Wisdom Audio S90i User Manual
Owner’s Manual
Sage S90i
In-Wall Subwoofer
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................4
About this manual ..................................................................................................4
Please register your system ....................................................................................4
Description .....................................................................................................5
Regenerative Transmission Line™ ...........................................................................5
Unpacking the S90i .........................................................................................6
Remote Setup via Modem ......................................................................................8
Room Acoustics & Placement ..........................................................................9
Start With the Room ..............................................................................................9
Rigid Walls ......................................................................................................9
Speaker Placement ...............................................................................................10
Left & Right Speakers ....................................................................................10
Center Channel .............................................................................................10
Surround Speakers ........................................................................................ 11
Subwoofer Placement .......................................................................................... 11
Room Treatment ..................................................................................................12
Professional Acoustic Design ...............................................................................12
References ........................................................................................................... 13
Installing the S90i in a Wall ..........................................................................14
Installing the S90i in the Ceiling ...................................................................16
Tips and Ideas ......................................................................................................24
Black out the HVAC and snorkel ...................................................................25
Limited access situations ...............................................................................26
Installing under the oor ...............................................................................26
Making the S90i Connections .......................................................................28
Optimizing the System ..................................................................................29
North American Warranty ............................................................................30
Standard Warranty ...............................................................................................30
Harsh Conditions Use ..........................................................................................30
Obtaining Service .........................................................................................31
Specications ................................................................................................32
S90i Dimensions ...........................................................................................33
Notes .............................................................................................................34
Introduction
Congratulations on purchasing your Wisdom Audio in-wall subwoofer. The
S90i’s Regenerative Transmission Line™ technology delivers tremendous bass
performance in terms of depth, dynamics, and distortion resulting in articulate bass that integrates seamlessly with high-resolution main speakers such as
Wisdom Audio’s Sage Series.
About this manual This manual focuses on the S90i subwoofer itself. In order to fully understand
the system, we recommend you also review the manual for the SC-1 System
Controller, without which this subwoofer will not perform correctly.
While we expect your local Wisdom Audio dealer to take care of the setup and
calibration of the system, we still recommend that you at least briey review this
and the other manuals (SC-1, SA-series ampliers) to understand the system’s full
capabilities.
Please register your system To register your warranty, please complete the form at the following address on
the internet:
http://www.wisdomaudio.com/registration/
Doing so will ensure that there will be no delays should you ever require warranty service. If accessing the internet is inconvenient, you can send a copy of
the sales receipt (showing your name, address and the products purchased) to
the address shown in the North American Warranty section of this manual.
Wisdom Audio does not and will not ever share its mailing list with other companies. Nor do we expect to contact you frequently, since you are buying a
product that should last a lifetime. However, we would like to be in a position to
contact you should a software update become available for the system control-
ler (as an example).
Lastly, please keep your sales receipt in a safe and easily found place. If you do
not register your purchase with the company, it is your only proof of warranty.
4
Description
Your Sage S90i subwoofer uses a modern implementation
of an old idea for high quality, low distortion bass reproduction. While the roots of the Regenerative Transmission Line™ go back to the 1950’s, it is the combination of
modern computer modeling and the vastly more powerful
motors of contemporary driver design that make the RTL™
so special.
Regenerative
Transmission Line™
There is a class of bass enclosures that has been around
since the 1950’s, which can be described generically as
“low frequency tapped waveguides” or “tapped pipes.” It
was an idea that was a bit ahead of its time then, since fully
optimizing its use required both powerful drivers and computer modeling. But if you are into such things, check out
US Patent 2,765,864 (led in 1955), and an AES paper published in 1959, “Analysis of a Low Frequency Loudspeaker
System.” We have published both on our website for your
convenience, at
http://www.wisdomaudio.com/support_documents.php
We have utilized sophisticated modeling software in order
to fully optimize our enclosures, and have developed driv-
ers that are specically optimized for this application. We
call our unique implementation of this relatively old idea a “Regenerative Transmission Line™” subwoofer, or “RTL” sub for short.
All dynamic drivers develop energy on both sides of the diaphragm, with the
rear energy being 180° out of phase with the front energy. If you allow the
driver to operate in free space (no enclosure), the front and rear energies largely
cancel each other out — especially at low frequencies.
