Acoustic Elegance AV12-X D2!

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

Bottom line is, don't rate a sub for 1000 watts if it's gonna crap out after a year. Rate the **** for 500 like it should be.

I was thinking more like 350 //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

Why does this have to turn into a flame war.. Do i have to be a bumbling bass happy ****TARD to be able to post on this forum? My setup is for quality, not burps and ghetto ****.

Racist.

 

[bdawson72 5,000+ posts]

And you're stuck on the long coil, retardedly overbuilt wet fart sounding kick. Yes, low inductance may not be new but it is important. No everyone wants a sub that has to be crossed at 50Hz or lower to give any semblance of good sound. Fi is no different or special from any other sub company like you seem to think. Everyone wants something different, and to be honest, hell would have to freeze over before I bought a Fi sub for my system, however for others they are perfect.

Son, please remove yourself from Mr.Lemons' nuts. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

 

[bose301s 5,000+ posts]

Son, please remove yourself from Mr.Lemons' nuts. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

Yes, because wanting a good sub with low, liner Le make me a SI nuthugger //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif You do realize there are other companies out there and other designers that advocate that and have low Le drivers right? Hell, the AE drivers have Le numbers that are around 1/4 that of the Mag. To be honest, if I were to be buying a new sub now I would probably get an AV.

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

Got a new best friend?!?!

nG

 

[bose301s 5,000+ posts]

Got a new best friend?!?!
nG

If that's what you want to think I am fine with it. I have met John and seen his drivers, I know the quality and that is why I would get one. There are still many driver I would love to try, I am just too poor, and the price point on the AV line and the Mag are about the max I can spend and having personal experience with both companies is nice. I would not hesitate to try those DIY Cable drivers, the CSS drivers. I would love top try some Focal, DLS, Dynaudio, Morel and similar drivers but they are way too expensive for me.

 

[microhaxo 10+ year member]

Thats actually why i went with AE, ~250 dollars well worth the money. The Fi Q i bought was a little more than that and it was a great sub but it was not nearly as good on sound quality as this. I was looking to get a ID MAX but those are way too expensive. (for me)

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed to learn how many people don't understand that regardless of how soft or stiff a spider or surround is, it has a limit. Period. And regardless of whether it takes 200 watts to reach Xmech or 2000 watts, once you've reached Xmech the driver is no longer behaving in a sinusoidal fashion. That might even happen before Xmech if the driver is a motor-limited design but trying to throw more power at a driver that is operating in such a manner is analogous to a clipping amplifier. Now, I've witnessed some harsh verbal beatings dished out on these boards for people who don't know how to set their gains and fall victim to clipping, so why should it be any different for you guys who break a driver because you simply didn't respect it's mechanical limits, whether it was limited by the spider, the surround, or the length of the voice coil relative to the mechanical clearance allowed. Maybe this is where all the sound quality guys get to point a finger and laugh at the SPL guys because they need something that won't break under the most brutal conditions to make up for their apparent lack of know how.

It's is very common for SQ drivers to have extremely soft spiders (and yes they will sag with gravity acting upon them if the moving mass is sufficient enough). Drivers like this respond to extremely delicate signals and sound wonderfully detailed at low-level listening while retaining dynamics. (I'll bet alot of people reading this don't even grasp the concept of low-level dynamics.) They also release the complex harmonic structures of musical passages with ease. They often times lack any sign of character that might give away their presence, possibly due to a very soft spider that isn't a stiff resonant disc making a sound of it's own, and sometimes this comes at the price of not being able to produce very high level of output that some require, though one doesn't necessarily mean the other. These attributes are not important to everyone but those who can appreciate them are likely to work within these limitations because the accuracy is most important. That's why they call it high fidelity. Many, many SQ guys turn to the DIY market for home audio drivers to use in their vehicles because they know a thing or two about driver selection and these types of drivers will provide the results they are looking for.

When it comes to SQ oriented drivers, it's about how much excursion you have to work with and how low in frequency want to play. Once you've figured that out, you can decide if you need one or two or four drivers to attain the level of output you require. Wouldn't you rather have a driver that could stroke two or three inches with 250 to 500 watts of input power so that you could run an amplifier that doesn't pull 150 amps from your electrical system and has lower THD with a higher damping factor to better control the cone motion of that driver? This seems like a no-brainer. Of course I'm dumbing it down a bit to drive home a point but surely someone is seeing the light here. Reaching the mechanical limits of a driver with only a couple of hundred watts is a good thing because you are less likely to reach the threshold of thermal compression which changes driver parameters and limits dynamics. It's good to know the thermal rating of your voice coils as a reference but it's more important to know when to stop cranking the volume and gains due to mechanical limits.

