I'm planning to build a pair of dipolar subs this spring using the Adire Tumult drivers. The first problem is finding a way to power them that doesn't bust my budget too badly. The drivers and cabinet cost are going to eat almost all the $ allotted to the subs so the question is how much over budget I will have to go. I'm looking at the Lanzar VHC2000 and the Rockford Fosgate Power 1050S. These are both 2-channel amps capable of delivering about 550 watts into 2 ohms per channel. The Tumult is a dual 2-ohm VC driver capable of handling 1600W "per IEC 268-5." I've only found one definition of that standard and it sounds more like RMS than peak. But my ignorance leaves me with questions as to whether these solutions are too underpowered. Anyway I would need one amp for each speaker.
Lanzars amps 350.00 x 4 1400.00
power supply 600.00
---------------------------------------
$2000.00
Does anybody know a cheaper way to do this?
The other area of concern is construction. Given the heft and power of these puppies this is more like an engineering problem than a woodworker's cabinet design problem and I feel a bit out of my depth. At present my plan calls for building each cabinet as three independent components that are stacked one on top the other and bolted together on installation. Rough estimate on assembled weight per cabinet is 275lbs / 125 kilos. In the drawing attached the grey material is angle iron. Am looking for 7/8" / 22.2 mm oak plywood as the cabinet material. Any suggestions for improvments would be appreciated.
thanks
eStatic
Lanzars amps 350.00 x 4 1400.00
power supply 600.00
---------------------------------------
$2000.00
Does anybody know a cheaper way to do this?
The other area of concern is construction. Given the heft and power of these puppies this is more like an engineering problem than a woodworker's cabinet design problem and I feel a bit out of my depth. At present my plan calls for building each cabinet as three independent components that are stacked one on top the other and bolted together on installation. Rough estimate on assembled weight per cabinet is 275lbs / 125 kilos. In the drawing attached the grey material is angle iron. Am looking for 7/8" / 22.2 mm oak plywood as the cabinet material. Any suggestions for improvments would be appreciated.
thanks
eStatic
Attachments
you said pair of subs, did you mean the 2 drivers being a pair or do you mean 2 boxes of 2 so having 4 tunults i the room😱
either way this system will move some serious air, but as for your question on ap, id be wanting at least 1 of those amps per pair, at 20Hz it takes 660w to reach xmax so this should be your minimum power goal, 550 will fit the bill though, but you would be better served throwing 1kw at each driver, this will give you plenty of headroom, and remember that dipole subs need HEAVY equalisation.
hope i helped somewhat
either way this system will move some serious air, but as for your question on ap, id be wanting at least 1 of those amps per pair, at 20Hz it takes 660w to reach xmax so this should be your minimum power goal, 550 will fit the bill though, but you would be better served throwing 1kw at each driver, this will give you plenty of headroom, and remember that dipole subs need HEAVY equalisation.
hope i helped somewhat
forgot to finish my post
i recomend 32mm MDF, it is very strong, and not as $$$ thick ply. if you want you could put thin plt over the top of the MDF making it even stronger. 22mm is too thin for the tumults to mount on due to the huge stress that these woofer will put on anything they are near let alon screwed too...they are beasts😎
i recomend 32mm MDF, it is very strong, and not as $$$ thick ply. if you want you could put thin plt over the top of the MDF making it even stronger. 22mm is too thin for the tumults to mount on due to the huge stress that these woofer will put on anything they are near let alon screwed too...they are beasts😎
michael wrote:
"you said pair of subs, did you mean the 2 drivers being a pair or do you mean 2 boxes of 2 so having 4 tunults i the room "
Uh... two subs, four drivers, 1100 watts per driver available. Linkwitz warns that it takes more umpf than one thinks.
I can't get 32mm MDF in a 75-mile radius of here--I've tried. And I need as small a footprint as I can possibly manage. I am planning to make the tops of the modules that hold the drivers out of two plies of 7/8" plywood laminated with epoxy for about 45mm total thickness to bolt to.
michael wrote:
"20Hz it takes 660w to reach xmax so this should be your minimum power goal,"
How did you get that? Not questioning its factuality, would just like to know what to read/study so I can do that my self.
thanks
eStatic
"you said pair of subs, did you mean the 2 drivers being a pair or do you mean 2 boxes of 2 so having 4 tunults i the room "
Uh... two subs, four drivers, 1100 watts per driver available. Linkwitz warns that it takes more umpf than one thinks.
