spectralman
01-05-07, 02:23 AM
I finally finshed my first of two sonosubs today. Each is virtually identical in design to those built by Parboy and Willd, using the TC Sounds TC-2000 15" SVC driver in a 320l 24" sonotube tuned to approx. 13-14 hz. I would first like to thank Parboy and Willd especially for answering the many questions I have been asking them over the past couple of months during construction, as well as everyone else here on AVS for the inspiration and technical know-how to do something like this. While I'm a pretty handy guy mechanically, designing a speaker or sub was something I would not have tackled on my own with regard to implementation of the T/S parameters.
It was hard to do, but I followed Parboy's (Brian's) advice and waited 24 hours after gluing everything together before installing the driver to let alot of the adhesive(s) fumes dissipate. The sub is hooked up right now to an old Crown PowerBase 2 amp I had laying around. Bridged into the TC driver, it puts out around 700 watts and has a high damping factor. The one bad thing about it is it has a VERY loud fan. When I get the bucks, I will probably buy a couple of Buttkicker amps and a Behringer DEQ unit.
When I first hooked the sub up, I was expecting it to need a little run-in time to open up and it did. Also, I had to mess around a couple of times getting the balance set properly. I put on a couple of concert DVDs (I listen to alot of these, probably spend more time watching/listening to them than watching movies) including Cream at Royal Albert Hall 2005, Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, and Pink Floyd Pulse. This sub is quite different from my old one, a Velodyne DD12. With music, it's sense of impact is not quite as "in your chest" as a forward firing sub at relatively equal volume levels. However, the sonosub has SO much more output capability than the DD12 it ain't even funny. I probably have 2 of the most mellow cats on Earth, but when the plane flew overhead and at the very end of Run Like Hell on Pulse, my male cat was freaked out jumping off my lap and running out of the room. When playing music, the sonosub just cruises along and is amazingly fast and tight. When called for, it just explodes with extreme low frequency info. My listening room is 13' x 21' with an additional room 13' x 10' behind the listening area. Just the single sonosub pressurized this entire area enough that it seemed like my recliner was gonna start hopping around. I've been into high-end 2-channel audio for over 25 years and haven't heard bass like this before.
Then, I put on SW Ep. 2 to check out the fly-over scene. Just the opening DTS intro blurb scared the crap out of me. Almost more impressive than the fly=over of the Queen's ship was when it blew up. Man, the LFE stuff through this sub is un-frickin-real. It's really gonna scare the heck out of my kid when he watches a movie this weekend.
A couple of things. Steve C. and Sherv: you guys must be insane if you have two AVA 18's, I can't imagine what that must be like after hearing just my one TC2k. May the force be with you. Also, instead of gluing the carpet to the sonotube (the black stuff purchased from PE), I made a big sock out of it and slid it over the tube. It's stretchy enough to do this, you just have to get the amount of stretch right. I then glued it only onto the very top and bottom edges of the sonotube. I figured if my cats ever decided to destroy the carpet or if I decided to put something more decorative on the tubes, I could get it off fairly easily. It was also much easier to put on in this manner, not having to worry about having any wrinkles in it when using a spray adhesive. Lastly, I used a brush-on instead of spray-on primer hoping to save a few pennies. Big mistake, as I spent hours sanding the brush marks out of the primer to get it really smooth and then ended up having to put on some spray-on primer anyway. Major PIA.
I have the all the pieces of MDF cut for the 2nd sub as well as the sonotube. I still have to rout out the holes in the MDF pieces though. The 2nd one should go a little faster than the first. I know you guys like pictures. I got a digital camera for Xmas, so now I have to figure out how to download the pix and get them onto AVS. This might take a few years as I'm somewhat of a Luddite computer-wise. Oh well...
Once again, thanks to everyone here at AVS for your help in this project.
Bill
It was hard to do, but I followed Parboy's (Brian's) advice and waited 24 hours after gluing everything together before installing the driver to let alot of the adhesive(s) fumes dissipate. The sub is hooked up right now to an old Crown PowerBase 2 amp I had laying around. Bridged into the TC driver, it puts out around 700 watts and has a high damping factor. The one bad thing about it is it has a VERY loud fan. When I get the bucks, I will probably buy a couple of Buttkicker amps and a Behringer DEQ unit.
When I first hooked the sub up, I was expecting it to need a little run-in time to open up and it did. Also, I had to mess around a couple of times getting the balance set properly. I put on a couple of concert DVDs (I listen to alot of these, probably spend more time watching/listening to them than watching movies) including Cream at Royal Albert Hall 2005, Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, and Pink Floyd Pulse. This sub is quite different from my old one, a Velodyne DD12. With music, it's sense of impact is not quite as "in your chest" as a forward firing sub at relatively equal volume levels. However, the sonosub has SO much more output capability than the DD12 it ain't even funny. I probably have 2 of the most mellow cats on Earth, but when the plane flew overhead and at the very end of Run Like Hell on Pulse, my male cat was freaked out jumping off my lap and running out of the room. When playing music, the sonosub just cruises along and is amazingly fast and tight. When called for, it just explodes with extreme low frequency info. My listening room is 13' x 21' with an additional room 13' x 10' behind the listening area. Just the single sonosub pressurized this entire area enough that it seemed like my recliner was gonna start hopping around. I've been into high-end 2-channel audio for over 25 years and haven't heard bass like this before.
Then, I put on SW Ep. 2 to check out the fly-over scene. Just the opening DTS intro blurb scared the crap out of me. Almost more impressive than the fly=over of the Queen's ship was when it blew up. Man, the LFE stuff through this sub is un-frickin-real. It's really gonna scare the heck out of my kid when he watches a movie this weekend.
A couple of things. Steve C. and Sherv: you guys must be insane if you have two AVA 18's, I can't imagine what that must be like after hearing just my one TC2k. May the force be with you. Also, instead of gluing the carpet to the sonotube (the black stuff purchased from PE), I made a big sock out of it and slid it over the tube. It's stretchy enough to do this, you just have to get the amount of stretch right. I then glued it only onto the very top and bottom edges of the sonotube. I figured if my cats ever decided to destroy the carpet or if I decided to put something more decorative on the tubes, I could get it off fairly easily. It was also much easier to put on in this manner, not having to worry about having any wrinkles in it when using a spray adhesive. Lastly, I used a brush-on instead of spray-on primer hoping to save a few pennies. Big mistake, as I spent hours sanding the brush marks out of the primer to get it really smooth and then ended up having to put on some spray-on primer anyway. Major PIA.
I have the all the pieces of MDF cut for the 2nd sub as well as the sonotube. I still have to rout out the holes in the MDF pieces though. The 2nd one should go a little faster than the first. I know you guys like pictures. I got a digital camera for Xmas, so now I have to figure out how to download the pix and get them onto AVS. This might take a few years as I'm somewhat of a Luddite computer-wise. Oh well...
Once again, thanks to everyone here at AVS for your help in this project.
Bill