Once in a great while, we encounter a product so advanced that it instantly outdates its competitors. Think of the Apple Macintosh. The jet engine. The piano. The light bulb. Would it be outrageous to place a subwoofer in this category? A week ago, I would have scoffed at that question. But the Velodyne DD-15 subwoofer has changed my mind.

 

Without Velodyne’s Digital Drive circuitry, the DD-15 would be just another first-rate subwoofer. Digital Drive, however, elevates it into a new category.

It not only sounds good, it makes the home theater experience more enjoyable for the entire family. Usually, if you turn your subwoofer up loud enough to convey the crash-bang-boom of action-movie soundtracks and the body-massaging deep bass notes of electronic music, family members who lack your enthusiasm for audio will run from the room. But the DD-15 reproduces all of these sound effects without the headache-inducing boom you hear when an SUV full of Em-inem fans pulls up behind you.  You play this subwoofer loud, but somehow it never sounds loud. And that’s just the start.

Any aficionado can tell by looking at the DD-15’s back panel that it is something special. Besides the usual array of input connectors, the DD-15 also sports a video output, an audio output and a microphone jack.  These extra features are key to Dig-ital Drive’s functionality.
Digital Drive is, in essence, a way to evaluate the DD-15’s performance in your home theater, and to optimize it to suit your room. Bass is the part of the audio spectrum that proves most troublesome.  The shape and size of your room, the composition of your walls and floor, and the positions of the subwoofer and your listening chair all affect bass dramatically. Some frequencies shake your couch while others vanish.  Your favorite jazz bassist becomes an amateur, overemphasizing some notes and nearly missing others.

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The Digital Drive Series subs boast jacks never before found on any subwoofer except Velodyne’s Signature 1812. These include a video output, a microphone input and an RS-232 control input. (Click image to enlarge)

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The best custom installers correct these problems by using complicated audio measurement instruments and professional sound processors designed to tame troublesome bass frequencies. Digital Drive incorporates these devices in the subwoofer itself.  A microphone, which you place in your favorite chair, picks up the sound.  The DD-15 provides a graphic readout of the sound on your TV screen; the graph shows you which frequencies your room is exaggerating and which it is attenuating. On-screen controls underneath the graph let you or your installer adjust the DD-15’s sound to compensate. It’s easy: If you see that one section of the bass spectrum is too loud, just select the control underneath that section and turn it down until the line on the graph is flat.  Think of it as an audio version of whack-a-mole.
Many competing subwoofers offer primitive versions of this circuit, but they do not offer as many adjustment controls as the DD-15, and they require the use of special test CDs and sound meters.  Thus, the process remains complicated. With the DD-15, though, fine-tuning is not only simple, it’s fun. I place the DD-15 where subwoofers sound best in my room—between my center and front right speakers—and it takes me only five minutes to adjust Digital Drive.

To get a quick impression of Digital Drive’s capabilities, I play the first few notes of Holly Cole’s “Train Song,” which opens with a deep, almost guttural acoustic bass line. Without Digital Drive, it sounds pretty good. I expect a subtle improvement when I activate Digital Drive, but instead enjoy the most perfect rendition of this bass line I have ever heard. The low bass rumbles authoritatively through the room, yet still I hear all the nuances—the performer’s articulation, the scrape of his fingers across the strings and the growling tone that makes this recording so appealing. Few large subwoofers convey these details; most simply shake the room. (Click image to enlarge)

I then move the DD-15 to the left front corner of my room. When I have placed other subwoofers here, they have sounded boomy and indistinct. Digital Drive cannot completely overcome this disadvantageous positioning, but the DD-15 does produce far better sound than any other subwoofer I have banished to the corner. The bottom few notes of bass guitar boom a bit, but otherwise the DD-15 maintains all the definition and precision I heard initially.

The remote control lets you access special modes, including a night mode that limits the DD-15’s volume to a preset level so you can play The Matrix Reloaded DVD without waking everyone in the house.  There are also five preset buttons: Movies, Pop/Rock,  Action/Adventure, Jazz/Classical and Custom. The presets are adjustable through another on-screen menu; your installer can, for example, boost the low bass for action movies or cut the overall bass level for chamber-music CDs. I find the factory presets tame for my taste, so I dial up the bass a little more for the Action/Adventure preset and a lot more for Pop/Rock. Once I tune the presets to my liking, I use them often.  Your installer can program the presets into a touchscreen remote control, setting up such options as switching automatically to Movies mode when you play DVDs. A sixth preset button lets you deactivate Digital Drive completely, but you’ll never use it.

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The DD-15’s on-screen display shows how even (or uneven) the subwoofer sounds in your room. To correct for a response dip or peak, simply raise or lower the sliding control underneath. (Click image to enlarge)

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By the way, the DD-15 is one in a family of four.  Velodyne also offers the DD-10, DD-12 and DD-18; the number designates the size of the woofer.

Having heard so many audio products through the years, I hesitate to proclaim any one as the best in its category—but the DD-15 is. There may be some rarefied subwoofers that play louder or deeper, but I have heard none that sounds better. For subwoofers, Digital Drive is the wave of the future.
DESCRIPTION
Powered subwoofer with integral digital equalizer and microphone. Adds extra bass to systems using small speakers

COMPONENTS
15-inch Kevlar-reinforced-cone woofer, internal 1,250-watt digital amplifier

CONNECTIONS
Audio: Five-way binding posts for speaker-level input, stereo analog line-level RCA inputs, balanced XLR input, two stereo analog line-level RCA outputs (unfiltered and high-pass-filtered at 80 hertz), stereo line-level RCA outputs for equalizer test tones

Video: Composite video and S-video
outputs

Control: RS-232 input for touchscreen control system, RS-232 output for connecting additional Digital Drive subwoofers, 1/8-inch jack for external remote sensor

DIMENSIONS
20 x 18 x 17.8 inches (hwd)

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: $3,999
CONTACT: 408.465.2800