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Small subwoofer

Pghpooh

Pghpooh

Senior member
HI
I currently have a 12 inch subwoofer made by Ohm. My wife has tolerated the huge size of it for 4 years and now we are going to update the furniture in the living room and add a new plasma tv she told me the huge subwoofer has to go!!!
I have seen and heard subs made by sunfire and they sound ok and the size is right. 13 inches square. The price is way too much.
I would like to get something small but affordable.
Any suggestions?
I'd like to keep the price around $400 and will rob the piggy bank to go to $500.
Yamaha makes a cheaper sub that is downward firing with the port in the front. They claim it can be put under cabinets, etc. How well does a downward firing sub sound when placed on carpet?
 
There was an article in some stereo rag magazine a while ago about old school and new school subwoofers.

Old school ones had large drivers in large enclosures.

New school ones had drivers with very large, powerful magnets in a very small enclosure.

There was also discussion of flat frequency response, vs. subs tuned with a prominent midbass hump for tactile, more impressive bass (aka car stereos).

If you don't need chest thumping bass at very loud spl, audio engine makes an 8 inch sub: http://www.audioengineusa.com/s8_home.php

If you can find the sub that was bundled with an Acoustic Research HC6 sub sat system, it also has an 8 inch woofer in a stylish, glossy piano black enclosure.

I think Sunfire and subs like Velodynes fall into that modern school large, powerful magnet driver in a very small enclosure. I think SVS used to make a 10 inch sub that was supposed to hit quite hard. Here is a pic of someone with the 13 inch SVS sub: http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95996
 
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I have a 10'' Sony one that I got on eBay for $100. Puts out good bass and the build quality seems good.
 
Making bass is science, simple physics, diameter of the driver relates to efficiency vs frequency, surface area and travel decide how much power it can output vs frequency, in both cases the lower the frequency the more demanding the requirement.

New school subwoofers are about marketing and perception, with a TINY amount of improvement in woofer design (long travel from the car market) and cheaper high power amplifier designs. Marketing figured out two things, big subwoofers are hard to sell, and most people don't have a clue about bass. Perception is the third part, the human ear "thinks" it hears the low fundamental note even if it isn't present as long as the overtones are produced. This recipe creates the small subwoofer market, where little or no real low bass is produced, just distorted overtones and boosted mid bass, and the vast unwashed masses eats it up.

See if you can't hide your "real" subwoofer in a corner, doesn't matter if its behind the sofa and can't be seen.
 
HI
Thanks for the help and advice!
Everyone had a good point and suggestions.
As mikeford suggested I would love to hide my sub somewhere. How do you hide something that is 15 inches high, 24 inches deep and 15 inches wide?? The wife already has plants in the corners! LOLOL I am going to try to reach some kind of compromise with the wife. To me the sound coming from a larger sub is a lot smoother then a small sub. The roll off when listening to light jazz and the old bass fiddle is sooo smooth and even. A small sub seems to have a “punch” and the roll off fades quickly. I am sure we can compromise. Just not sure what she’ll make me give up! LOLOL
Thanks everyone.
 
Would a cylinder sub from SVS work? They have a pretty small footprint that you can tuck along a wall/corner and go up instead of "out".
 
Tell your wife, "If the sub goes, I go!"




And then get ready to pack your bags 😛

vi edit, weren't you the one who made a sub into an end table? OP, you could do something like that: make the sub into a piece of furniture that doesn't look like a sub at all.
 
Nope made it by hand. It's just 3/4" MDF with mitered edges in a 22" cube. I laminated a 2nd sheet of plywood to the baffle to make it a full 1.5" and give me the room to recess the driver.

I sanded the corners down, slapped a couple coats of stain and then just put up some simple oak trim around the top and bottom for a bit of flair. The marble top is just a couple 12" tile from Home Depot that I picked up for a couple bucks a piece that I put on there for a water resistant surface to set drinks on.

🙂
 
It's a birch veneered MDF. And that is part of my internal bracing. The "big" hole is for the port to stay in place and the little ones are there to allow air flow. I could have done a window brace but my jig saw was acting up so I just used a keyhole cutter on my drill and did a bunch of little ones.
 
Had I to do it over again, I'd probably just go with a plain MDF and go with a butt joint instead of mitered corners. They are a PITA to line up, can't be nailed together for easy assembly while gluing, and if you get any dab of glue on the veneer it won't take stain well. I'll just butt joint every thing, bevel the edges and then do a press on veneer and oil/stain and then poly it.
 
vi edit said:
Because it's in the middle of the cabinet parallel to the top/manifold.

The driver magnet recesses into the big hole, the port drops through the smaller one with the foam gasket around it, and then the little holes just let air freely pass through while it does it's think inside the cabinet.
Click to expand...

Ah...thanks for the extra info. I saw the two larger holes for the sub and port and assumed it was the bottom piece.

I was about to ask a couple more questions, but decided to dig up your original thread instead since the answers are already there.

Since av123 is likely to go by the wayside, I might nix my aspirations for an MFW-15 altogether and build a DIY one like you have. I'd go with a sealed 15" though since I won't have the problem you had of reusing an amp. My current sub would go in my computer room, and I'd be building from scratch.
 
Sealed vs. ported makes no difference on the amp you use. Either can use a plate amp. Either can have a binding post dropped on the back and powered from seperate rack mount amp on the other side of the room.

If you want something similar to the MFW-15 then check out this "easy slot" build using an Exodus Tempest-X. It's a very potent package with excellent performance. Truth be told the driver in here will stomp the driver in an MFW.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...9-first-tempest-x2-design-easy-slot-port.html
 
vi edit said:
Sealed vs. ported makes no difference on the amp you use. Either can use a plate amp. Either can have a binding post dropped on the back and powered from seperate rack mount amp on the other side of the room.

If you want something similar to the MFW-15 then check out this "easy slot" build using an Exodus Tempest-X. It's a very potent package with excellent performance. Truth be told the driver in here will stomp the driver in an MFW.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...9-first-tempest-x2-design-easy-slot-port.html
Click to expand...

I was going off of what you said in your original thread here:

vi edit said:
But, if I went the sealed route, there was no way my current amp was going to power that thing sufficiently. With a vented design you can eek a bit more out of a driver with less power. Going sealed I would have been dropping another $250 in an amp.
Click to expand...

The setup you mentioned looks pretty sweet for $500. I liked the OP's performance comparisons:

SVS PB13 Ultra..... munch munch... The Tempest-X2 has more cone area, more swept volume and if you use the 1000W PE amp, more power in a slightly larger box. Port area is about the same. No comparison on this one. The slot ported Tempest should eat it for lunch. $1600 plus shipping Internet Direct

http://www.svsound.com/products-sub-box-pb13ultra.cfm


AV123 MFW-15" munch munch.... Mark does a good job at offering good value but no comparison here. The Tempest-X2 is just a much more capable driver, with more power on tap in a larger enclosure. Strike one, two and three. $699 + shipping

http://www.av123.com//index.php?page...mart&Itemid=37


JL Fathom F113. This isn't even a fair comparison. The JL is sealed, with lots of power and a great driver but the laws of physics are on our side. I'll take Newton in my corner, thank you very much. It is smaller, a good compact sub with good output. The signal processing stuff is nice, but you can just get a Velodyne SMS-1 and copy all of that functionality. Price.... don't even ask, $3400 each!. You could build an entire array of Tempest-X2 slot ports and one of them alone should handily outperform a single F113.

http://home.jlaudio.com/products_subs.php?prod_id=371
Click to expand...
 
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