Testing Your Home Theater Subwoofers

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
May 14, 2012
2,029
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Windsor, Ontario, CANADA
I just put my custom sealed subwoofer array to the test with a hi-res, hi-fideltiy digital recording & hope the sound comes through as well as it does in person...The box is a custom made 8x 6.5" subwoofer system with 4x 1cu-ft sealed chambers each contaiing 2x6.5" subwoofers. Each subwoofer driver has an 80w RMS power handling rating & a 38Hz resonant frequency. The vented f3 is about 23hz but I can't figure out the vented enclosure specs so went with a safe sealed box setup downfiring through a slotted vent face that vents forwards & backwards, is just over 3 feet long 15" deep & just under 2 feet high. I use it as my tv stand & sit sdirectly in the center of the action for a seamless sound combined with the front & center speakers....

Don't forget to listen on good speakers or headphones capable of reproducing sounds below the 40Hz range if possible...

BOOOM!!!

Enjoy & let me know if the bass comes through & what you think! Total cost of the setup, including the Velodyne 'DPS 12' plate amp & the custom made cabinet is about 450 us dollars...The rattling noise you hear faintly in the background is my room shaking...not the box or woofers...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crWQ8MaR7hA&t=177s


Here are some pics of the construction of this massive monolith of bass....



each chamber holds 2 subwoofers in a 1 cu ft. sealed box finished with fibergalss insulation at the back panel & sealed with dynamat sound deadener to illiminate resonances from the 1" MDF walls...the chambers dimensions are designed to reduce standing waves by using a narrow but tall internal set of dimension, similar to most standing floor speakers...


The face of the woofers will be a downfiring array that opens to 2 slotted faces, front & back which will direct the low frequencies to the floor in a wide dispersal pattern to convey an omni-directional room filling sound.




The Velodyne DPS 12 subwoofer plate amp is a used salvage unit that has 175w RMS into 8 OHMS & 375 watts of peak power at 20Hz


Here, you can see the custom side mounted amp, installed & ready for testing..



The entire cabinet is done & ready for action, resting on its side...













The secret sauce to fine tune the frquency response is this Elemental Designs 2 band digital parametric EQ with adjustable band centers, 10-50Hz & 50-100 Hz. IT also has bandwidth adjustment for each frequency band of 0.3-3 Octave width cotnrol for a very versatile dedicated Subwoofer eq that is super clean as the manipulation is entirely digital...