I am going to build a subwoofer.

[Number1]

even if you are going to leave it matte, you should still sand it down a bit then apply another coat.

Absolutely, this thing will be getting 2 or 3 more coats of paint.

 

[Number1]

The driver finally came in.

The moment of truth is here. I put the driver in the unfinished and opened box and tried it.

Shit, I am still getting a rattle.

The music: Better off alone by Alice Deejay from Top 100 Trance and Techno Party Song of all time 2008.

After a bunch of testing I hooked up my old Sony sub and I notice the same rattle but much less noticeable.

I played the same tune using my Sutherland Amp and the sub input. There again from the same tune: the same rattle when I cranked the bass.

I have to conclude that subs are suseptible to rattle if you are not very careful with the bass level with my Sony amp.



I finally sealed the box and as long as I don't crank the bass too high this thing sounds GOOD!

Movies special effect are especially impressive. The lazy boy and everything in the room including my ear drums pulsate.

This tune (thanks yoyo) is hearth pounding (carefull with the volume on this one).

So far so good, I think this is going to work for me. The bass is not even comparable to what I was getting from the Sony and as long as I am careful with the bass level it works pretty good.

I only have cosmetic work to do on the box now and I can finally declare it operational.

 

[vi edit]

I wonder if the "rattle" is actually your driver hitting it's mechanical x-max from overexcursion. By your descriptions I would imagine so.

 

[Howard]

I would think that he's driving the sub with too much energy below the tuning point, but he's got it set pretty low... Are you sure your slot is the right length or if you have the proper end correction factors? Try to measure the impedance or the frequency response to see if you match your simulation.

 

[Number1]

I wonder if the "rattle" is actually your driver hitting it's mechanical x-max from overexcursion. By your descriptions I would imagine so.

No, it's really easy to find out when this thing over excurses. It emits a very loud PAK witch is the cone hitting the magnet. It is LOUD and scary.

I went to Future SHop yesterday and bought a brand new PolkAudio PSW10 ($179.00 including taxes, this is half price) to see how it would compare to mine.

It rattles just as easily as mine if I am not careful with the bass level. There are no wall shaking deep low frequencies with this one.

I offered it to my son for $150. If he doesn't want it Ill return it.

Now I know, my sub is behaving as it should.

 

[Number1]

I would think that he's driving the sub with too much energy below the tuning point, but he's got it set pretty low... Are you sure your slot is the right length or if you have the proper end correction factors? Try to measure the impedance or the frequency response to see if you match your simulation.

I emailed the people who sold me the electronics, CSS and told them about my issues. I sent them a link to my smugmug gallery and gave them the box measurements. Their engineers are supposed to get back to me. If I did something wrong, they should be able to point it out to me.

They told me they would get back to me next week.

 

[Number1]

I have been listening to music all day with the new sub and it's sounding surprisingly good once I got it adjusted properly. The deep bass is punchy and precise yet not harsh.

The bass is faster and more defined. It changes the sound of the entire system.

Combined with my newly acquired and renovated antique Warfedale E70 speakers I have to say the setup is sounding awesome.

So far so good.

 

[Number1]

Sub # 2 has found it's rightful spot in the basement's entertainment room.

It is not finished yet. The back cover is screwed on and sealed but not glued in case I decide to modify the interior. It will remain this way for a while. I am waiting from news from CSS and my course of action will depend on what they say.

I might even build box # 3 if this is what they recommend.

But for now, this thing shakes the room when I play movies and the music is much enhanced over my previous sub. It kept me busy for a while as I am sitting at home not working, waiting for an operation. By the way you don't want to be in a hurry when you live in Canada and need surgery but that is a different story.

 

[Booty]

Cool thread to follow - thanks for sharing! Hoping to try my hand it this sometime in the near future...

 

[Plimogz]

By the way you don't want to be in a hurry when you live in Canada and need surgery but that is a different story.

Off-topic: Sure, but at least you don't have to be selective about which fingers you accidently chop off while building your DIY subwoofer... and no one ever has to choose between bankruptcy and a steady 5 year diet of nothing but SPAM and potatoes on account of a week-long hospital stay... Sorry to risk derailing your thread here, but I just had to chime in: Universal free healthcare still strikes me as a "pro", never a "con", of living in Canuckistan.

