Adire DPL12, very disappointing?

[Otter]

Couple of weeks ago, I ordered an Adire Audio DPL 12. After paying a LOT of money for shipping and transport taxes, it arrived. Hurray, finally a decent woofer.

I hooked it up to my 300W RMS amp, set the crossover frequency on my Soundblaster Audigy to 100Hz, and slowly turned up the volume. Woofer was not in a box yet, just a quick open air test. And what do I hear? A rattling sound. Excursion was about 10mm peak to peak, the woofer can hande over an inch peak to peak. Sounds like something is vibrating although everything seems to be glued quite well. The rattling is worst during 'kick-bass'. If I test it with a pure sinewave (5Hz), I can reach one inch peak to peak excursion without rattling (just some harmonic distortion and vent noise), so I guess it isn't a scrachy voice coil. I tested with three different amps, no difference. I've heard 30$ 'plastic' woofers which sound better.

If I mount in in a box it is even worse. If I turn of my satellite speakers, it sounds like a cheap *** car stereo.

So the question is: Is something wrong, or is this normal? I guess I'm screwed ain't I?

[morbo]

If you put it in a box, and you get a rattle or clank sound at moderate volumes, the driver is defective IMO.

[BassAwdyO]

something is indeed very wrong. It almost sounds to me like your amp is clipping. When an amp clips it flattens to the wave peaks which sounds VERY distorted. Typically it sounds like a mechanical problem in the speaker, but this is not the case. At low level does the sub still rattle? If not, then clipping is most likely the problem. If it still rattles, then the speaker is likely defected.

[Bill Fitzpatrick]

After reading a number of posts on this forum, it appears that Adire offers an interesting guarantee - they guarantee that you will get a defective woofer plus all the inconveniece involved.

[BassAwdyO]

well, my tumult works perfectly fine! THANK GOD! The common defect I've heard about adire's subs are unglued spiders...

[xstephanx]

Its only the emincence built adires that have had problems with the spider from what ive seen. the distisadfiubdfdsfyigdsfy(no idea how youre supposed to spell that company name anyway) woofers have had different problems. I believe that the DPL is a non eminence built sub, though i could be wrong.

Check the spider anyway, sounds like part of the spider is claking. The spider should be glued to the plastic ring and the plastic ring to the basket.

Hope you get sorted out soon!

[hunter audio]

adire should care flully choose whom they give the oem manufacturing to , as they design very good drivers

they should give their manufacturing to guys who are used to low volumes and high quality with no defect ratio

what i have seen with 11 yrs manufacturing drivers is :

after all at the end there is human involvment - and a workers attitude is hard to change if he is now working in a stringent quality consious eviornment from the start

it is how the enterproneur grooms his staff

suranjan das gupta

transducer design engineer

[bear]

I have a set of DPL12s that were early in the production.

They seem to work pretty much as advertised.

I may have noticed some slight noise *in my box* on high excursion LF sinewaves when testing.

I notified Adire and they said they would take them back if I found
that the driver was at fault.

I am using PR loaded boxes, so the pressure inside the boxes can be *very* high - the off axis force to the cone and the PR is also very high, and moves with frequency.

Quite honestly I don't know if there is a design flaw in the drivers
or if it is due to a tolerence defect in one driver or if it is unavoidable with a driver with this much spider and this much excursion in a PR box with the pressure nodes that are present. I have not had the time to retrofit the other 3 out of the 4 drivers into the boxes (extensive router work required, I'm sorry to say)...

If I was designing this driver, I'd have gone for double spiders myself, to assure VC alignment at high excursions. Shades of Cetec Gauss?

However, I had to put no less than 50 lbs of barbell plates on the top of the sub box to keep it from waddling over on its side at fairly high outputs, but less than max... the bass I'm getting is fairly serious, and in these ~4cuft PR loaded boxes this driver extended the F3 point about 1/2 octave lower, which makes it flat as a pancake to ~28 Hz. and -3dB @25Hz., which aint no slouch.

This is a ~0.4 or so Qt driver, so it makes for a "magic" alignment in almost any box (btw).

It should be pretty clean free air - quite clean.

If it's not clean free air, and you get the noise at *more than one frequency* then it is almost certainly a driver defect.

It's a good woofer.

_-_-bear

PS. you can see my subs on my site under the Speakers button

PPS. if it makes no noise in the usable pass band >16Hz. use a hp filter for certain protection and forget about it.

[Coulomb]

Originally posted by BassAwdyO
something is indeed very wrong. It almost sounds to me like your amp is clipping. When an amp clips it flattens to the wave peaks which sounds VERY distorted. Typically it sounds like a mechanical problem in the speaker, but this is not the case. At low level does the sub still rattle? If not, then clipping is most likely the problem. If it still rattles, then the speaker is likely defected.

I have two DPL2's that I purchaased from CSS in BC. I have two of thier large sub cabinets as well. I have built only one so far and spent a lot of time on carefuly constructing the cabinet.

I to get a very loud clacking when driving the speaker at higher volumes. I am hoping it is the amp I bodged together for the job clipping the output.

Regards

Anthony

[BassAwdyO]

I really dont think dual spiders are needed for a DPL. Tumult doesnt even have them with ~3"p-p xmax. As I said before, clipping can often be mistaken for driver defection due to its mechanical sound. If your speakers do not distort until a certian point, and then distort like mad(before reaching xmax), then its probably the amp. If you're getting distortion at any level, and it gets worse as the signal gets higher, then it is likely a faulty driver.