No. 25 marks a new standard in cabinet execution, both for its physical beauty and the manner in which it manages the critical backwave propagating from the rear surface of the massive 15″ carbon fibre piston at its heart. The shape of No. 25 is designed to disturb and cancel much of the incredible force created by the inward stroke as No. 25 reloads for your music or film’s next set of demands. It is necessary to keep this backwave as silent as possible, while allowing the driver to “breathe” without compressing dynamics. The curvilinear cabinet walls deflect, diffuse and dissipate these waves into smaller cross plane waves. Minimizing rear waves that eventually emerge as comb filtering — noise that cancels the primary bass — is what creates clear, purposeful bass that strides into a room with tremendous energy and clarity.
Comprised of 30mm thick (about 1 1/8″) Australian MDF, transected by hardwood spars that break up common mode resonances within the top surface of the cabinet and down its sidewalls, our bracing is not unlike the spars in a ship’s hull. Some may view this as excessive, but these are the lengths our design team goes to to deliver the finest subwoofer extant, fully fitting of the title No. 25.
Reproducing Perfection
When we experience bass in real time out in the world, it occurs with height to it. It strikes our sinuses, it kicks at our chest cavities, it rumbles along the floor conveying power authority and majesty. Our Reference Line Arrays permits bass to emerge more naturally, adding a height component in how it propagates throughout the room. The bottom unit reinforces the deepest overtones, creeping and rumbling across the floor to produce room shake. The middle location provides crisp attack and articulation of kick drums or any transient-based event. The unit imparts the flutter and shimmer of all manner of instruments floating in air. Making Reference Line Arrays the Holy Grail of the REL experience and is only available with our Reference products.
Since 90 percent of the energy produced by a system resides in the bass regions, Reference Line Arrays are the magic element missing from so many otherwise state of the art systems. This air, transparency and, of course, effortless power that Reference Line Arrays convey can’t be imagined, it can only be experienced in person.
Agile Power
It takes huge power to invest the No. 25 with the shattering dynamics of which it is capable. The rugged beast of a 1,000 watt NextGen3 amplifier that powers No. 25 has already proven itself in the field in one of our previous designs, making us comfortable with not only its startling sonic performance but also its reliability.
However, No. 25 is no mere exercise in excess, but rather a thorough exposition in the art of rendering sub bass, totally, completely and with great deftness in tonality, expression and dynamics. It is this ability to not merely play loud, but to bring to life the contrast between loud and soft passages that makes REL owners so passionate about our designs. After all, dynamics are not merely the ability to play loud, but to bring to life the contrast between loud and soft passages in music or film. Ultimately, this is what makes the No. 25 the addiction it quickly becomes.
Rigid Speed
No. 25 has a heart of pure carbon, as we opted for a cone material that is stronger than steel, yet incredibly light. Carefully woven from pure carbon fibre, No. 25’s 15” cone structure weighs 70% less than a 10” cone of just two years ago. This combination of incredibly light weight coupled to remarkable structural integrity is what gives No. 25 its combination of speed and power.
Yet another benefit of the weight reduction strategy we employ is that it permits near-perfect dynamic balancing of the driver, yielding ideal behavior throughout its incredible 4” of fore-and-aft stroke.
Total Control
Begin your relationship with REL Reference by simply picking up the remote; feel its heft, how its rounded contours fit gently in the cup of your hand. This is a carefully wrought system improvement that encourages the sort of finely detailed decisions during set-up necessary to achieve the perfect balance to the ultimate system owner.
REL Reference models employ remote control in order to assist and increase ease of initial set-up. We do this knowing that once properly set, the owner will likely use it rarely during the remainder of their ownership experience as RELs truly can be set-up correctly to reproduce all forms of music and film without resorting to cheap parlor tricks like turning bass up for movies and down for music.
