Ultimate HT sub?

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Most explosions and things in HT are more felt than heard. I thought, that the tumult had to be the best sub ever if you want to FEEL an explosion. But then i stumbled across the Blueprint 18.
It has a high sensitivity, moves 51mm p-p, and has 1210cm^2 of Sd. This all rusults in about a liter more of air moving capibility than a tumult. The real deal part of this is that, it is so much cheaper. Where your looking at 1000+ dollars for a pair of Tumults, you would only have 640 dollars in subs, and thats shipped. Think about a pair of these, runnung with about 1000rms shared. I honestly thing that 12-13L of total linear displacement (for the pair) would equal some serious SPL at even the lowest frequencies. At you would definantly have that real shock factor when someone see's two massive 18's sitting there in your Den.
 
bhg41088 said:
that real shock factor when someone see's two massive 18's sitting there in your Den.

since WAF is a no-issue here, if you have a basement, why not seal the basement door real tightly, drill some 18inch holes in your floor, mount the woofers upfiring, glue some coins and screws onto the driver cone, and get a new protective metal grill floor on top of the existing? :D

Ported enclosure ofcourse, using the chimney, or you could couple it to the building ventilation to get some good all-over bass? I'd like to see santa's face when he realizes he's trapped in a vented speaker system :yikes:

:santa2:
 
There's also another factor when you're looking for subwoofer to look out for ..that there're designed for home audio or pro use..and not for cars..I find subs that are diesigned for car use have a lot less vas...which makes it undesirable for HT use. You would be better off with 4 Tempests...wiht thier high vas and good X-max..or if you have the money you can always go for these...







By Wilson Audio..twin 18 ichers..nearly 8 feet high 700 lbs
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
jonz said:
There's also another factor when you're looking for subwoofer to look out for ..that there're designed for home audio or pro use..and not for cars..I find subs that are diesigned for car use have a lot less vas...which makes it undesirable for HT use. You would be better off with 4 Tempests...wiht thier high vas and good X-max..or if you have the money you can always go for these...
I believe the drivers used in the XS are Aura 1808s.
 
I'm not sure what kind of drivers they used..but this thing goes for $18,000 dollars....you know what we can do for that kind of money.. supposly they'll fo down to 12 hz..

this is cut/paste from WilsonAudio


The XS

There really isn’t a lot to tell you about the XS as it is fairly simple in design, although not simply implemented. The cabinet is a combination of proprietary "X" material and MDF. It is heavily cross-braced with two large aluminum ports, each serving one driver. The drivers themselves are 18" units that reportedly are the finest available. Power handling is rated at 1600 watts and compression is minimal even at extreme sound-pressure levels. The grille is located on a front decoupled baffle board. Two large custom binding posts are located on the rear, near the bottom of the cabinet. One feature that is representative of the quality that goes into the XS is the large brushed-aluminum ring that covers the mounting hardware of each driver. These are huge, with the company’s name engraved near the lower edge. This creates a sandwich for the driver to rest in. Unfortunately, there are no casters or feet available for the XS. I’m not sure if this has to do with the weight of the unit, but it sure would be nice to have some way to place the sub on a floor so that the thing can be moved. The review sample was placed on a foam pad and in turn the pad on a blanket. This did allow the unit to slide on my wood floor, but there has to be a better way. Rated frequency response is -1.5dB at 15Hz, but during testing Wilson Audio measured strong response below 12Hz. Nominal impedance is 4 ohms, while sensitivity is 95dB.
 
All depends on what you mean by ultimate?

My idea of ultimate would probably be something like a basement horn (like royal devices). This would give you such high SPL with any 12" subwoofer that you could then focus on the quality of the driver. I don't know much about horn design, but imagine if you could use this with say a Focal 15" audiom!

Or there is the IB path ... William Cowan has gone this path using 18" PA drivers. I don't consider subs that need >1" of cone movement to be really ultimate as it is difficult and expensive to get linear motion of that magnitude. From a fidelity point of view I think it is better to have a larger SD and multiple drivers. This could qualify as ultimate as the box effect is taken away and the drivers, say 4 x 18" have a lot of displacement without excessive cone movement.

Or there is the dipole approach. Using a large number of woofers like the Peerless XLS working down to 40 Hz, augmented by LFE subwoofers for the bottom octave where room modes are less problemmatic.

This is my take on "ultimate" bass, for those who have the budget and the space and inclination ... but for the rest of us, we go with budget ultimate!

In my case I went with a pair of Stryke Audio AV12's, which I have yet to come up with an affordable amp to run properly, and I'll put them in a pair of boxes that can switch from sealed to vented as I can't decide or limit myself to either!
 
dont forget, the tumult is a 15" the blueprints are 18"
box requirements could be rather large for lows! ~ 250L ea?

power handling wont be too much down low.

I wouldnt tend to use woofers below their Fs too much as the distortion is primarily the compliance,which is certainly nonlinear and you dont want 60hz 3rd harmonics appearing in ur 20hz sine!

IB would be a good choice for the high xmax woofers,for good lows.although again ,for ultra high spl 115db + at listening position,calls for some serious wooferage.

see 'the hometheatre forum'(the one with lots of ads in the way of the forum threads)
for HT subs discussion-in a beatn to death- every -thread sort of way :D

:)
 
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