It's like when you meet that perfect woman and you just want to tear into her and see what she's got but she may not respond well to that. No, some desire a much different approach and require a certain finesse to extract the full potential she has to offer. The results are often worth the effort. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

There's just so much more I would like to address in these threads but John is right, some people already know it all and nothing that is said will change their minds.

 

[John_E_Janowitz 10+ year member]

Santoprene? ya gotta be kiddn me //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

Santoprene is the most well damped of any rubber type material. It has good elongation properties. It is chemically resistant to just about everything which is needed in an automotive environment. It is not harmed by UV rays like foam surrounds are. It also has the best operating temperature range with a brittle point of -76F to around 280F on the upper range. It can be processed very consistently. I'm not sure which of these properties are poor for automotive use. It was actually made originally for rubber boots, grommets, etc in the automotive industry. It's only drawback is that it is a DuPont specific material and because of this is quite expensive.

John

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

I quite enjoy reading these threads.

I comprehend all the points given, and know which I tend to agree with. To each their own. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

nG

 

[John_E_Janowitz 10+ year member]

2.5" coil driver rated for 1000w. No.

This is one of the easiest parts to respond to. Power handling is not about VC size, it is about keeping the coil within a safe operating temperature. A chinese made coil will fail about 375F as the glue used to secure the windings begins to fall apart around that temperature. A well made US coil will withstand around 600F before it has any issues delaminating as they are baked at close to this temperature during the curing process. That gives US coils a huge advantage regardless of size.

The more ability you have to pull heat from the coil, the more power you can apply. The tighter the gap, the better you can transfer heat from the coil to the top plate and pole where it can be absorbed into the massive amounts of steel. Having a highly conductive layer close to the coil like the copper sleeve on the pole increases the thermal conductivity and pulls more heat. Also the more heatsinking area the better. This is why larger diameter coils have an advantage. Thicker top plates also increase the ability to pull heat from the coil as they increase the heatsinking area on the OD of the coil. Our 2.5" coil has more heatsinking area than most 3" coils. Our 2.5" coil pro audio 18 was recently proven to have lower power compression than one of the highly regarded industry standard 4" coil 18's. There is no magic, no smoke and mirrors, just more heatsinking area so the heat comes away from the coil faster. Then the tighter the gap, the faster the coil will force air back and forth through it and the more heat is dissipated that way.

The AES1986 standard for power handling for a subwoofer will require power handling of a given amount of power over one decade of the frequency spectrum for a period of 2 hours. This uses 12dB filters at the top and bottom of that decade and 6dB crest factor. So in the case of a subwoofer like the AV series we do 1000W from 20-200hz filtered pink noise with 6dB crest factor for a period of 2 hours. They will easily exceed this 1000W continuous rating.

Aluminum cone + tinsels that aren't woven. No.

Woven in tinsels are great except they become very brittle throughout the forming process as the spider is formed with heat. I have seen MANY drivers with the woven in leads what have frayed, sparked, and even started 100% cotton spiders on fire. Also in a single VC driver if both wires are on the same side they tend to pull and rock the coil. The sewn on top wires are much better for spider linearity.

Very soft suspension that there have been many reports of people messing up within days. No.

Smearing silicone on the cone to fix the tinsel problem. Laughable at best.

Actually there has been ONE person exactly who has had a problem with the spider. I'm not sure how ONE and MANY are considered the same. We have a Cms of .22 mm/N. If you look at drivers like the IDMAX, their compliance is .39mm/N, nearly twice as soft as what we have. Our AV12X and the IDMAX Mms are nearly identical, but the IDMAX Fs is significantly lower. The main difference is only that we have significantly more motor strength and more low end efficiency. I don't believe I have yet to see anyone giving the kind of abuse to an IDMAX that was given to our driver and then criticizing it the way our AV woofers have been.