In our Regenerative Transmission Line™ subwoofer, the energy from the back
side of the driver is sent along a long, folded path in such a way that its lowest
frequencies arrive back at the front side of the driver in phase, effectively summing to an increase of 6 dB in output. Thus, the energy from both sides of the
woofer cone is used in a productive way, resulting in a substantial reduction in
distortion and an effective surface area double compared to what you would
otherwise expect. As an example, the effective radiating surface area in the S90i
is roughly equivalent to a 13” diameter round woofer, yet the enclosure ts in a
5.5” deep stud bay.
The results are quite stunning. Low frequencies are strikingly dynamic and responsive, and integrate quite seamlessly with the fast and detailed Sage Series
planar magnetic hybrids. As an example, the S90i is easily hidden in the wall,
yet is at to 20 Hz and can output in excess of 120 dB at 20 Hz (measured at its
output port to minimize the room’s effects on the measurement).
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Unpacking the S90i
The Wisdom Audio Sage S90i subwoofer is a substantial piece of equipment.
Please exercise caution when unpacking your S90i to ensure that you do not
strain yourself from its (perhaps unexpected) weight.
Caution! Do not attempt to lift your S90i by yourself. Unpacking this
subwoofer is easy for two people, but it is unwise for a single person
to attempt doing so.
Do not attempt to lift your S90i while bending or twisting from the
waist. Use your legs for lifting, not your back.
Always stand as straight as possible and keep the S90i close to your
body to reduce strain on your back.
The S90i is fully assembled on delivery:
The front surface has a smooth, resin-coated paper nish that can be taped and
spackled, and then painted to match the adjacent drywall (gypsum board).
6
The end of the speaker that contains the grille assembly also includes the “pigtail” for connecting the speaker to the system, as well as some “feet” to support
the S90i slightly above the sole plate, to allow room for the wiring and the base-
board of the nished wall. (Rooms with unusually tall baseboards may require
the S90i to be mounted somewhat higher still.)
The grille itself is friction-t into its frame using rubber channels on its edges.
Removing the grille exposes the black service panel, which only needs to be
removed in the unlikely case that one or more drivers needed to be replaced
after installation in the wall.
The Regenerative Transmission Line™ opening occupies a little less than half the
space covered by the grille.
7
The serial number for the S90i can also be found on the inside of the opening
for the Regenerative Transmission Line.
8
Room Acoustics & Placement
Wisdom Audio believes in equalization. Assume for a moment that you had a
“perfect” loudspeaker: as soon as you place it in your room, its perfection is
gone. In fact, even good rooms often introduce deviations of 20 dB to the response of the system. This is particularly true in the bottom two octaves, where
a subwoofer operates.
It seems strange to us to worry about tenths-of-a-decibel differences between
one component and another when there are 10-20 dB problems right there in
the room with you.
At the same time, room equalization is not a panacea. It does not solve all prob-
lems. In fact, and somewhat paradoxically, EQ works best when it has the least
to do. It is best used as the “nishing touch” on an otherwise good system. Un-
fortunately, most people do not understand that the most important component
in their system is their listening room.
This manual does not have the space for a full description of everything that
goes into creating excellent room acoustics; doing so would require a textbook
of several hundred pages. Instead, we will give you some ideas, and some references to pursue should you want to learn more.
Start With the Room There are many myths oating around pertaining to what a “good room” should
be like. One of the most common is that it should have non-parallel walls. Without going into the details, we recommend staying with rectangular rooms whose
dimensions do not share common divisors.
Thus a room with dimensions of 8’ by 16’ by 20’ would be quite poor (since the
dimensions are all divisible by a length of 4’, and 16 is also a multiple of 8). By
contrast, a room whose dimensions are 9’ by 16’ by 29’ would be much better,
since none of the dimensions are mathematically related to one another.
There are innite variations on this idea. If you have the exibility to choose (or
modify) your room dimensions to avoid such problems, do so. Either way, our
room correction will be a big help.
Rigid Walls Another myth that should be dispelled is the notion that the walls (and ceiling
and oor) of the room should be extremely rigid in order to reproduce good
bass. Rigid, inexible walls reect energy extremely well; thus you will keep
more of the bass energy in the room. This much is true. However, those rigid
walls will only increase the amplitude of the standing waves that your room
naturally supports. In simple terms, you will have more bass, but it will also be
more irregular, with larger peaks and valleys in the response.
Walls that ex a bit (but do not rattle) are much better. Coincidentally, traditional American residential construction standards (sheet rock on wooden studs) are
not a bad place to start. You can do better still with professional help, but studs
and sheet rock are better than poured concrete. (If your listening room is in the
basement, a false wall can easily be built in front of the concrete. You probably
need something like this for insulation and aesthetics anyway.)
