Acoustic Elegance AV15

[bose301s 5,000+ posts]

Wow, that is over the top. John, just ignore this BS.



Ok, so you pushed it to the point where it folded - but not that bad. It is clear that you deliberately pushed it beyond its limits. Not sure why, but perhaps you just wanted to start an E-argument.

Folks are intelligent enough to read through all of this and form their own conclusions. Stop trying to prove a "point" - it is not working and no one is listening to you. Just stop it.

You almost had me fooled until I read the last sentence //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

Yea, the Dan Wiggins person almost had me fooled too, I actually had to reread the post to make sure that I read it right the first time, lol.

 

[Papermaker85 5,000+ posts]

seriously you have no clue on wooferage, please stop wasting you time, i don't care about you or your woofer, fact remains that on the 15H the spider surrounds and triple joint FAILS. first, it was rocking issues, now it non linear spiders and a very overmotored woofer.. john him self said it would be fine with 1500... point has been made.. take your "SQ" design and try to convience someone else it sounds good..SPL orenited woofers don't need a box that big.. go read articles ive written, THEN try to tell me some shit...

 

[duece212 5,000+ posts]

You are correct dear sir. However it seems that there was a poor choice in the adhesive used in this driver or the substrate was not free of contaminates apon application. I too have had issues with this in drivers that I build and sold to the general public with full knowledge of the defect and still sold them to the general public.

fukn lawl!

 

[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.

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

seriously you have no clue on wooferage, please stop wasting you time, i don't care about you or your woofer, fact remains that on the 15H the spider surrounds and triple joint FAILS. first, it was rocking issues, now it non linear spiders and a very overmotored woofer.. john him self said it would be fine with 1500... point has been made.. take your "SQ" design and try to convience someone else it sounds good..SPL orenited woofers don't need a box that big.. go read articles ive written, THEN try to tell me some shit...

When you write your articles, does someone else type it for you? Or do countless others have to figure out what word you were actually trying to spell, or where you should have placed a capitol letter or perhaps a bit of punctuation?

Wooferage, lol.

Some drivers are motor-limited and some are suspension-limited. It's up to the user to know how to implement these machines. You drove it past it's mechanical limits which accounts for user error. It's time to accept that responsibility.

 

[microhaxo 10+ year member]

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.

well said..

 

[bose301s 5,000+ posts]

seriously you have no clue on wooferage, please stop wasting you time, i don't care about you or your woofer, fact remains that on the 15H the spider surrounds and triple joint FAILS. first, it was rocking issues, now it non linear spiders and a very overmotored woofer.. john him self said it would be fine with 1500... point has been made.. take your "SQ" design and try to convience someone else it sounds good..SPL orenited woofers don't need a box that big.. go read articles ive written, THEN try to tell me some shit...

Where is the triple joint failure, I honestly can't tell from the pictures.

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

well said..

Thank you. Enjoy your driver. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[dragon.breath 10+ year member]

you know John when i spoke to someone at your company about a month ago (before all the threads) i told them i had a rf1000.1bd that the birth cert. stated 1231 rms, they stated a 12 inch av would be a PERFECT match. LOL

 

[bumpin buick 5,000+ posts]

this has turned into a real enjoyable read.

A few things for the two people who complained about these subs though, I would still like answers to.

1. You mentioned that all of these subs have failed. I personally could not get the driver to fail, nor can anyone else I know using them. Can you please elaborate on how they have "all" failed.

2. Why are you two defending one another and ignoring any of the good information shared? I mean were on post 190 and have gone over why the sub has failed multiple times, all though I feel you guys ignore it.

3. Why is it that the identical sub that John gave me to test, had no issues, and you clearly blew yours past its limit, all though I put even more power to it. Only conclusion I could come up with is that either I have; a box that was built well, I used an amp that has a subsonic control, and I had clean power the entire time.

 

[bumpin buick 5,000+ posts]

you know John when i spoke to someone at your company about a month ago (before all the threads) i told them i had a rf1000.1bd that the birth cert. stated 1231 rms, they stated a 12 inch av would be a PERFECT match. LOL

Im sure it would be, I had my Z2lv at 4ohm on the sub and just let loose, the sub was perfectly fine afterwards. I think as long as you set everything accordingly you that sub would love 1200wrms. All though John clearly made it for 1000wrms.

The company follows the same path as most SPL companies, you rate it at what the average joe can run it at no problem, but competitors know what they can really take. Example would be HDC3, rated at 1000wrms... but if you are smart and know what your doing, you can show it plenty more. Thats what I did with the sub, and I took vids to prove it, doesnt get much better then that unless people want to come visit and see it in real life take the power.

 

[kendogg 10+ year member]

this has turned into a real enjoyable read.
A few things for the two people who complained about these subs though, I would still like answers to.