The standard policy that nearly everyone in the industry does to avoid lead wires tapping on the bottom of the cone is to glue a piece of felt or foam to the underside of the cone. With a paper cone that is easy. With an aluminum cone that absorbs and dissipates a lot of heat it gets harder. The adhesive has to be able to withstand 300F and higher temperatures. We actually have a silicone foam in stock to glue to the underside of the cone, sourced from these people. http://www.ipotec.com/ It is good to 500F. The clear silicone you see is the adhesive they sell with it as not much other than silicone sticks to itself. The adhesive is good to 600F. After doing a few it became very clear that the silicone itself was plenty to make an insulating layer without the foam being glued on. There was no need to add extra weight with the actual foam.

John, I respect your efforts, but this is really a sophomoric attempt at the market you're trying to penetrate. You failed to "idiot-proof" your sub. Seems to me that what you have is a 5-700w driver capable of taking 1000w if you're careful. But, if you rate it at 1000w and put it in the hands of the general car audio crowd, they'll tear it up within hours.

Yes, I agree that i did not "idiot-proof" the sub. My intent was to make a very low distortion driver for many of the applications we sell drivers to that include home theater, recording studios, and live sound use. As people have been buying our TD woofers and IB woofers for SQ applications in vehicles, it was only a matter of time before people started buying the AV series for vehicles as well. Thermally they will handle 1000W all day like I mentioned above. The problem in the car market is that people don't realize that a power rating is specifically a thermal rating. The mechanical limits are always going to be application specific. We have people using our AV15's in infinite baffle subwoofers for home theater where they wish to get output down to 10hz. (Yes, many movies have bass this low.) The difference is that they realize that at 10hz in an infinite baffle it may take only 100W to reach the suspension limits of the driver. However, this is not a negative, it means it is very efficient here. It is much better to reach the physical limits with 100W in this application than it is to require 1000W to reach the same physical limits and the same output levels.

-If you're aiming at the car audio market, who cares about extension beyond 100hz?

I really never was aiming at the car market. I started out with only single 4ohm coils as that is what was needed by our OEM customers and most of the home theater people. I only decided to offer dual 2ohm and dual 4ohm drivers to the car market after many requests. Maybe I should have decided against that.

The high frequency extension is not a needed factor in car audio. It comes from the copper sleeve though. The low distortion and increased heat transfer from the coil are however beneficial to any application.

John

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

When you gonna start consulting for Boeing there cutie? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Given the two dozen or so times I've seen you mention this.....you must really think that makes you special //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

Seriously, nobody gives a fuck.

Appeal to authority, anyone? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif The appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

I wanted to know if your average idiot could hear any of that stuff he was talking about when group delay and real world application in the car is nothing short of totally ignored.

Maybe I'm missing something.....but could you please show me anywhere in these threads where John was specifically using the frequency extension/low inductance as a main selling point to the car audio crowd? Seriously, if I missed it, please let me know.

Because from what I remember of the current conversations, John was pointing out these aspects of the driver specifically to refute the postings by a couple members that the driver itself lacked any response above 50 or 60hz. Conversations then carried on about how/why the drivers are capable of this. But he wasn't running around saying "Buy my driver because it extends to 1khz!" He was pointing out that the design of the driver allows it to offer significant extension, and that there may be other factors at play in their systems. It was at this point you decided to jump in and "debate" him on various aspects....at which point, I agree with bose, he promptly and eloquently handed your ass to you.

From my perspective, you tried to debate with him because of either 1) attempted revenge for some prior petty disagreements, or 2) because he is a competitor in the market.

Either way......I can't help but laugh.

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

I'm just saying... I don't doubt that the voice coil can handle 1000w thermally. The problem is... well, the rest of the soft parts.

Thus you fail to comprehend the difference between thermal power handling and mechanical power handling, and the factors that can affect the mechanical power handling.

If 1600w was able to rip the surround, rip the spider AND fold the cone on a "1000w" sub.... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/hilarious.gif.02a037aad04aa96f19982b298a3d70a8.gif

See above.

Also, I guess I fail to see the fault in the design for failing when overdriven by 60%.

I'm just saying, it may be able to handle 1000w for a while, but with all the reports of sagging suspension (Even due to GRAVITY! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif)

Sag is pretty common knowledge in most other communities when mounting the driver horizontally.

Adire used to have a white paper about it on their website, and explained formulas for calculating which drivers (based on specs) should probably avoid being up/down fired.

I guess it's more laughable you were not aware of this //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

There's nothing wrong with headroom. Subs have to be able to withstand some abuse. I have abused the **** out of some subs, giving 2-3x their rated power and NEVER folded a cone or ripped a surround. Everything from a piece of **** Pep Boys 8" to a nasty Kenwood 10" or a 15" L7.