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The ultimate in dedicated listening room construction involves the design and
construction of oating walls, ceiling and oor. This approach yields the added
benet (when done properly) of providing outstanding acoustic isolation from
adjacent spaces as well as superb bass reproduction. This approach goes well
beyond the scope of an owner’s manual; if you are interested, you should contact a professional acoustician who has specialized in this sort of domestic room
design.
Speaker Placement Within the room itself, placement of the speakers and the listener will have a
profound effect on the performance of the system, particularly below 300 Hz
or so. There is no “perfect” position that will solve all problems, but nding the
best compromise will make it easier to solve the remaining problems with the
SC-1.
Your Wisdom Audio dealer can help you with optimizing your speaker placement, which is never quite as simple as it seems it should be. The characteristics
you should listen for are several:
Left & Right Speakers Goal #1: Stable, 3-dimensional stereo imaging
This usually requires reasonable symmetry within the room, and a bit of space
between the speakers and adjacent side walls (to minimize the adverse effects
of early rst reections). Mono (correlated) pink noise can help here, though it
does not replace listening to music. With pink noise playing in both speakers,
you should hear a tightly-dened little “ball” of pink noise oating in space exactly halfway between the speakers.
Goal #2: Smooth, consistent bass
Oft-cited rules of thumb for smoother bass reproduction include both “placing
the speakers at different distances from the side walls vs. the wall behind them,”
and “placing them at ‘odd fractions’ of the room’s dimensions” (e.g., fractions
in which the denominator is an odd number, like 1⁄3, 2⁄5, 2⁄7, etc.). But nothing
replaces your experience in your room, combined with your dealer’s experience in a variety of rooms. Playing pink noise through the woofer sections of
your Wisdom Audio speakers (with the microphone at the listening position, and
prior to doing any equalization) and watching the results on a Real Time Analyzer (RTA) will let you see the results of your labors.
Center Channel Center channel height
Once you have a solid stereo image up front (when listening only to the Left and
the Right speakers), you need a center channel speaker for multichannel reproduction. It should be centered between the Left and Right, and centered on the
screen’s location, preferably at the same height as the Left and Right speakers.
This presents an obvious problem: you cannot place a speaker in front of your
television screen.
Ideally, a center channel speaker would be behind an acoustically transparent
front projection screen and would match the Left and Right speakers. Doing so
would ensure the best possible consistency of tonal balance, image height, and
dynamic capabilities for the critical center channel.
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Another way to achieve similar results without relying on an acoustically transparent front projection screen is to use a total of four front speakers:
• two widely-spaced line source speakers handle the Left and Right
LR
C
Sub 1
Sub 2
L
s
R
s
R
b
L
b
22°
30°
90°
110°
135°
150°
0°
channels;
• two line source speakers closely anking the screen both play the
(mono) center channel signal.
This approach creates a stunningly convincing “phantom” center image that appears to emerge directly from the center of the picture, while allowing you to
use any display device you choose.
Failing an acoustically transparent screen or a phantom center channel approach, the important thing is to match the tonal and dynamic capabilities of the
Left and Right speakers while minimizing the change in image height as a sound
is panned across the front stage. Wisdom Audio has designed horizontally-oriented planar magnetic hybrid speakers that will match your Sage loudspeakers
superbly; place them as close to the edge of the screen as is practical.
Surround Speakers Surround channel geometry
In a 5.x channel system, the surround should be placed either directly to the
sides of or slightly behind the listening area (90°–110° from the center channel,
as seen from above). In a 7.x system, the surround speakers should be closer to
90° from the center speaker, and the surround back speakers should be at approximately 135°–150° from the center speaker. This conforms to industry standards, and ensures that you hear what was intended from a spatial placement
point of view. (Too often, the surround speakers are all behind the listeners, cre-
ating a big “hole” in the soundeld between the front and the back.)
One possible exception to these guidelines: if you have a THX®-certied pro-
Subwoofer Placement Subwoofers offer somewhat greater exibility in placement, since the frequen-
cessor and are using the THX Advanced Speaker Array™ circuitry, you should
follow the guidelines in your owner’s manual for the processor. Using this
technology, it can actually be more effective to have the rear speakers in a 7.x
system directly behind you and immediately adjacent to each other.
cies they reproduce are not readily localizable by the human ear. This is due to
the fact that the wavelengths they reproduce are more than ten feet (3 meters)
long, but our ears are located only about 6-7 inches (17 cm) apart. Thus these
a 7.2 channel system layout
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