Velodyne Acoustics CHT-12Q User Manual 2

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Australian Hi-Fi

40 |

Australian Hi-Fi

equipment

review

though it also has an equally large number
with infinite baffle enclosures! Indeed this
time around it was my turn to be surprised by
the sheer number of models Velodyne has in
its range—it’s quite incredible!

What is also incredible is that the CHT-12Q
has Velodyne’s auto-equalisation circuitry,
which automatically adapts the frequency
response of the subwoofer for best results in
your room. To use it, all you have to do is
position Velodyne’s tiny microphone at your
usual listening position, using the miniature
microphone stand that’s also supplied, and
plug the other end of the microphone lead
into the mini socket on the front panel of the
subwoofer that I mentioned earlier (which
is so much more sensible than putting the
socket on the rear, as was the case with earlier
Velodyne subwoofers!). Then—after making
sure the CHT-12Q is switched on, all you
have to do is press the ‘EQ’ button on the
remote. That’s it. In a few moments you’ll
hear the first of a series of frequency sweeps
and, after 40 seconds or so, the job is done
and you simply disconnect the microphone,
lead and microphone stand and pack them all
away for if you ever need to use them again.
I should note that you don’t have to use the
auto-tuning if you don’t want to. If you just
plug the CHT-12Q into mains power and
connect the LFE output of your AV receiver
to the LFE input on the rear panel of the
CHT-12Q, you can be up-and-running with
just a flick of the on/off switch and a push of
the volume control. However, the simplicity
of the calibration procedure is such that it
will only take a few extra minutes, so why
wouldn’t you?

Unfortunately, although the inbuilt
calibration can match the CHT-12Q to your
room, it can’t match its output to that of
your main speakers or to your AV receiver.
So you will still have to set the CHT-12Q’s
high-pass control and volume control by
ear—as you would with all other subwoofers.
If your AV receiver is a recent model and has
its own inbuilt calibration, you can use this

to aid set-up. However, note that you must
always run the CHT-12Q calibration BEFORE
you run your AV receiver’s calibration. (Also,
since most AV receivers have only a limited
calibration range, it’s still better to set up by
ear first, and then run the two automated
calibration routines.

When the Velodyne equalises itself, it does
so for the flattest response, which it then makes
available ‘au naturel’ in the Jazz/Classical
preset position. This ensures tight, clean,
extended—and perhaps most importantly—
accurate bass response, but when you’re
playing video games, or watching an action
movie, you don’t necessarily want accurate
bass, you want ‘oomph’ and excitement!
This is where the other three presets come in:
‘Movies’, ‘R&B/Rock’ and ‘Games’. The titles
are self-explanatory, but of course you can use
any setting you like, no matter what you’re
doing. If you’re playing a video game and
you think the game sounds the best when
you’re using the ‘Movies’ preset, then use the
‘Movies’ preset! There are no rules.

The CHT-12Q’s driver has a cone of
reinforced fibre that’s driven by a two-layer
copper voice coil. I measured the cone as
being 330mm in diameter overall, a little
larger than claimed by Velodyne, but the
Theile/Small diameter is 258mm, which
gives a cone area (Sd) of 523cm². The bass
reflex slot beneath measures 345×31mm.
The amplifier plate on the rear has the usual
rotary low-pass crossover filter, but it works
‘backwards’ to usual, so that the subwoofer
operates at its maximum bandwidth (120Hz)
when the control is fully counter-clockwise,
and at its minimum (40Hz) when it’s fully
clockwise. The crossover slope is 12dB/octave
(24dB/octave ultimate). The volume control is
far from conventional, being push-button(s)
rather than rotary. (However the only time I
can imagine you would use the push-buttons
is if you have mislaid the remote or let the
batteries run flat.) Below the volume control
is a two-position slider switch marked ‘Stand­by’ and ‘Always On’ that self-evidently

Velodyne obviously intends its CHT-Q

Series subwoofers to be used in home theatre
applications. This is not mere supposition on
my part: it’s printed right there on the front
of the Owners’ Manual: ‘Remote Controlled
Home Theatre Subwoofers.’ However, proving
that you can have your cake and eat it too, I
found that I would be more than happy to use
Velodyne’s CHT-12Q in an audiophile-quality
home hi-fi system.

The Equipment

Upon opening the packaging, and placing
this relatively small subwoofer (and I mean
small—it’s only 457mm high, 381mm wide
and 495mm deep) on the floor, the very first
thing I did was remove the front grille, be­neath which I found something surprising.
No, it wasn’t the input for a microphone—I
quite expected that. What was unexpected
was the slot at the bottom of the front panel.
I had been labouring under the impression
that all Velodyne’s subwoofers used infinite
baffle enclosures, yet here was the CHT-12Q
with a bass reflex enclosure… though I noted
when reading the specifications that Velo­dyne obviously prefers to call it ‘slot-loaded
bass reflex.’

I was actually quite pleased about the bass
reflex port, because although infinite baffle
(sealed) subwoofers have extraordinarily
smooth and extended bass, bass reflex
subwoofers are far more efficient (because
they harness the energy from the rear of the
cone that is completely lost in an infinite
baffle design) and because I personally think
the bass from a reflex enclosure has a little
more bottom-end ‘punch’—especially on
transients—which I particularly like, and
therefore I am prepared to trade this against
a slight loss of deep bass extension. However,
when I did a quick check-up via the miracle
of the Internet, it transpired that I was
labouring under a mis-impression regarding
Velodyne using only infinite baffle, because
Velodyne actually has a very large number
of subwoofers with bass reflex enclosures…

Velodyne
CHT-12Q

Subwoofer

(DEQ-12R*)

*Velodyne Note: Outside North America, the DEQ-R is known as CHT-Q.

