Pairing Planar Speakers With A Subwoofer (Eminent Technology)

Hi I have Magnepan 1.7s... originally I had a Rel T7 sub paired. Honestly, IMO it was just ok and I was wrestling with a love/hate relationship with the Maggies. Then my Rel blew a Diode.. so while it was down I quick picked up PSB subwoofer cheap. Crazy as this may seem.. the PSB pulled everything together. My sound never sounded better.. for all genres of music. I fixed the Rel, sold the PSB and immediately regretted it... bought a new PSB and have been happy ever since & it keeps sounding better and better as it broke in. It matches so good with my Maggie’s that I’ve actually considered starting a thread on it... I think other Maggie owners may be interested. Just another thing to consider.
good luck!

I use a pair of 12" Rythmik subs with little Maggies and they integrate seamlessly (to my ear, anyhow).  I use Audyssey to effect the xover and add room correction

The hybrid LF8 presents a different (lesser)  challenge given the cone bass driver, so I don't see why it would be tough to pair with a sub.

I don't know much about the Eminent speakers but they have always intrigued me. I currently have two sets of ESLs. Quad ESL 57s and Music Reference ESLs. I shied away from subwoofers because I thought they made things a bit too complex and I never could get used to the idea of bass being driven by plate amps. So I listened to my ESL 57s with my OTLs and enjoyed what bass they could muster, which quite frankly was more than I expected. Then Roger Modjeski introduced me to his Airspring woofer system that he uses with his ESLs, which by design only go down to 100 Hz, so they require something to provide the bottom end. He fixed up a Class A/B solid state amp with a low pass filter for me and I made two of the woofer boxes myself. Once I put that in my system there was no going back.

Today I use a Beveridge RM-3 as the crossover with 100 Hz boards, my OTLs on top driving the ESL 57s or the MR ESLs, and a Luxman M-02 driving not 2 but 4 woofer boxes spread asymmetrically around the room. This has done more to improve the sound in my room more than anything else I have ever tried. So for me biamping was the ticket and I imagine you can attain the same effect with good subwoofers. In fact I'd recommend checking out the Audiokinesis Swarm which is a nice little system that would play well with the LF8s.

What happened to the DD-18 on your list? 

If you still have it I'd slave it from a 10" or 12" DD Plus for a sort of modular 1812. I had one brief experience a few years ago setting up a pair of DD-10 Plus with a receiver equipped with Audyssey (I don't recall which level or the setup details). In that room the Velodyne Manual Room Optimization procedure did a noticeably better job of the basic integration than Audyssey not to mention the two custom movie presets.

I'm sure there have been Audyssey upgrades since then. I found it to be so useful with the rest of the system in this particular room I wouldn't dare dismiss its capabilities.    

  

m-db...my DD-18 is for home theater only.

I want an identical stereo pair of subs for music only.