I can't get 32mm MDF in a 75-mile radius of here--I've tried. And I need as small a footprint as I can possibly manage. I am planning to make the tops of the modules that hold the drivers out of two plies of 7/8" plywood laminated with epoxy for about 45mm total thickness to bolt to.
michael wrote:
"20Hz it takes 660w to reach xmax so this should be your minimum power goal,"
How did you get that? Not questioning its factuality, would just like to know what to read/study so I can do that my self.
thanks
eStatic
eStatic said:I'm planning to build a pair of dipolar subs this spring using the Adire Tumult drivers. ...
Does anybody know a cheaper way to do this?
eStatic
Do you own the drivers already? On the Linkwitz site there's a design using Peerless drivers that cost 30% of what the Tumults do.
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/woofer.htm
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/woofer3.htm
Always bear in mind that I know nothing.
Does anybody know a cheaper way to do this?
I don't know the history of how you settled on your driver choices and design, but I think you should read some of the dipole sub threads. There are some wicked designs suggested that could be built for less than $2K.
Also, you don't mention EQ devices, and I hope that you have accounted for that.
With that budget, I would definately be building a couple of planet10's push-push dipoles before anything else.
If I were doing this I would use LCaudio's zappulse which is $150 and will do 500W into four ohms if you replace the filter caps (or just pony up the cash for the SE version). I would guess that you could even get about 1000W into 2 ohms given that these are bridgeable, but I would check. If so, you'd only need one amp per side, or two if you wanted to go crazy.
The power supply should not be too expensive. Very cheap would be to use four of ApexJr's clearance 24V/7A trannies per amp ($28) along with some of his $4 10,000uF 80V caps.
So possibly as cheap as $300+$56+filter caps? Much less than $2k. Depends on the peak to RMS load, but that setup with Steve's transformers is almost 700VA.
The power supply should not be too expensive. Very cheap would be to use four of ApexJr's clearance 24V/7A trannies per amp ($28) along with some of his $4 10,000uF 80V caps.
So possibly as cheap as $300+$56+filter caps? Much less than $2k. Depends on the peak to RMS load, but that setup with Steve's transformers is almost 700VA.
Leadbelly
Hey Leadbelly, I see you're located in Calgary too. Perhaps you'd be interested in an e-mail exchange?
Brendoncookatshaw.ca
Hey Leadbelly, I see you're located in Calgary too. Perhaps you'd be interested in an e-mail exchange?
Brendoncookatshaw.ca
To Dave Jones -- I am familliar with that design ane those drivers and their not quite what I'm looking for.
leadbelly wrote:
"I don't know the history of how you settled on your driver choices and design, but I think you should read some of the dipole sub threads. "
Tumults are among the few for which I could find publish distortion specs. That's very important to me. If you can cite others I'd be most grateful.
The design was predicated on the requirement of a small footprint and the need to keep the weight of the largest single unit manageable.
I did several searches based on different key-word sets. I'll try some more.
leadbelly wrote:
"Also, you don't mention EQ devices, and I hope that you have accounted for that."
I've seen at least one passive 6 db/8ve schematic here that I think I could adapt to the I/O the impedances of my pre/power/ interface and knee freq. I'll definitely ask here before I go too far with that.
At your suggestion I'm doing searches for planet10's push-push dipoles right now. The only one I had come across was the tower of small drivers.
thanks
eStatic
leadbelly wrote:
"I don't know the history of how you settled on your driver choices and design, but I think you should read some of the dipole sub threads. "
Tumults are among the few for which I could find publish distortion specs. That's very important to me. If you can cite others I'd be most grateful.
The design was predicated on the requirement of a small footprint and the need to keep the weight of the largest single unit manageable.
I did several searches based on different key-word sets. I'll try some more.
leadbelly wrote:
"Also, you don't mention EQ devices, and I hope that you have accounted for that."
I've seen at least one passive 6 db/8ve schematic here that I think I could adapt to the I/O the impedances of my pre/power/ interface and knee freq. I'll definitely ask here before I go too far with that.
