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HD Equipment

Today's Show:
Anyone who owns a home theater system knows that a Subwoofer is essential to the experience. Watching a movie in HD with surround sound is great, but some scenes require that you feel the bass. A subwoofer does just that. An issue some have is Subwoofer placement. Its not always convenient to place the subwoofer next to the receiver. This requires that you run cable to a spot that is more conducive for the placement of the speaker. The ULS-15 has a nice feature that makes this no longer necessary. The subwoofer has a wireless connection that in most cases works great. More on that later.

HSU Research ULS-15 Subwoofer (MSRP $1299 - $1499)
ULS-15 At a Glance


The subwoofer is designed for what HSU Research calls a huge room. That's 6,000 cubic feet or a room that measures 20X20X15 feet. For our friends outside the US that's approximately 160 cubic meters or a room that measure 6X6X4.5 meters. The unit was tested in Ara's Media room that has a volume of 2,500 cubic feet and by HSU's standards the room is in-between a small and midsized room.

The people at HSU Research include a diagram that provides tips on unpacking the unit. At first I thought that was a nice touch, but after I followed the instructions I determined that it was necessary. The subwoofer weighs 84 pounds and is a bit difficult to get out of the box. Following the instructions are a life saver.

The unit measures 18.875"(h) x 18"(w) x19.25"(d) 20.25" (d) with grille and looks very nice and solidly built. The fit and finish of the ULS-15 is superior. Its bigger than what it replaced but Ara's wife did not mind it so much. She is either used to the big home theater gear or liked the looks of the subwoofer. It comes in five finishes. The most basic, Satin Black, goes for $1299 while the Piano Black goes for $1499.

Setup
At the basic level, you connect power then you connect the LFE output from the receiver and power on. If you use wireless. You connect the LFE output from the receiver to the wireless transmitter and you toggle the Wired/Wireless switch to wireless and you are good to go. The transmitter and subwoofer need to have a line of site so if your electronics are hidden you need to bring out a cable into the room with the subwoofer and then connect it to the wireless transmitter.

There is an included calibration CD with instructions for proper setup. We tried the subwoofer with and without the calibration. To get the most out of this subwoofer you will want to do the calibration. It is not too technical but you will need a Sound Pressure Meter. You can pick one up at Radio Shack for about $50.

The back of the unit has Volume control, phase switch, crossover in or out, crossover frequency control, and ULF trim to compensate for room gain at very low frequencies.

Sound
Simply amazing! The 15 inch subwoofer packs a huge punch. The sound is clear and undistorted. According to the manufacturer the subwoofer can go down to 10Hz in most rooms. We were not able to measure this for our room but we can say that we were able to notice subtleties with this subwoofer that we could not hear with our current gear.

We ran our extreme test with the Dolby True HD demo disc, the scene from "The Last Mimzy" and we nearly brought down the walls of the house. There was so much sound moving through the room that you could feel it. We also watched the Seabiscuit vs War Admiral challenge race. You would have thought that the horses ran through our media room it was so lifelike. The subwoofer added a higher level or reality to the movie. So much so that Ara's kids stopped what they were doing and came upstairs to watch (we mean feel) what was going on.
We would have put in the Alien Contact Scene at the end of Close Encounters, but we didn't want our windows blown out ;-) In general, every movie we watched that had any LFE effects was enhanced by this subwoofer.

Music benefited as well. The bass was clean and crisp. Ara's preference is rock and roll so there is not that real pronounced bass like there is in say hip hop. Even still you could feel the bass line in almost everything we listened to. We did have to turn up the volume to achieve that effect however. Classical music benefitted from the speaker as well.

Wireless
The wireless does what HSU advertised but a few tips will help you get the most out of it. The manual says that the transmitter and subwoofer need a clean line of site. When the transmitter and subwoofer were in the same room the subwoofer performed perfectly. We were able to achieve this at a range of about 18 feet, the maximum of Ara's Media Room. However, moving the subwoofer less than 10 feet away in the adjacent room resulted in unacceptable performance. HSU does not advertise a maximum range because mileage will vary based on interference and the layout of the room. They do recommend placing the transmitter as high as possible to maximize the distance.
If there is excessive interference on one channel you can select another one that has less noise on it. We found that in our environment the wireless connection provided very clean sound.

Conclusion
If you have a upper middle to high end system and a large room you should really consider the ULS-15 subwoofer. At $1500 its not for everyone but for those of you that can afford one won't be one bit disappointed!

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