pass crossover to degrade the sound of the main speakers.
Contrary to velodyne's claims, their crossover does degrade
sound quality in both tonality and soundstaging.

If this were a Video forum this sub would get 5 stars, But it isn't.

Similar Products Used:

REL, Muse

an amazing sub for music and movies

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this sub is an amazing sub for both music and movies. i currently own four ( that's right four ) of these hgs 18 subs and nothing can compare to this for levels of bass and how musically these subs are. my system consists of 4 velodyne hgs 18 onkyo integra tx ds 939 reciever that i am using as a pre amp , parasound hca 2205 as a power amp , cerwin vega vs 150 as main speakers , cerwin vega e715 as rears , cerwin vega cvt lcr center speaker, pioneer elite dv09 dvd player , pioneer laser disc player, pioneer elite recordable cd player, toshiba tn 61x81 61 inch projection tv it is truly an amazing system that has to be seen to believed.

Similar Products Used:

boston acoustics subs , energy etc

Just about the most output of any home theater sub!!!

a little slow for music but to be expected from an 18" cone

First off Yee, Curtis is talking about Stereophile Guide to Home Theater which lists there Recommended Components AAA, AA, A, B and C. Second this is a forum for anything having to do with Audio and I do believe Home Theater falls into that category so if someone is going to use this sub in a dedicated Home Theater would you then rate it a 5 star product?

Gary, I must tell you that I am the guy who sold the HGS-18 to Drew for $1,800 since I got a special buy from a friend of mine so when you say they are know available for $1,800 implying that dealers are slashing the prices because nobody 's buying them that would be far from the truth. Walk into any authorized dealer and I gaurantee you will not get that price.
You also mention your cars system and you should realize that to achieve that level of bass performance in a home is very difficult mainly do to the fact of the size of the two spaces, imagine listening to your home system in a walk in closet and I think you will get the idea.
I have listened to the Energy sub you mentioned and I was impressed and feel you made a good choice for yourself since it is a fine sub but it does have its positives and negatives just like the Velo and since it has been or will be dicontinued soon makes it a mute point to go on discussing it.

You both do share a common truth though that we should all trust our ears and not our eyes. If everyone liked the same thing there wouldn't be hundreds of flavors of Ice Cream would there?

I do feel that there are many other subs which do a better job on music but only a few that match the HGS-18 in a home theater setting. I feel the best way to implement a high performance Stereo/Home Theater system would be to use say 2 REL (or whatever floats your boat) subs for left & right with your mains and the HGS-18 for the center, surrounds & .1 or LF effects. Use the Music subs for Music and fire up the Big Daddy for Home Theater.

Don't try to use a hammer to remove a fly from a friends forehead and don't try and compare a high output, large woofer home theater sub with a quicker smaller music sub that you both admit does not have the output capability of the Velodyne for HT.

I just wanted to clear up some things and to let people know that if your looking for an outstanding Home Theater sub then look no further than the Velodyne HGS-18, heck even the negative reviews on here mention that it has unbelievable output for movies just look elsewhere for a music only system or better yet get away from the computer and listen for yourself, there no better judge than that!

Happy listening all

Similar Products Used:

M&K, HSU, Paradigm, Rel

High SPLs, Low distortion, Flat

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This is a class AAA sub. It produces prodigious amounts of clean undistorted flat sound at pressure levels that are un-matched by all but a couple very expensive subs. The build quality is great. This sub has made a perfect match in sysems for both Wilson Watt/Puppy 6, and Wilson Cubs. This is just a great sub. It a study in pure fun through redicules excess. It sounds great. It mates easily with my speakers.

Some people have remarked that it is great for theater use but not for music. They say it is not fast enough for music. This is a puzzling statement. I sub can't be fast, the waves it produces are too large. If it was "fast" it would be a tweater! So I assume they must mean that it has some characteristic that they hear and then describe as not fast. This is also puzzling because the Velodyne speaker is flat and has the lowest THD with its servo controlled feedback system. It is about as perfect as perfect can be. Any lower THD and it would have better specs than the amplifier and preamplifier driving it! With subs, what you measure is what you get. I suspect that they may have a room interaction with the large amount of base energy introduced by the Velodyne, giving rise to standing waves that just are not produced in the same magnitude with a smaller sub. Try moving it all over the room until it blends in. I found that the Velodyne is a perfect match with the Watt/Puppies and sounds gorgeous with all sorts of music.

Large cones are needed to produce low frequencies efficeintly or you start trading off SPL for distortion because a smaller cone has to move in larger excursions than a large cone to produce the same amount of sound pressure. And it is a simple fact that the more a cone has to move the higher the distortion it produces. Large 18 inch cones have inherently lower THD than smaller cones because they don't have to move to the limmits of their throw to produce the same amount of sound as a smaller cone. And smaller cones don't have an advantage of being faster because, once again, both large and small cones are all moving at the same speed, slow(remember they are not tweaters.)

Think about the size of that big kick drum in a drum kit. If you want to hear it accurately think big, it might suprize you. Don't buy into the idea that your speakers won't mate well with this huge speaker because it isn't really that big for what wavelength it is asked to produced. And I bet if you look at your main speakers, you probably have enough midrange and tweaters already. This 18 incher will mate with your system. Don't be fooled, this speaker is awesome fun and sounds perfect with music.

Similar Products Used:

M&K, Atlantic Tech., Wilson WOW,

Top Notch Subwoofer

Afraid my house will collapse one day.... :)

I've had this subwoofer for several months now and this is the best $2100 I've ever spent. I've amazing at the sheer output of this subwoofer.

Some other mentioned an audible hum, well about a month after I had mine, my unit developed a hum after a signal was applied. I called Velodyne and they told me my amp had gone bad. Brought it back to the dealer, who got a replacement amp from Velodyne, and the sub is perfectly quiet when on and no sound in the room.

One other thing I noticed, and I don't know if it's just the tremendous bass, but some movies, the sub sounds like it reproducing these big thuds, like someone is actually banging on my wall. Not sure if thats a limitation of the speaker, or just true low frequency output. Anyone know?