At your suggestion I'm doing searches for planet10's push-push dipoles right now. The only one I had come across was the tower of small drivers.
thanks
eStatic
Wow that's one killer sub when you are done. 😀 Just a suggestion instead of using the Lanzars why not consider the JL 500.1 instead
http://www.jlamp.com/amps/5001.html
Cost a bit more than the Lanzars ($420 Ea) but it has a selectable 2nd or 4th order crossover and the best part it has a variable parametric bass boost of up to +15db from 20 to 80Hz so that settles all the bass eq and the crossover issues for you in one go. Btw the Tumult's Qts of 0.39 would ment that a fair bit of eq is needed. I've muck around with JL stereo amps and yes the bass control is superb and will in fact put quite a few big bucks amps to shame in the bass area. Do keep us informed of your progress. 😎
http://www.jlamp.com/amps/5001.html
Cost a bit more than the Lanzars ($420 Ea) but it has a selectable 2nd or 4th order crossover and the best part it has a variable parametric bass boost of up to +15db from 20 to 80Hz so that settles all the bass eq and the crossover issues for you in one go. Btw the Tumult's Qts of 0.39 would ment that a fair bit of eq is needed. I've muck around with JL stereo amps and yes the bass control is superb and will in fact put quite a few big bucks amps to shame in the bass area. Do keep us informed of your progress. 😎
If I read it correctly one can deliver 600 watts into 2 ohms so I would need 2 for each driver so the cost is about the same as the Lanzars but the PWS are more problematic for me. I am under the impression that it is not advisable to wire PWS in parallel unless they have been designed for that kind of operation (small differences in output impedences leading to uneven loading of the supplies) . Can someone clarify this for me?
BTW Though it is not shown in my drawings the drivers would (necessarily) be wired out of phase. Thus there should be almost as little net momentum transfer to the cabinet as with planet10's push-push layout.
thanks, eStatic
BTW Though it is not shown in my drawings the drivers would (necessarily) be wired out of phase. Thus there should be almost as little net momentum transfer to the cabinet as with planet10's push-push layout.
thanks, eStatic
A cheaper way to achieve roughly the same results would be to use 8 Stryke AV15's. These have very open cast baskets and a flared pole piece that should be nice and quite for dipole use, and some pretty serious excursion of their own... and a price much more enticing than the Tumults. Not sure how symmetric the field is and whether "oil-canning" would be a problem or not (I would guess that at most sane listening levels and excursions it would not). 8 AV15's vs. 4 Tumults would save you money, would provide an easier load for most amplifiers, and are more efficient, requiring less total power for the same SPL as the 4 Tumult setup. They would require more total power to drive to their max SPL than the Tumults' max SPL, but again they would have a higher max SPL capability.
However, you said footprint is a concern. 8 AV15's are definitely going to take up more space, unless a stacked system is acceptable. If not, then I think you've found a winner in the Tumult. Very low distortion (probably the lowest of any sub driver made at decent excursions), very long throw (good for dipole use), good basket for dipole use, and a pretty symmetric magnetic field. They are expensive, but if size is a concern there is nothing better for dipole use.
For amplification, look to prosound amplifiers. Good value options are the Crown XLS and Carvin lines. The Crown K1/K2 are favorites for their fanless silent operation, and the RMX and PLX lines from QSC are popular for their reputation, power output, price, and build quality. Any number of those can deliver 600+ watts per channel into 4 ohms (some well over 1000), so you would need a pair for the four Tumults. For reference, the Crown XLS 600 (600 wpc 4 ohm) goes for $350 or less regularly.
However, you said footprint is a concern. 8 AV15's are definitely going to take up more space, unless a stacked system is acceptable. If not, then I think you've found a winner in the Tumult. Very low distortion (probably the lowest of any sub driver made at decent excursions), very long throw (good for dipole use), good basket for dipole use, and a pretty symmetric magnetic field. They are expensive, but if size is a concern there is nothing better for dipole use.
For amplification, look to prosound amplifiers. Good value options are the Crown XLS and Carvin lines. The Crown K1/K2 are favorites for their fanless silent operation, and the RMX and PLX lines from QSC are popular for their reputation, power output, price, and build quality. Any number of those can deliver 600+ watts per channel into 4 ohms (some well over 1000), so you would need a pair for the four Tumults. For reference, the Crown XLS 600 (600 wpc 4 ohm) goes for $350 or less regularly.
Estatic,
Here's a good reference for determining PA requirements for dipole woofer designs:
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/dipole_spl_limit.htm
It takes a little familiarization with the spreadsheet (closed-box1.xls) parameters, but once input correctly it will determine everything you need to know.
Generally, power amplifier output is not the limiting factor for achieving Xmax at lower frequencies, however the Tumult is a special case. I used the published numbers at the Adire website and plotted the results with the Linkwitz spreadsheet. The outcome is rather interesting. Try it yourself with the Tumult parameters and see if your results agree with mine.
Cheers,
Davey.
Here's a good reference for determining PA requirements for dipole woofer designs:
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/dipole_spl_limit.htm
It takes a little familiarization with the spreadsheet (closed-box1.xls) parameters, but once input correctly it will determine everything you need to know.