1. You mentioned that all of these subs have failed. I personally could not get the driver to fail, nor can anyone else I know using them. Can you please elaborate on how they have "all" failed.

'All' of them from CAF failed. Folded cone, shorted leads, and I forget the other now. Your enclosure is tuned higher than hell, and you had a SSF installed (which is a MUST with an enclosure tuned so high). You probably had to be seeing full excursion closer to 50 Hz, which also completely explains the high SPL reading at 70 Hz - it was still moving more air. Try doing that in a lower tuned enclosure like John instructed me to use mine in.

2. Why are you two defending one another and ignoring any of the good information shared? I mean were on post 190 and have gone over why the sub has failed multiple times, all though I feel you guys ignore it.

I'll 'ignore' why the driver failed because the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge that maybe he should not have sold these drivers to the car audio crowd, and honestly - I feel like a ****ing lemming for taking everything he said to heart. Thats not like me. Infact, thats not me AT ALL. I hate myself for it, and in turn, I'm going to hate him for it as well. I've stated it before, and I'll state it again - you should NOT need to EQ a set of frequencies as small as what a subwoofer reproduces in order to get a somewhat flat response.

3. Why is it that the identical sub that John gave me to test, had no issues, and you clearly blew yours past its limit, all though I put even more power to it. Only conclusion I could come up with is that either I have; a box that was built well, I used an amp that has a subsonic control, and I had clean power the entire time.

We have no idea the sub you got was identical. Also, you only pushed it for a few hours. Ours had MUCH more time on them.

Answers in red.

 

[bumpin buick 5,000+ posts]

'All' of them from CAF failed. Folded cone, shorted leads, and I forget the other now. Your enclosure is tuned higher than hell, and you had a SSF installed (which is a MUST with an enclosure tuned so high). You probably had to be seeing full excursion closer to 50 Hz, which also completely explains the high SPL reading at 70 Hz - it was still moving more air. Try doing that in a lower tuned enclosure like John instructed me to use mine in.

I'll 'ignore' why the driver failed because the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge that maybe he should not have sold these drivers to the car audio crowd, and honestly - I feel like a ****ing lemming for taking everything he said to heart. Thats not like me. Infact, thats not me AT ALL. I hate myself for it, and in turn, I'm going to hate him for it as well. I've stated it before, and I'll state it again - you should NOT need to EQ a set of frequencies as small as what a subwoofer reproduces in order to get a somewhat flat response.

We have no idea the sub you got was identical. Also, you only pushed it for a few hours. Ours had MUCH more time on them.

Tuned "higher then hell"? 38hz? And the enclosure you guys used was what 32-34hz? Guess I dont see that being really high. I consider 50-60hz high. 38hz for an SPL build is pretty low and it allowed me to range from 70hz to the mid 20s with no problem.

Im sure if you'd like John will let me beat on a sub for a week or two. I dont feel that will be relevant though because I pushed it as hard as I ever would for a few hours, the TS parameters showed little to no change at all, so its not like the material is being worn down or strength is dissipating.

Im not a frequenter of CAF but I know on other sites, with other people using AE subs, I have not heard of issues. Also it sounds as if there have been three known subs that have blown, am I correct? Also how many owners? To my record it is just you two. There are more users on here that have used AE for that, and not had any problems. Not really sure what more you expect from this discussion. I did the tests that were blamed for the subs failure, the sub clearly did not fail... its over and done with. There is nothing more for you to prove here, and only more reasons we can prove why the sub failed on you two.

 

[kendogg 10+ year member]

It's been posted over and over again. My enclosure was 3.5 tuned to 25 Hz, per John's recommendation.

The drivers failed for more than just papermaker and I. That is 1 driver. There were 3 driver failures on CAF. It comes dwon to the fact that no matter what, once any of us posted our displeasure about how we felt about the driver, we were shunned. I'm sure if you changed your mind after more testing and realize it's shortcomings, John would start telling you you did everything wrong, you abused the driver, etc. etc. etc. also. There's a pattern here you simply aren't (or refuse to) seeing.

 

[bumpin buick 5,000+ posts]

It's been posted over and over again. My enclosure was 3.5 tuned to 25 Hz, per John's recommendation.
The drivers failed for more than just papermaker and I. That is 1 driver. There were 3 driver failures on CAF. It comes dwon to the fact that no matter what, once any of us posted our displeasure about how we felt about the driver, we were shunned. I'm sure if you changed your mind after more testing and realize it's shortcomings, John would start telling you you did everything wrong, you abused the driver, etc. etc. etc. also. There's a pattern here you simply aren't (or refuse to) seeing.

Pattern im not seeing? Please explain. John let me beat on that sub, he said he had no problem if it blew and I tried for it. The sub was fine after hours of abuse. I dont see that changing in a week specially if the parameters werent changing at all after abuse.