Back on topic: That looks to be a very nice subwoofer you built yourself there. What do you figure your total BOM was for the project? How much would you say a prebuilt model offering the same kind of performance might have cost? I ask because, like Booty said above me, I too feel an itch to try my hand at some DIY speakers/subwoofers at some point in the future, but I'm getting the feeling that there isn't that much in the way of actual $$ savings to be had.

 

[vi edit]

DIY subs sort of waver in value depending on the quality range you are building and what you want it to look like.

For $399 + shipping you are going to have A LOT of trouble building something that both rivals and MFW-15 in performance and looks. It's just a giant killer at that b-stock price and second to really nothing.

If you want really cheap construction costs, don't care much about looks, and just want crazy output you can throw together a sonosub for about $50 in materials, grab a nice $200 15" driver and a $200 pro audio amp and proceed to destroy your house.

Where things really start to get fun is in the $1000 DIY range. You are in a price category that really starts to seperate the DIY from the commercial stuff. At $1000 you are building large eclosures with multiple drivers that offer frightening levels of output. It's a price range that commercial audio simply can not compete with. But again, at a cost of looks & size.

With subs you basically have four choices
1) Performance
2) Size
3) Cost
4) Looks

Pick two

 

[Number1]

The fucking Amp craped out tonight! The sub volume control no longer works.

I am going to call CSS tomorrow.

More later.

 

[sdifox]

The fucking Amp craped out tonight! The sub volume control no longer works.

I am going to call CSS tomorrow.

More later.

I am starting to think it's the user

 

[Number1]

I am starting to think it's the user

Let's put it this way, I am not about to start a career building Subs. LOL

And it's intermittent to make it more fun.

 

[Number1]

I took the Amp out and check the circuit boards for dust. It looked reasonably clean. I blew canned air on the circuits verry carefully making sure I was not freezing anything.
I checked all the connectors and they are all properly seated.

I seated the amp back int it's hole on the box, installed 2 screws to secure it and plugged it in. It worked OK
As I was putting the rest to the screws in, as I tightened this screw, the sub started acting up. When I loosened it it works OK.

Disconnected everything, took the amp out, plugged everything back and turned it on. As soon as I bend the aluminum plate around that screw, I get the problem.
If I bend or twist this circuit board a little bit I get the problem

Well at least I can duplicate the problem now.

 

[sdifox]

I took the Amp out and check the circuit boards for dust. It looked reasonably clean. I blew canned air on the circuits verry carefully making sure I was not freezing anything.
I checked all the connectors and they are all properly seated.

I seated the amp back int it's hole on the box, installed 2 screws to secure it and plugged it in. It worked OK
As I was putting the rest to the screws in, as I tightened this screw, the sub started acting up. When I loosened it it works OK.

Disconnected everything, took the amp out, plugged everything back and turned it on. As soon as I bend the aluminum plate around that screw, I get the problem.
If I bend or twist this circuit board a little bit I get the problem

Well at least I can duplicate the problem now.

There is a short somewhere that happens when you tighten it. check which way the panel flexes and look for cold solder.

 

[Number1]

There is a short somewhere that happens when you tighten it. check which way the panel flexes and look for cold solder.

It's a cold solder joint, no question. The amp worked for a few days in the box and the vibration exposed the weak point. I am shipping it back today.

The way to fix this would be to redo all the solder joint on the board but there are just to many and I don't have the equipment to do this properly anyway.

They won't have any in stock until May so it may be a good idea to purchase a better more expensive plate amp. I told Rob to wait until we get an answer from the engineers to see what they recomend about my setup.

Meanwhile, I sealed the plate amp hole in my box and hooked this up the Sony sub amp. It's sounding surprisingly good. I don't have to be anywhere near as careful when setting the volume on the sub amp and I get copious amount of fairly clean sounding bass. I don't get the deep deep low low frequencies in movies but it will do until further notice.

This is turning out to be a fun little project with all kind of twists and turns. LOL

 

[vi edit]

I bet the sony amp has a filter that is blocking out any signal below a particular frequency.

