Reviews : Tempest MkII Subwoofer
Australian HiFi Although it has been part of the hi-fi landscape in Australia for more than twenty years, the last five years have been a frenzy of activity down at Whatmough Monitors. During that time it had more than quadrupled its workforce, moved to new headquarters in Melbourne, started manufacturing in China, commenced exporting loudspeakers on a large scale to Japan, the USA and – incredibly enough – China! It has also dramatically expanded its product range. About the only thing that has not changed is the person designing the speakers. Colin Whatmough is still at the helm, doing all of the research and design work and far more of the quality control work than he’s supposed to, if the tales from the factory floor are to be believed. THE EQUIPMENT Although this subwoofer is called a ‘Tempest’, the only thing Whatmough’s Tempest II has in common with the original – and highly successful – Tempest is the name. Otherwise, everything about it has changed: the driver, the amplifier, the port lengths – even the cabinet dimensions are very slightly different than the original model. I’m not a fan of this approach to naming models, because the temptation for consumers is to think a ‘II’ model of something if basically the same as the model that preceded it, but when I raised this with Colin he said that he used the same name because he liked it, and it went well with the other subwoofers in the range. He also pointed out that it was commercially accepted in a number of industries, using Toyota’s Corolla, Honda’s Civic and most recently the Volkswagon Beatle as cases where models had undergone dramatic changes whilst returning the same name. The stimulus for the change was simply that while evaluating new drivers for use in another design, Colin discovered a newly designed driver he thought delivered exceptional performance. Not surprisingly really, considering the magnet is more than 50 per cent bigger than that used in the driver used in the original Tempest, and the excursion more than double that of the original, but since the driver was almost the same diameter, and Whatmough is one of the few manufacturers that actually needs to use the ‘Specifications may be changed due to continued product development’ disclaimer on its brochures, Whatmough decided to put the new (and more expensive) driver into the Tempest. The fact that this meant re-working the cabinet, port tuning and doubling the power output of the internal power amplifier were seen as justifiable hurdles in order to deliver a subwoofer that slotted more neatly into the gap between the Typhoon and Tornado models. Colin told Australian HI-FI ‘If you’re not keeping up your R&D and improving your product all the time, you’ll go out of business within a couple of years.’ The new dish-shaped speaker cone on the Tempest II has a total diameter of 259mm, a moving diameter of 228mm and a cone diameter of 188mm. This results in a system ECA of 277cm2, so the Tempest isn’t any slouch in moving air. The cone is made from specially treated paper pulp – or ‘cellulose fibre’ as manufacturers prefer us to call it! – and the surround from rubber. Readers should note that despite the low-tech connotations paper is a truly excellent material from which to make subwoofer cones: it’s light, stiff, and extraordinarily durable (far more so than polypropylene). In fact so long as it’s protected from moisture (as the driver in the Tempest is), paper is difficult to beat as a cone material – particularly for very large-diameter cones (300mm and above). The cone operates from a bass reflex environment, with two front-firing ports, both 67mm in diameter. Unusually, they’re slightly different lengths: one is 375mm long; the other 380mm. Around the rear of the subwoofer is the vertically mounted power amplifier module, which has a 300watt RMS rating. At the top right is a gold-plated RCA line input, with a line output (for daisy-chaining to another subwoofer if required) immediately alongside. Slightly further down are a rotary phase control, a rotary low-pass filter (with a stated range of 40Hz to 160Hz) and a volume control with just two markings: Max and Min. All three controls are quite small, and I found them a little difficult to grip. Otherwise the controls work fine with a smooth – but rather stiff – action. This stiffness would undoubtedly become less stiff with continued use. Further down again are speaker-level inputs and outputs (all of which sport gold-plated banana binding posts on 12.5mm centres). As with all Whatmough’s cabinets, the Tempest’s cabinet is beautifully made – and beautifully finished – in a real wood veneer. The wood used is American Oak, but it's stained to look like Burnt Cherry. That said, I have to say I was not overly keen on the rounded MDF corners, even though they’d been stained to match the veneer. Perhaps these rounded corners work better with Whatmough’s light-coloured veneers – or perhaps it’s just me! The Tempest II isn’t a large subwoofer, by any means. My tape measure stretched out to 382mm across the top and to 460mm front-to-back. The height depends on whether you use the supplied spikes or not. If not, the sub stands 432mm high. Add spikes and the dimension becomes 466mm. PERFORMANCE Having heard and been mightily impressed by the original Tempest, I was a little concerned as to the level of improvement that might be evident in the Mark II, particularly since the new woofer has a little less cone area that the older one. I should not have worried. It appears the fact that the new driver has more than twice the excursion of the old one (and that the new paper cone is lighter than the polypropylene one!) means there’s no shortage of bass, in either extension or volume level. In short, I was even more impressed by the Tempest II than I was with the original. How impressed? Think taut, hard-hitting bass that sounds like it’s traveling on the back of a steam train. Think bass extension that digs well below 20Hz and certainly far deeper than you’ll ever need for either music or movies. Think volume levels that will have your ceiling raining drywall dust (well, perhaps I’m exaggerating just a little bit here). And, when it’s not operating (which with DVD movies, is more often than you’d imagine!) the Tempest II is as quiet as the grave, with no annoying hums, buzzes or clicks to disturb the silence. CONCLUSION As I never tire of pointing out, the art of building a subwoofer (and of buying one!) is the art of compromise. Sure you can get more bass extension, more volume and more features than are on offer in the Tempest II, but they’ll cost you both in terms of dollars and in terms of lounge-room real-estate, because such subs are much larger and more expensive (Whatmough’s own Typhoon, for one). For mine, the Tempest II is a very workable compromise. It’s keenly priced, sensibly sized, décor-friendly and will deliver more – and deeper – bass than I think most people will be able to handle. Greg Borrowman >> Back |