Today is the first day I feel settled and content with my "new" system. I gotta thank AVS DIY for introducing me to lots of great ideas, and especially to some great software like REW and WinLSD. Soon I'll be getting ARC 2 from IK Multimedia which uses Audyssey technology.
So where do I begin? I guess with the fact that I live in the city (dowtown Philly) so I'm not going to be doing any wood-working or building any subs that defy the laws of physics. Not enough room for any of that. For a couple of months I thought I was on to some great solutions, namely I considered a giant sub based on a Kicker Solo-X driver, but I learned more and more about really deep bass and that solution started to seem expensive and cumbersome (100+ lb maget!), so I decided to look into 12" and 15" drivers in multiples. Over the course of the last couple of months I tried out various Eminence, Polk, Alpine and Kicker drivers as well as auditioning several big-ticket drivers - the LMS-5400, Kicker Solo-X 18", Orion HCCA 154 and JL 13W7AE.
Then everything went bonkers. I was bored one Sunday and I went to Wal-Mart and grabbed a pair of Sony Xplod 12" woofers. I wanted to hear 'entry level' as a point of reference. Their published specs are not impressive and inflated (they have two different RMS numbers listed and they promote the peak power on the box) and of course it's frikkin' Wal-Mart and Xplod. Well that turned out to be quite a 'mistake' because I fell in love with their sound. Seriously.
So, the Wal-Mart 2012 edition of the Xplod is rated at 30-1,000 hz. I measure much better bass response in modest-sized sealed cabinets... who knows how small the cabinets Sony assumed (remember, it's a wal-mart item) would be but their spec is laughable - in real-world they beat subs costing twice as much. I can play 8 HZ and hear the wall boards creak as they pressurize, 16hz has genuine 'feeling' to it and very little THD hum. Based on success with the Sony drivers, I opted to take my woofers - Eminence Kappa Pro 15" - out of my system and run the Sony subs up to the lowest point where my horns can still keep up. My horns are powered by Selenium 2" titanium compression drivers rated for 600-20,000 hz... but I only use a fraction of its potential output, so I now I run the horns down to 360hz and use a mild EQ curve (which is needed anyhow since it is a constant-directivity horn). The result astounds me. Here's the basic REW curve from my listening position. I know there is a lot of work to be done with room treatment and Audyssey, but this result is significantly better than anything I ever... ever imagined could be achieved with cheap Wal-Mart speakers and by pushing my horns beyond their spec.
The Drivers are mounted in a cheapo Atrend enclosures that happen to do their job admirably well, despite being meant for car audio use. Underneath each enclosure are three 40 lb. paver stones, and one more stone on top, upon which rests the horn. I plugged the ports on the enclosures with duct putty, about 20 lbs. of duct putty total. I've read enough about speakers to know this - in reality all speakers should be covered in carpet - veneer looks great but from an acoustic POV, carpeted speakers are that much more invisible.
The last ingredient was to go for hardcore minimalism in the signal chain. That meant having only one source, which was not going to be my old Sony STR-DH810 receiver - that's totally retired now. I tried a few sound cards and external audio interfaces. I really liked the Asus Xonar Phoebus and the Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 but I finally chose the Creative Titanium HD for it's impeccable SQ and low price.
The Titanium HD feeds my Crown signal XTi-1000 directly, and the Xti applies a HP crossover via built-in DSP (360hz, 18db Butterworth) and is wired directly to the Selenium driver... now that's minimal! The Xti then relays the original signal to an iNuke 6000DSP which applies it's own LP crossover with the same parameters. Thanks to the software DSP crossovers, I was able to find these setting in real-time, observing the direct effect of different crossover setting on the overall sound, while sitting in the sweet-spot. I also time-aligned the two drivers in this fashion. So finally i ended up with a 2-way system that can literally hurt people in a space this small, with bass that - in my very humble opinion - is crisper and better defined than any other subwoofer I looked at, at any price point... and with the bonus that they can play high enough to integrate with the horn directly. I would not have even believed any of this could be attempted were it not for this forum!!!
Anyhow, here's what it looks like:
I only wish I could somehow demonstrate how great it sounds. I was frankly embarrassed that I liked this rig the most of all the things I tried since I essentially wasted over $1,000 on 'better' drivers and enclosures before my mad science project went astray. My friends have made their comments about how weird it is to open their eyes and see the XPLOD logo staring at them after such virtuoso hiFi performances from hose speakers! I ran them as high as 1000hz before I realized my horm could exceed spec and that's what led to the 2-way, 360hz crossover point. The one thing I'm glad for is that it has stopped my need to buy 'better' subwoofers cold. I can't imagine needing more bass, my wife noted that this is the first time the bass is so direct and impacting, that it's scary and causes goosebumps and freaks out the animals and makes the whole house creak and sounds 'unlimited' - even though I've had drivers with 4X the total displacement of this in my system so very recently, and more than enough power to run it.
