Which chip/board to drive a Subwoofer?

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Hello wise audiophiles who have hopefully tested or have knowledge about the usual suspects like TPA3116, TDA7492, TDA7498, ... are there others?

which one would you recommend to drive a subwoofer with bandpass encosure?

i've read all over the internet today and the tendency i have so far is that the TPA lacks a bit of bass but the TDA chips have a very good bass amplification. is that true?

the sound of the mids/highs is not that important for me, it should just output a dry and powerful bass down to about 30HZ.

what would you use?

i am going to drive this guy:
IMG_20150109_225444.jpg


IMG_20150109_225623.jpg


IMG_20150109_225730.jpg
 
wow, the TAS5630 is a bit too much for my purposes, i'd say... the Hypex UCD look perfect. by looking through the shops i found subwoofer board with front plate and power supply.

i think i am going with one of that, since some of them have adjustable crossover and phase. this is perfect to tweak the sound to complement my two monitor speakers.
 
@OP;

you could bi-amp with that sub if you wanted, choose a board that's known to have good bass 'grip' and a different one for your monitors.

Without the outputs in use, passive stereo subs provide a nice, high-impedance load for any amp.

Believe it or not I use two TA2020's in this way - the sub is a JPW, 12+12 ohm (intended to be paralled with 6-8 ohm monitors from it's outputs), driven by a Lepai (!!!). I believe that the high impedance benefits the 'damping factor' with the Lepai.

Probably getting no more than 15 watts clean, but in my fairly small room, even at very satisfying (borderline neighbour-baiting) volume, it gives a real presence to kick-drums and other <60Hz content, and I can easily tailor the reinforcement for different material with the Lepai's volume control.

After a lot of trial and error with positioning it's actually very 'tuneful' as well. I love being able to hear bass-lines properly. A test-disc I often use is Simon Phillips "Another Lifetime", with Anthony Jackson's 6-string 'contrabass' mixed to the fore - he uses that bottom string quite a lot, with it's open fundamental at c. 32Hz (IIRC)
 
The TPA311x chips don't "lack bass" by design, only by implementation. If the input coupling caps bringing audio into the chip are undersized, it'll create a highpass filter which can keep some bass out. Changing said caps will fix that.
 
Barely on topic;

to get my JPW sub's positioning right, I had to raise it off the floor by about 2 ft (total), using the smallest of a cheap set of 'nested tables' (simple, rigid, flat-pack laminated chipboard).

Using this as a platform, the sub is on a 18" x 9" x 2" slab of limestone I picked up for nothing (any massy platform will do), in turn on a barely inflated small bicycle inner-tube.

Almost no vibration whatsoever reaches the floor (IOW, the structure of my building), but it nevertheless moves the air very convincingly.

The result is superbly tight, punchy, tuneful bass.

I agree with Max Townshend on this - speakers should always be suspended inside buildings.

Just FYI.
 
i use a slightly modded tpa3116 board for my home subwoofer.
i have it in pbtl, 3.3uF input caps, 470uF chemicon KZE onboard and bigger caps right before the boards power inputs.
i use 24V spms (trimmed to only 22V).
a selfmade active 3rd order mfb-filter is right infront of the signal input.
the woofer is an mivoc awm-104 (quite common in germany), which is a 4-ohmer.
spl-wise this system more than enough to me.

but you should keep in mind that you have two 8Ohm woofers.
So i´d suggest a TDA7498-board.
The cheapest of the cheap should be good for subwoofer usage.
The cheap boards usually have more problems with higher frequncies, because of insufficient output filters.
If anything is important about the output filters in this application, you should check the temperature of the inductors.
And you may want to modify the signal input capacitors as they act as high pass, which should avoid DC, but might cut off too much of the low frequencies.
 
i use a slightly modded tpa3116 board for my home subwoofer.
i have it in pbtl, 3.3uF input caps, ...

People need to quote what gain they're using because it greatly affects the low freq roll-off you get from your input cap.

TPA31xxD2 input caps and gain.jpg

So your 3.3uf input caps have an f3=0.8Hz with 20db gain and f3=5Hz with 36 db gain. 😱
The spec sheets sets f3=2Hz, ... but I usually go for f3=1Hz


I couldn't find my data sheet so I downloaded a new one and it looks like they added some updates:

TPA31xxD2 layout1.jpg

TPA31xxD2 layout2 top.jpg

TPA31xxD2 layout3 bot.jpg

😎
 
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The last posts are a bit too advanced for me. although i could learn the stuff i would rather buy a board that i can use for my purpose.

so is there a tda7498 or similar board which has s/pdif coaxial input? also the lowpass cutoff and phase/delay adjustment would be perfect...

or maybe a DSP board with D/A converter and an amp board?
 
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