It was time to do some listening tests

War of the Worlds

By this time I had been at this for the better part of six hours and it was getting late. So what did I do? I popped in a few movies. My first thought was to watch something with a lot of bass (heck, that was nearly always my first thought). War of the Worlds immediately came to mind. The first time I watched this flick it was fairly late at night and my wife kept waking up because of all the bass. I kept turning it down until I could barely hear the dialogue and still she was complaining. Looking at my original frequency response, I can see why. The low bass had a huge bump while the rest was significantly lower. When I calibrated my system, this created an inordinate amount of low bass. With the EQ in place, I could listen to it at a fairly loud volume without invoking the wrath of "She Who Shall Not Be Awakened." Definitely an improvement.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

But was it better? Because of my bass problems, I've watched War of the Worlds sparingly so I'm not that familiar with it. One of my favorite movies to use to check bass is Star Wars Episode II:Attack of the Clones . The first scene with the two flyovers, the landing, and the explosion really test the mettle of a sub. I saw a small Infinity one time go into what can only be described as anaphylactic shock trying to reproduce that scene. Kind of sad really. Now my Axiom EP500 is no slouch but I've never really been pleased with the rendition of the bass in this scene. You could hear the bass cut in and out to the point that sometimes you could barely hear the sound at all, all the way to painful levels. My DIY room treatments helped a great deal with this as did adjusting the placement of the sub (it was corner loaded at the time which was BAD ). With the Onix R-DES engaged it was like I was finally hearing the bass the way it was meant to be heard. The sound of the ship flying by was much more uniform, the boominess was greatly reduced and frankly, I was amazed.

Yello: The Eye

Lastly I stuck in my new favorite album for testing speakers, Yello: The Eye. Yello is the band that gave us the "Oh, Yeah" track from Ferris Bueller's Day Off . I know you know the song. The album is all electronica but there are some great tracks for testing imaging and crossover points. Track 5: "Junior B" has a nice bass run that cycles down into near subsonics. Ever since acquiring this album, I've been bothered by the unevenness of this run. Much like the flyovers in Star Wars , this was much improved. What was once uneven, was now much more consistent and pleasant to listen too.

Suggestions and Recommendations

No product is perfect and I do have a couple of recommendations for improving the Onix R-DES:

• Graphical overlay - it would be fantastic if the Onix Graph Paper and the Onix R-DES interface could interact so that you could see the predicted outcome of your EQ choices. Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but it would cut down on the learning curve.
• Save button - The R-DES EQ interface has GOT to have a save button. It is far too easy to close out without saving. The Onix Graph Paper also closes out without asking if you want to save your work. That clearly needs to be remedied.
• Clear button - It would be nice in the Onix R-DES EQ interface had a "clear" button to reset the current curve to the default values.

Comparison to the Velodyne SMS-1
Since I've only seen the Velodyne SMS-1 in demo and can't make a direct comparison. The Onix product is quite a bit less expensive, though more labor intensive. The Velodyne SMS-1 gives you an on-screen display and the ability to watch your EQ attempts make changes in the frequency response in real time. The thing to remember is that regardless of which product you go with, once you get it dialed in, you are done - at least until you change something in your room. It isn't like buying a DVD player or a receiver where you can play with and interact with it all the time. It just sits there. The two products are very different and the level of understanding/interaction the Onix requires may encourage some to pay the extra dough for the more expensive Velodyne. But for those of us that don't mind (or even like ) tweaking stuff manually, this is an easy way to save a few hundred bucks.

Conclusions and Overall Perceptions

The big question: Is the Onix R-DES for everyone? No, not really, but it should be. Honestly, with only the most rudimentary understanding of how a parametric EQ works, you can do WONDERS for your bass response. For those out there unwilling to take the time and energy to learn to use the R-DES - go ahead, live with bad bass or pony up for a much more expensive product. For me, I'm going to sit back and enjoy my system that has never sounded better.