Generally, power amplifier output is not the limiting factor for achieving Xmax at lower frequencies, however the Tumult is a special case. I used the published numbers at the Adire website and plotted the results with the Linkwitz spreadsheet. The outcome is rather interesting. Try it yourself with the Tumult parameters and see if your results agree with mine.
Cheers,
Davey.
Fear the Tumult
4 Tumults is not a project for someone counting pennies...
I'd strongly consider 2 Tumults, each in an H-baffle. You can still move serious amounts of air: 1 Tumult will almost displace as much air as 4 DPL 12's (another popular dipole driver). The push-pull W-baffle is IMHO overkill for a low distortion driver like the Tumult. With the savings you can get the amps that these puppies deserve.
And, yes, you will need to EQ them.
4 Tumults is not a project for someone counting pennies...

I'd strongly consider 2 Tumults, each in an H-baffle. You can still move serious amounts of air: 1 Tumult will almost displace as much air as 4 DPL 12's (another popular dipole driver). The push-pull W-baffle is IMHO overkill for a low distortion driver like the Tumult. With the savings you can get the amps that these puppies deserve.
And, yes, you will need to EQ them.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
The footprint _must_ be <= 18.5" (470mm) square (see System Pictures and Descriptions). Not sure I'm clear on the H design. Two is not just for the dB but headroom and self-cancellation of momentum, which I consider important. I'd consider 12" drivers but can't find any that look like they have the air moving ability and have published distortion specs
. Suggestions please.
What amps would you consider appropriate.
Thanks
eStatic

What amps would you consider appropriate.
Thanks
eStatic
The footprint _must_ be <= 18.5" (470mm) square (see System Pictures and Descriptions). Not sure I'm clear on the H design.
OHHH, so in your sketch, the drivers actually fire up. I had assumed you were laying it flat as SL does. I think you're going to be throwing away a lot of room gain if you do it this way. If 18.5x18.5 is your footprint limit, then I believe your best option is indeed the H baffle as tg3 says, forget W baffle.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=264587#post264587
There was a good thread on low distortion subwoofer drivers a while ago, but I can't seem to find it in my searches. I suggest you keep reading.
tq3 wrote :
"4 Tumults is not a project for someone counting pennies... "
Thankfully I'm not counting pennies (for the time being) but I do have to count grands. And now, with leadbelly's additional push in that direction, I am persuaded to try a pair in the H configuration first.
Much thanks and gratitude for the wisdom of the list,
eStatic
"4 Tumults is not a project for someone counting pennies... "
Thankfully I'm not counting pennies (for the time being) but I do have to count grands. And now, with leadbelly's additional push in that direction, I am persuaded to try a pair in the H configuration first.
Much thanks and gratitude for the wisdom of the list,
eStatic
TUMULT = 12 OUNCE Mms
The Tumult cone Mms is 343 grams, or about 12 ounces. The H-frame topology puts both cones moving together, 24 ounces trying to tear up the baffle and walk the baffle around your living room. A H-frame Tumult dipole would need to be excessively heavy to keep the speaker from moving.
The W-frame topology is designed to put half the force on each baffle, and more importantly to allow the two cones Mms to move in opposite directions and hence cancel out the cone acceleration forces. The W-frame construction must be strong enough to handle these forces, but not excessively heavy to keep the speaker from moving.
For dipole woofers used above 60Hz, I think the H-frame sounds better, is more efficient, and has fewer resonances than the W-frame or Z-frame. The H-frame topology seems better suited to high efficiency woofers with low Mms. There are good 15" and 18" woofers with 90-120 grams Mms and decent Xmax of 10-15mm that seem well suited for H-frame dipoles.
The Tumult cone Mms is 343 grams, or about 12 ounces. The H-frame topology puts both cones moving together, 24 ounces trying to tear up the baffle and walk the baffle around your living room. A H-frame Tumult dipole would need to be excessively heavy to keep the speaker from moving.
The W-frame topology is designed to put half the force on each baffle, and more importantly to allow the two cones Mms to move in opposite directions and hence cancel out the cone acceleration forces. The W-frame construction must be strong enough to handle these forces, but not excessively heavy to keep the speaker from moving.
For dipole woofers used above 60Hz, I think the H-frame sounds better, is more efficient, and has fewer resonances than the W-frame or Z-frame. The H-frame topology seems better suited to high efficiency woofers with low Mms. There are good 15" and 18" woofers with 90-120 grams Mms and decent Xmax of 10-15mm that seem well suited for H-frame dipoles.
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