Epik Legend Subwoofer review

25 Jan 2011. Wouter De Raeve

This month I had the honour and pleasure to test a subwoofer once more. Nothing less than the Epik Legend was there to put the fire to my regular SVS. Epik? Never heard of you say? Well, then it's about time you get to know them!

Epik
Epik is not very well known in Europe, because until recently they were only available in the US. Since a few months however they made an agreement with L-Sound from Norway. L-Sound is also well known as the only European importer of the famous SVS-subwoofer, of which my own PB12+ is an example. L-Sound does not use a dealer network. You order your subwoofer, whether it is an SVS or an Epik, directly through them. Their after sales service is excellent, so you do not need to worry if anything should be wrong with your sub.

As they already housed the SVS range, L-Sound must be convinced that Epik can add surplus to their range. Epik is in America a very well respected player in the subwoofer area, among others because since their Epik Empire model they showed a somewhat different philosophy then other subwoofer manufacturers.

Legend
The Legend is the smaller brother of the Empire. The Empire was quite innovative. It uses two drivers facing each other. Moreover the Empire and the Epik are sealed subwoofer, so there is no bass port. This remarkable choice to build a sealed subwoofer using two active drivers, was made very consciously though, as it deals with some of the issues quite efficiently.

First of all ported subs have a few drawbacks. One of them is the possibility of port noise at higher volumes (or when poorly designed). This happens when the air going through the port is making friction noises because of its high speed. Secondly ported subs are tuned to perform optimally until a certain frequency. Below that frequency there is a large decay. This can be audible, especially with smaller subwoofers, who often are tuned relatively high (30Hz or even higher). This leads to the third problem, necessary to tackle the above mentioned issues, being you need a big volume. Size does matter, but not everybody can appreciate a big subwoofer in their room.

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