Edited by imagic - 9/23/12 at 10:41am
So where do I begin? I guess with the fact that I live in the city (dowtown Philly) so I'm not going to be doing any wood-working or building any subs that defy the laws of physics. Not enough room for any of that. For a couple of months I thought I was on to some great solutions, namely I considered a giant sub based on a Kicker Solo-X driver, but I learned more and more about really deep bass and that solution started to seem expensive and cumbersome (100+ lb maget!), so I decided to look into 12" and 15" drivers in multiples. Over the course of the last couple of months I tried out various Eminence, Polk, Alpine and Kicker drivers as well as auditioning several big-ticket drivers - the LMS-5400, Kicker Solo-X 18", Orion HCCA 154 and JL 13W7AE.
Then everything went bonkers. I was bored one Sunday and I went to Wal-Mart and grabbed a pair of Sony Xplod 12" woofers. I wanted to hear 'entry level' as a point of reference. Their published specs are not impressive and inflated (they have two different RMS numbers listed and they promote the peak power on the box) and of course it's frikkin' Wal-Mart and Xplod. Well that turned out to be quite a 'mistake' because I fell in love with their sound. Seriously.
So, the Wal-Mart 2012 edition of the Xplod is rated at 30-1,000 hz. I measure much better bass response in modest-sized sealed cabinets... who knows how small the cabinets Sony assumed (remember, it's a wal-mart item) would be but their spec is laughable - in real-world they beat subs costing twice as much. I can play 8 HZ and hear the wall boards creak as they pressurize, 16hz has genuine 'feeling' to it and very little THD hum. Based on success with the Sony drivers, I opted to take my woofers - Eminence Kappa Pro 15" - out of my system and run the Sony subs up to the lowest point where my horns can still keep up. My horns are powered by Selenium 2" titanium compression drivers rated for 600-20,000 hz... but I only use a fraction of its potential output, so I now I run the horns down to 360hz and use a mild EQ curve (which is needed anyhow since it is a constant-directivity horn). The result astounds me. Here's the basic REW curve from my listening position. I know there is a lot of work to be done with room treatment and Audyssey, but this result is significantly better than anything I ever... ever imagined could be achieved with cheap Wal-Mart speakers and by pushing my horns beyond their spec.
The Drivers are mounted in a cheapo Atrend enclosures that happen to do their job admirably well, despite being meant for car audio use. Underneath each enclosure are three 40 lb. paver stones, and one more stone on top, upon which rests the horn. I plugged the ports on the enclosures with duct putty, about 20 lbs. of duct putty total. I've read enough about speakers to know this - in reality all speakers should be covered in carpet - veneer looks great but from an acoustic POV, carpeted speakers are that much more invisible.
The last ingredient was to go for hardcore minimalism in the signal chain. That meant having only one source, which was not going to be my old Sony STR-DH810 receiver - that's totally retired now. I tried a few sound cards and external audio interfaces. I really liked the Asus Xonar Phoebus and the Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 but I finally chose the Creative Titanium HD for it's impeccable SQ and low price.
The Titanium HD feeds my Crown signal XTi-1000 directly, and the Xti applies a HP crossover via built-in DSP (360hz, 18db Butterworth) and is wired directly to the Selenium driver... now that's minimal! The Xti then relays the original signal to an iNuke 6000DSP which applies it's own LP crossover with the same parameters. Thanks to the software DSP crossovers, I was able to find these setting in real-time, observing the direct effect of different crossover setting on the overall sound, while sitting in the sweet-spot. I also time-aligned the two drivers in this fashion. So finally i ended up with a 2-way system that can literally hurt people in a space this small, with bass that - in my very humble opinion - is crisper and better defined than any other subwoofer I looked at, at any price point... and with the bonus that they can play high enough to integrate with the horn directly. I would not have even believed any of this could be attempted were it not for this forum!!!
Anyhow, here's what it looks like:
I only wish I could somehow demonstrate how great it sounds. I was frankly embarrassed that I liked this rig the most of all the things I tried since I essentially wasted over $1,000 on 'better' drivers and enclosures before my mad science project went astray. My friends have made their comments about how weird it is to open their eyes and see the XPLOD logo staring at them after such virtuoso hiFi performances from hose speakers! I ran them as high as 1000hz before I realized my horm could exceed spec and that's what led to the 2-way, 360hz crossover point. The one thing I'm glad for is that it has stopped my need to buy 'better' subwoofers cold. I can't imagine needing more bass, my wife noted that this is the first time the bass is so direct and impacting, that it's scary and causes goosebumps and freaks out the animals and makes the whole house creak and sounds 'unlimited' - even though I've had drivers with 4X the total displacement of this in my system so very recently, and more than enough power to run it.
Edited by imagic - 9/23/12 at 10:41am
