god-like Subwoofer - Page 2

If you're on a limited budget, you should look to buy/build the best single sub you can afford compared to buying/building two of lesser quality.

i agree that two separate subwoofers can be difficult to set up correctly

D-EJ915,

personally, i'd recommend that you just use a single driver and buy a higher quality one instead of buying 2 cheaper ones

shiva, tempest, av-12, av-15, sadhara....whichever



edit: sol beat me to it!...also changed a few things that i'm not so sure of now

I made one, out of a shiva 12" sealed, small, with a 200 amp, that really rocks....

two active drivers on one sub will cause just as much boomyness as two separate subs with one driver each, in a small room that is. i would just go for one really nice, high end, great quality subwoofer. SVS, Velodyne, Energy, and i have a Kilpsch RSW-12 that rocks...i've hardly ever heard such quality in an active/passive 12" subwoofer.

Zeplin, I don't know of any correlation between number of drivers and boominess.

A speaker with a passive woofer is usually refered to as a passive radiator design. Same thing as a bass reflex (ported) design, but necessary in situations where the port length would be excessive.

I can think of 2 main attributes that I would call boominess. The first, and more obvious, is a peak in the response in the 50 to 100 hz range. In general, any strong peaks will sound objectionable after a while. Unfortunately this behavior pretty much describes any room with the normal number of walls. There will be a cancellation at a wavelength 4X the distance from the sub to the opposite wall, and there will be a major reinforcement at 2x that frequency. The only way I have been able to get rid of it is to set the subs up in nearfield against one wall (nearfield plus quarter space lessens, but does not eliminate the problem) and set a third sub against the oposite wall. The far sub was driven with an out of phase signal, with a delay equivalent to the room length. Worked like a charm. Getting rid of the wall is the only other thing that I have had success with. I am open to suggestions.

The other boom contributor is a speaker with poor damping characteristics. Putting a big driver in a small sealed box (high total system Q) will do this. Seriously mistuned bass reflex designs are also great for this, although the huge peak in the response usually outweighs the damping issue.

In general, my experience has been, the larger the room, the better the bass quality. A smaller room has the advantage of higher amplitudes for a given power input. Removing one or more walls and the ceiling is the best, but not very practical. I've never had a room small enough to get on the other side of these problems (that includes my car). Well, except for headphones, of course!


gerG

as long as you use a good driver that can handle the power and use decent quality amps you won't ruin it

the shiva can handle 650 watts and the stryke av-12 can handle 500

If you want seriously good quality low frequency extension and are not looking for a cheap car boot (trunk) boom box then look no further http://www.rel.net/

The studio lll is awesome http://www.rel.net/products/StudioIII.shtml