Hi everybody, Hope i'm not too late to offer a bit of help. I just bought a rel Strata II and if you go to www.rel.net you can locate amazing reviews of the REL sub. The Robert Harley review says it better than I can. EVERY single word of that review is accurate. I use Monitor Audio M14s' which have a gold tweeter that has very high extension but can sound harsh unless balanced by the lower frequencies. The REL sub connected to the speaker mains is the way to go. I found out about REL by chance. I was listening to Vienna Acoustics speakers at Harvey Sound in NYC and stepped into another room where Sonus Faber Concertos' wre being set up. Certainly this is a good speaker but when they added the REL to it everything jumped to life. I have always hated subs. BOOM, BOOM , BOOM, BOOM, you know what I mean. This was totally different. The sub was in perfect time with the mains and added dimension, weight and detail to all the frequecies. I set mine at 49 Hz, with volume set at a level that you do not notice the sub at all until some very low frequencies are hit, and you are fooled into thinking that your mains have awesome depth. This is the only way I have been able to approach the effect of higher end speakers at a resonable cost. If you are interested I love the REL so much that I would sell mine for $950 in order to buy it again in a wood finish instead of black. Keep us posted as to what you decide. BTW Carl, do you know if the Strata II can be set up from the mains and from the LFE channel at the same time so that if you were watching a movie you get the 5.1 mix with LFE and when listening in stereo still get the main speaker outs from your amp? Even if this is possible, is this a good idea? Good luck Emil!