Then I guess you aren't very good at abuse //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

It's not difficult to exceed the mechanical limits of a driver.

If someone can completely total a 1000w sub with 1600w, that is laughable.

You're inability to comprehend much of the information present in this thread is what's laughable.

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

It's funny Fi subs sound like a wet fart..If I remember right we've got 3 world title SQ cars running the subs? Steve was running a pair of the 12 Q's..Mr. Budwala is running one of our subs as well. So is Dave Edwards...all of which have 'horrid inductance and can't sound good'

So tell me there slick, How many IASCA/USACi/MECA world championship cars are running low inductance and/or xbl^2 equipped woofers? I'll be waiting for that one.

It's pretty funny how everybody likes to cry foul at this line of argument.....until it suits their purposes.

The L7 has been used to win multiple world championships in the toughest and most critical classes of SQ competitions. IIRC it has been used to win atleast 8 world championships.

I guess that proves the L7 is better than Fi.

 

[WS2186 10+ year member]

squeak9798 - excellent points

kennyg - you need to find a counselor. it's pathetic that youve wasted so much of your life posting in these threads, as your revenge for "losing $70", especially after John offered to reimburse you even for that. and also stfu about "im done posting here" since obviously this is one of your big goals in life.

for those that dont comprehend how obsessed kenny is with this situation, I have PM's from him from MONTHS ago when he saw that i posted about getting an AE woofer and he sent me a PM tryign to dissuade my purchase. I can only imagine how many others he has done the same to.

bassfreak - I have a real hard time believing anything you say since youve said so many different things. First your box is tuned to 32hz and you refuse to use a highpass. Then when I ask, you say it is bandpassed from 30-70. Then later you post that it's bandpassed from 30-55. Now it is tuned to 32 hz again. You changed the box also in the meantime. Was that before or after the surround separated?? No highpass filter ever. Your woofer looks like **** and you're crazy if you cant see that it was from over excursion due to no highpass filter.

Nick from Fi - It seem obvious to me that after 2 former Fi owners went to the AE and said it was better, you came in here to stir ****. Your analogies have ****** and you have contradicted yourself. I liked my Fi, but im not going to support your company anymore (im sure you dont need me, right?), especially when there are better options.

If anyone has the right to be upset with John or AE, IT IS ME. I BOUGHT HIS WOOFER AND I HAVE BEEN THE ONE WAITING. Yet, I'm not.

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

It's pretty funny how everybody likes to cry foul at this line of argument.....until it suits their purposes.
The L7 has been used to win multiple world championships in the toughest and most critical classes of SQ competitions. IIRC it has been used to win atleast 8 world championships.

I guess that proves the L7 is better than Fi.

That's a bit of a stretch there squeek //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

you know better then to make that comparison.

 

[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

Thus you fail to comprehend the difference between thermal power handling and mechanical power handling, and the factors that can affect the mechanical power handling.
See above.

Also, I guess I fail to see the fault in the design for failing when overdriven by 60%

Sag is pretty common knowledge in most other communities when mounting the driver horizontally.

Adire used to have a white paper about it on their website, and explained formulas for calculating which drivers (based on specs) should probably avoid being up/down fired.

I guess it's more laughable you were not aware of this //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

Then I guess you aren't very good at abuse //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

It's not difficult to exceed the mechanical limits of a driver.

You're inability to comprehend much of the information present in this thread is what's laughable.

You totally missed my first point. I said that its cool that the sub can handle 1000w thermally, but it doesn't mean **** if it can't handle it mechanically.

Again, I will repeat that this woofer really isn't suited for car audio use, and I don't understand why it's being marketed as such. Why?

Car audio subs are generally more likely to be abused. If a kid is given a 1000w sub and a 1000w amp, there's a good chance that he'll clip the **** out of the amp to make the sub louder. On top of that, if music with gratuitous amounts of bass is played at high volume, that is torturous to a sub's suspension.

I see the AV as being a home sub primarily- from what I've read, it has soft suspension and doesn't fare well under continuous beating. Like I said, a movie filled with explosions and other bass-intensive scenes won't abuse a sub as badly as the entirety of a rap album. Why? Because in movies, intense bass is short-lived and sparse. On top of that, people tend not to keep their HT setups ridiculously loud because of neighnors.

