What types of sub woofer sounds good

[ataul]

What types of sub woofer sounds good and easy to build.

[bentoronto]

That's easy for me to answer and I have been quite certain of the answer since CDs came on the scene. Only a horn can blow enough air through a room to make good bass at realistic levels.

I also believe my opinion is probably distorted by "anthropomorphic" notions (rather than acoustic notions).

A 15 inch driver in a horn moves gallons of air with ease. Funny how carefully the wonks fret about peak amp power without spending a second wondering how much air a wee 10 inch driver could possibly move relative to a large bass side-drum (I heard Tan Dun conduct his spectacular piece, The Map, two nights ago with the Toronto Sym Orch... wow).

Pity they are the most complex constructions. Sad that SpeakerLab, great kit suppliers, died. I still miss 'em.

Nasty footnote: never seen any blind testing of it let alone been part of one, but I've always had a visceral dislike for resonant boxes like bass-reflex and derivatives. Again, maybe just ignorant gut feel, but I've never "felt" the system resonance of sealed boxes and other minor tuning found in enclosures was objectionable. I suppose you could have a well-damped port that kept resonances in check in tuned enclosures.

[Bigun]

It turns out that several different kinds all sound good, but people have different preferences so there isn't a simple answer.

Often it depends what you want it for e.g.

Home Theatre - lots of big rumbling bass ? (usually means not as good for hi-end music)

Car - some obvious limitations in terms of size ?

Music - looking for accurate low distortion but maybe not ground destroying power ?

Do you need a built-in amplifier (often called a Plate Amp) or will you buy an external amplifier ?

Easiest to build is probably to find a kit that you can buy, a box and driver. Otherwise, I'd go so far as to say the easiest is a simple sealed box with a single driver in it. A box with a port (often a tube installed inside the box to a hole in the side of the box) isn't much more difficult and offers some benefits and disadvantages.

[mikje]

ataul,
If you're looking for one for music, this one might do
http://www.rjbaudio.com/Cerberus/cerberus.html

If not, Parts Express has a couple of plans that might work.

Mike

[rubidium7]

My experience is (and it is limited) that if you go with a ported design, you can get very high output levels with great bass, until you reach the lower limit, when they QUIT. Also, ported designs have a tendency to have humps in their response curve which some people like. A properly designed port will give good results, but they also have overshoot on notes, so they have a slower sounding attack and release.

I have planar speakers which are very "fast" which a ported sub doesn't match well to. For this I ended up with an NHT dual 10 sealed box that, altough a huge power hog, is very fast and tight and has a smooth response all the way to the bottom. It mates well with my planars. The bass doesn't sound as loud, but to my ears it is more realistic....

Keep in mind, that the surface area of your driver is positively related to output and negatively related to speed. I feel the ideal driver side for speed is 10".

[badman]

Originally posted by rubidium7


Keep in mind, that the surface area of your driver is positively related to output and negatively related to speed. I feel the ideal driver side for speed is 10".

Wow, you're a generalizations machine!

"Fast" bass is a function of inductance and driver bandwidth, not driver size. Smaller drivers tend to have less Le and more top end extension, but this is not a hard and fast rule.

Also, inductance varies with excursion (some motors keep it pretty constant, though) , so the driver 'speed' will change when it's pumping. Best to have a very large surface area moving gently, than a small one moving violently, in my experience.

[MaVo]

fast bass? Its just a myth, grown on bad room acoustics and wrong eq and crossover settings.

[Cal Weldon]

OK, let's not get too sidetracked here.

ataul,

Perhaps you could let us know a little more like your room size, volume requirements, what you are listening to etc. To ask a question like this, you will get too many answers to make sense of them.

Originally posted by mikje
ataul,
If you're looking for one for music, this one might do
http://www.rjbaudio.com/Cerberus/cerberus.html

That's a 6.5" woofer. Don't get me wrong, a pair of them, each with it's own plate amp in my 100 ft2 bedroom works fine but...

[dangus]

Sealed box subwoofers have a lower order roll-off, which possibly means their transient response is better or something, from what I vaguely remember of circuit theory. They're also more tolerant of variations in woofer parameters.

In support, I'll submit the NHT SW3 which is/was a sealed box sub using the NHT1259 12". Several magazine reviews of subwoofers called it the most musical, but it'll rattle walls very well too. A lot of DIYers have and continue to build subs using that driver after it was made available to the general public.

[HK26147]

sounds good and easy to build.

Sounds good is subjective ( and subject to all manners of never ending debate ).

Easy to build include - a closed box.

A lot of different ways to move air at LF, with different pluses and minuses. ( cost, size, complexity, etc, etc )