It was a ‘hair-raising’ experience when I attended a private listening event at the listening room of one of Malaysia’s most well-known audiophiles, Datuk Danon Han, in his bungalow in Cheras yesterday.
Well, the bass went so low to the below 10 Hz region that my hair (I still have some left) actually moved when the fight scene from Ip Man and the shooting scene from John Wick 2 were played on Danon’s uber-expensive AV system comprising the four-box Gryphon Kodo floorstanders, four ASCENDO 18-inch subwoofers, four ASCENDO 12 surround speakers and the superstar performer of his system — the ASCENDO 64-inch The64 Sub. Four Atmos speakers were also in the system.
According to Geoffrey Heinzel, Co-Managing Partner of ASCENDO, who was in town to tune the system, The64 Sub could play down to 2 Hz in Danon’s listening room.
When I sat on the sofa with The64 Sub behind me, I was treated to a back and scalp massage when more AV demo snippets such as Ready Player One was played.
Suffice it to say that it was perhaps the most ‘moving’ AV demo I have ever experienced.
Geoffrey Heinzel also revealed a new speaker which features a planar diaphragm with frequency response of 80 Hz to 20kHz and 180° dispersion.
After the AV demo, Danon played three songs via the Gryphon Kodo with and without the ASCENDO The64 Sub connected.
Was there a difference? Yes, there was a subtle difference in that acapella singers sounded fuller, acoustic instruments sounded richer, sustains and decays lingered for a longer time and reverberations in the room where the recording was made became more apparent.
According to Danon, he cannot get these improvements even when using his ASCENDO 18-inch subwoofers.
I asked Geoffrey where sound below 20 Hz come from when the lowest musical note is the last key on a normal piano which is 27.5 Hz while a few pipe organs can produce notes as low as 16.35 Hz but they are seldom played in mainstream music.
Geoffrey said subharmonics are frequencies that are fractions of the fundamental frequency. They occur at integer multiples of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and so on, creating lower-pitched components of a sound.
In many musical or acoustical systems, subharmonics can contribute to the richness or complexity of the sound, but they can also introduce distortion if not managed properly. For example, a subharmonic of a fundamental frequency of 100 Hz might occur at 50 Hz (1/2 of 100 Hz), 33.33 Hz (1/3 of 100 Hz), or 25 Hz (1/4 of 100 Hz).
He said when ASCENDO started making infrasonic subwoofers other players in the industry thought he had gone crazy. Nobody bothered about subharmonics; they only cared about harmonics and overtones.
But judging from the performance of ASCENDO’s The64 Sub, which can go down to 1-2Hz, there is little, if any, competition out there. But Geoffrey added that you don’t have to get ASCENDO’s 64-inch sub to get good infrasonics. The 32 or 24-inch subwoofers can also go low.
By the way, Datuk Danon Han is the first audiophile in Southeast Asia to own the ASCENDO The64 Sub.
ASCENDO subwoofers and speakers are distributed in Malaysia by AV Designs.