Anyone who wants to put a sub on the shelf for the car audio market needs to understand that their woofers will be abused. If your sub can't withstand abuse for even a couple days, you're going to see a very high failure rate.

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

That's a bit of a stretch there squeek //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif
you know better then to make that comparison.

How is that a stretch? It's following the exact line of reasoning Nick used.

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

You totally missed my first point. I said that its cool that the sub can handle 1000w thermally, but it doesn't mean **** if it can't handle it mechanically.

And yet, you continue to fail to understand the factors that influence mechanical power handling. It isn't a hard-lined, slap a number on it statistic. You can not create a generalized mechanical power handling spec for every scenario the driver will encounter. I can guarantee you there are not many, if any, subs on the market that will handle their rated power in my installation. Why? Because I'm not using an enclosure.

So when I damage a 1kw driver with 400w in my installation, I should go and bash the manufacturer I presume?

Again, I will repeat that this woofer really isn't suited for car audio use, and I don't understand why it's being marketed as such. Why?

Again, I fail to see why the driver isn't suitable for car audio.

Car audio subs are generally more likely to be abused. If a kid is given a 1000w sub and a 1000w amp, there's a good chance that he'll clip the **** out of the amp to make the sub louder.

That isn't the manufacturer's fault; that is the idiot users fault.

When the driver is used within it's intended range of use, how many failures have occured?

On top of that, if music with gratuitous amounts of bass is played at high volume, that is torturous to a sub's suspension.

And it's the users responsibility to understand how to use the product they purchase. If they blow a driver because of their own ignorance or intentional abuse (applying 1600w to a 1kw driver is intentional abuse), don't be surprised if the driver fails.

Anyone who wants to put a sub on the shelf for the car audio market needs to understand that their woofers will be abused.

That's idiotic at best.

And that is what a warranty exclusions are for. If you use the driver outside of it's intended use, and damage occurs.....you are the one who messed up, not the manufacturer.

Go grab a random driver from your local dealer, wreck the suspension by admittedly driving the suspension beyond it's mechanical limits and/or by supplying it with well beyond it's rated power handling.....then take it back and see what they say.

Manufacturers design a driver for a specific purpose and specific use. If you don't know how to use the driver, or can not use it within that intended use, then you're SOL when damage occurs.

 

[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

John admits he didn't idiot-proof his sub. I understand that mechanical limits are very much influenced by the enclosure, but there seems to be a large amount of complaining from people who used them in pretty normal applications. From what I've read, we're not looking at people who put their 12" sub in a 6 cube box tuned to 50hz and then played 15hz tones.

The point I'm trying to drive home is, when you don't idiot-proof your sub, you end up with pissed off customers. I had a piece of **** Kenwood sub, rated for 150w RMS, yet I gave it 400w on a daily basis for a few months. That's over twice its rated power. I gave a 15" L7, rated at 750w, 2,000w on a daily basis for 6 months and it still worked fine when I sold it. If customers can break a sub within days with a modest amount more power than the driver is rated for, well you have a problem.

And I find your brand of argument to be hysterical. Condescension and insults embedded within an argument add no value, yet in any argument I've ever seen you get in on cacom, you resort to it. And that is poor form.

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

but there seems to be a large amount of complaining from people who used them in pretty normal applications.

The mechanical power handling of the driver can vary in normal applications. Just because it's rated to handle 1kw thermally, doesn't mean it will handle that much mechanically in "normal" enclosures.

But, how many drivers have failed the way the one owned by papermaker did when driven with 1kw or under?

If you significantly over drive a speaker and you damage it, that is NO fault of the manufacturer especially when you should be intelligent enough to know that you are risking damage at such levels.

The point I'm trying to drive home is, when you don't idiot-proof your sub, you end up with pissed off customers.

Only the ones who aren't intelligent enough to understand that when you overdrive your subwoofer, and you damage it as a result, it's your own dumb fault.

If customers can break a sub within days with a modest amount more power than the driver is rated for, well you have a problem.

Modest?

Go drive 60% over the speed limit, and then try explain to the officer how it was only a "modest" amount faster than the posted speed limit.

And I find your brand of argument to be hysterical. Condescension and insults embedded within an argument add no value, yet in any argument I've ever seen you get in on cacom, you resort to it. And that is poor form.

I honestly don't give a **** how you feel about it.