LAB REPORT

Readers interested in a full technical
appraisal of the performance of
the Velodyne CHT-12Q Subwoofer
should continue on and read the
LABORATORY REPORT published
on the following pages. Readers
should note that the results
mentioned in the report, tabulated
in performance charts and/or
displayed using graphs and/or
photographs should be construed
as applying only to the specific
sample tested.

Australian Hi-Fi

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41Australian Hi-Fi | 41

lowest bass of any available musical recording:
‘Big Notes’ (DMP CD-454). You have to like
Flim and the BBs, but if you do, about five
minutes into Funhouse you’ll hear a note at
5Hz.

My favourite deep bass movie is still Jurassic
Park, and I can confirm that when listening
through the Velodyne, T Rex really stomps!
Yes, Maria, the earth truly does move… but
it’s not just the depth of the bass, even with
movies that don’t have extended bass, the
Velodyne’s performance was such that it
always provided a superb foundation for car
crash scenes, explosions, special effects… all
manner of cataclysmic events. Throughout it
all, I have to say that with rare exceptions,
no matter what preset I started on, I always
gravitated back to Preset 1 when watching
movies, and most of the time, the Preset
remained on 1 even when I was listening to
music.

Conclusion

Music or movies, Velodyne’s CHT-12Q is a
great little subwoofer that will always have a
place in my heart as the subwoofer responsi­ble for converting me to the joys of remote­controlled subwoofing. Paul Cameron

on the top of the front panel because in my
listening room the sub sits directly below my
screen, so I would otherwise have found the
bright blue glow more than a little distracting.
However I also appreciated the fact that the
display was so large and bright when I did
want to read it, because I found it easy to read
from clear across the room, even without my
glasses!

I thought the most important test I
could make first-up was to establish whether
Velodyne’s high-tech circuitry actually made
a difference to the sound. So to evaluate
this, I first listened to the CHT-12Q set to
Jazz/Classical when it was fresh out of the
box, using the ‘factory’ setting, then without
changing anything at all, I equalised it for
my room and then listened again. Right from
the get-go, it was immediately obvious that
the sound had improved. It wasn’t, perhaps,
quite the earth-shaking difference I thought it
might be, but then again I thought the CHT­12Q sounded very good straight ‘out-of-the­box’ and my listening room is a particularly
subwoofer-friendly one, being of good
proportions and equipped with properly­positioned bass absorbers.

Having established the CHT-12Q’s high­tech credentials, the next step was to listen
to see how well it delivered its bass. I quickly
discovered that its bass response extended
further towards single-figure frequency figures
than was necessary for any of the CDs or DVDs
I have in my collection. By way of example,
one of my all-time favourite CDs, Enya’s
‘Watermark’, digs down to 27Hz, which may
come as a surprise to many of you. (Those of
you with similarly discerning musical tastes
to my own will be able to check this out by
replaying your own copy: it’s Track 10—The
Longships). Another surprise can be found
on jazz pianist Warren Bernhardt’s album
‘Reflections’ (DMP). Listen to Stone Ground
and you’ll hear a sustained synthesised note
at 23Hz! Then again, maybe the deep bass
on this disc isn’t so surprising, because DMP
also makes the disc that I understand has the

switches between signal-sensing activation
and ‘On.’ (There’s also a 240V on/off switch,
located adjacent to the fused three-pin IEC
socket.)

Velodyne provides a full set of inputs and
outputs on the CHT-12Q, with low-level L/R
inputs and L/R outputs via RCA sockets, with
the left-channel RCA input doubling as an LFE
input. High-level (speaker-level) inputs are
via banana/screw terminals. These terminals
have a fixed high-pass filter that turns over at
120Hz for the pass-through signal.

Last, but not least, there’s an IR input. This
enables you to run a wire to a remote infra­red relay sensor, enabling you to locate the
subwoofer in a cupboard, or somewhere else
that would normally be out of range of the IR
signal from the remote.

Listening Sessions

I have always viewed remote controls for
subwoofers as superfluous to requirements,
simply because setting subwoofer volume is
usually a ‘set and forget’ operation, because
once you have correctly matched the vol­ume against that of your main and surround
speakers, the subwoofer automatically ‘tracks’
whatever volume you set using your AV re­ceiver, so there’s no real need to control vol­ume remotely.

However, seeing that the CHT-12Q offers
so much more than an ordinary subwoofer, I
found the remote almost indispensable. And,
once I became accustomed to using it, I have
to admit that I found it very handy indeed,
to the point where I found myself fiddling
around with the volume far more than I ever
have with any subwoofer I have ever owned
or reviewed that didn’t have a remote control,
and finding that there were benefits in doing
so. I confess that whenever I watched a movie,
I also switched across all the presets, to make
sure I was getting the best impact from each
soundtrack… and even this switching became
more than a little ‘more-ish’. I did appreciate
the fact that you can use the remote to switch
off the rather large and rather bright display

• Auto - Eq

• Very small

• Remote control

• ‘Backwards’

Lo-pass filter

Velodyne CHT-12Q Subwoofer

Brand: Velodyne
Model: CHT-12Q
Category: Subwoofer
RRP: $1,399
Warranty: Two Years
Distributor: Revolution Technologies
Address: 30 Miller Street

Murarrie, QLD 4172

T: [phone]
F: [phone]
E: [e-mail]
W: www.revolutiontechnologies.com.au