 

[Number1]

I have not heard anything from CSS since I shipped the plate amp back.

Meanwhile I have been experimenting. I relocated the box and removed the Sony sub amp from the set up. I also upgraded my Sony Amp to an Onkyo TX-SR507.

I found out I can my crapy Sutherland multi channel amp as a sub amp and it works better then the Sony sub amp. The very low frequencies come out nice.

I also found a bargain 300W 12" Sub on Kijiji, $110. It looks like new and it PERFORMS! D-Box brand, not much info on the web except they sell for around what I paid for.

As of now, I have the two 12" subs hooked up one in each corners of my listening area. I am getting this "OMG there is a train about to run into the house feeling" type of bass. Some part of the room you'd think there IS a train in the house.

It sounds good.

No more rattle form the driver but everything else in the house is!

LOL

It is strange how the bass level varies so widely wherever you are in the room. Some places it's too low, a foot to the left it is too loud.

I am probably going to have to look into bass traps to even out the sound level in the room.
There is also a delay between the bass and the rest of the music in some of the tunes. I can't adjust the phase on the Sutherland amp so I am probably going to have to put up with this until I get a replacement amp from CSS. There might be an adjustment for this in the Onkyo, Ill have to look it up.

I am getting closer to the level of performance I was aiming for when I started this. More to come.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Did you not take back that White Van stuff yet?

With the amount of time, money, and effort that's gone into this so far, I imagine you would have been better off getting some quality Internet Direct subs.

 

[Number1]

Did you not take back that White Van stuff yet?

With the amount of time, money, and effort that's gone into this so far, I imagine you would have been better off getting some quality Internet Direct subs.

I setup a meeting with the white van people but of course when I showed up she was not home. I called and they told me they would be in my area a week later because her boyfriend was getting surgery at the hospital near by and would call me. I never heard from them. I gave up, it was only $80.00. I found a use for the little speakers. I use them upstairs for my wife to listen to the radio on zone 2 of the living room radio. You seen what I am doing with the amp for now.

In retrospect, it would have been cheaper to buy a second hand sub instead of building it I agree but I wanted to give this try and I did not anticipate all the trouble I would have getting this thing going.

I am almost where I want to be with my audio stuff. My Wharfedale E70 cost me $40 plus $100 to fix them. They are the best sounding speakers I have ever owned. The home made sub cost $381 for the driver and amp plus $150.00 for wood, glue, screws etc. I got the Onkyo on sale $50.00 off and sub #2 cost me $110.00


So for roughly $1300, I get a setup that sound pretty darn good including a brand new Onkyo TX-SR507

And it kept me busy.

I am still on the look out for a center speaker, preferably an older Wharfedale floor speaker so I can match the sound to the main ones.

Edit, I also sold my older receiver and the Pioneer speakers, $100 each and used the profit to buy 5 matching Cerwin Vega speakers for my son's birthday. The rear speakers needed a little bit of work. I repaired the box and painted them and they look brand new. For $200, what do you expect. This equipment sounds good but not as good as my stuff.
Here what he is getting

The front speakers, 10" driver, 6" mid plus tweeter.:

Centre, 6.5" drivers:

Back Speakers on top, 6.5" driver

Even a 10" sub:

 

[Number1]

Project Completed.

I decided to abandon my own box design and go with this built:
CSS Trio12APR15

I replaced my fried BASH300 Amp with a BASH500 and ordered the APR15 passive radiator plus mounting hardware.

I built box number 3 using the specifications found here.

I bought a table saw, something I should have done when I bought my house years ago and was able to cut very thigh fitting pieces. I did away completely with screws and used clamps and glue for the box. It is airtight without the use of silicon in the corners.

I put about 10 coats of paint and I wet sanded. It looks good but I was not able to achieve perfection. The front facing piece looks best. From my seat in the room, the box looks professionally made. I am looking for a decorative grill for the passive baffle now.

I am happy with the results, the box is smaller, I have the amp set at 3/4 power and this thing rattles every walls in the house and sounds good doing it.

Of course I documented the build on my SmugMug account under Subwoofer # 3 gallery.

 

[sdifox]

dude your space sucks