As DevilDriver mentioned, there were some issues in the past. The company used to be Stryke Audio until a trademark issue forced me to change the name. I was selling a lot of the HE15's and the original AV series for awhile built by another manufacturer. I won't get into all the details but their actions put me into bankruptcy and put my family out of a home. Regardless of the bankruptcy, I still had to take care of my customers though. It took me nearly a year to take care of everyone, but by working 80+ hour weeks I was able to out of pocket refund over $15,000 for woofers that were built defectively and warranty's not honored by previous manufacturer. It has been over 5 years and I have yet to have even received a return phone call from them.
After taking care of my customers it was time to start over. I couldn't take a chance on any company putting me through the same situation again so I needed to make woofers in house. I was making the Lambda TD woofer in small quantity for the past few years. I really needed to add the AV series to the lineup again though as it was the best seller. This was not as easy as I had thought. It took me over 2 years and multiple attempts to get vendors who could reliably supply some of the parts like cones and surrounds. Being a small company, most companies don't want to even bother, but I have now found some very good vendors that don't treat me differently because my orders are smaller. I spent 6 months becoming an expert in adhesives to make sure everything used worked properly. I bought equipment and learned machining so I could hold tolerances on motor parts properly. I designed and built equipment for assembling motors. Assembly tables were built to efficiently be able to assemble drivers. Weeks went into setting up a measurement system that would allow me to accurately and repeatably measure parameters and test every driver before it is ever packaged. I worked with a metal spinning company that had never done a speaker cone before until we could get them to make the cones nearly perfect.
The AV series was finally re-released in its new form in January 2009 after a LONG and painful wait. They are intended for both home theater and car audio use. Dual 2ohm coils will be available very shortly. Throughout everything that happened the AV series got a huge upgrade and went from a 2" coil standard overhung design to a 2.5" coil design with the same copper faraday design as the Lambda woofers. The Lambda design was created nearly 10 yrs ago by Nick McKinney of Lambda Acoustics. He had put himself through college working at a speaker recone shop. In doing so he rebuilt and tested dozens of woofers per day. In addition to his engineering background he was able to physically evaluate what worked and didn't. He took all of this knowledge as well as things he learned from the likes of Roger Russell (McIntosh) and Tom Danley (Danley Sound Labs and previously servodrive) and the Lambda motor was born. Our page here talks about the benefits of the Lambda motor, with it is and why it lowers distortion so much:
http://www.aespeakers.com/Lambda001-1.php
While I realize this is a car forum, you may be interested in some projects others have done with our woofers. You can see quite a few in the install gallery on our forum, but here are some others:
Rightbrained's Tremor Twins with AV15X's.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1122565
TD woofers used by many in this thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1035126
TD12's used in the Basslines and in the Salk Speaker that inspired them. Look at posts by Jeff Bagby who has been in the industry 30 yrs and has written several speaker design software packages
http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=29988
10" MTM using TD10M's and Fountek NeoPro 5i done by Owen Colombus from Paradigm
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132884
Audio Kinesis Planetarium system using TD12M's
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?topic=60103.0
Review of Seaton Sound Catalysts with custom 12" drivers by movie producer Peter Chang
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1094517
Evolution Acoustics MMThree using custom 15" drivers
http://www.evolutionacoustics.com/mmthree.html
One of my own installs but a studio we did for Nick Barnett's Traxx Squad Productions. If you're looking for something new to bump in your car, you'll be hearing a lot from them shortly. Theirs is likely the only studio in the country that can monitor flat down to 10hz at over 120dB.
http://www.aespeakers.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=701
Traxx Squad and their first artist Bee
http://www.myspace.com/beehighmusic
http://www.myspace.com/traxxsquadpro
Subwoofer done for Studio 4 at Chicago Recording Company one of the top 10 studios in the nation
http://www.chicagorecording.com/
If you would like any other references I would be glad to provide them to you.
The goal of the AV series is to pass on what we have achieved in the recording and hifi world to those looking for high levels of extremely clean bass in a home theater or a vehicle. We created drivers that achieve this and at the same time have some of the lowest power compression of any drivers ever created. They can also play extremely high in frequency when needed. Check out the response curve measured by Rightbrained in the first AVS thread. A woofer that can accurately play 1KHz can easily play 100hz and below as well. No driver can come close in the midbass department. They've only been available really for less than 2 months with the exception of a small quantity of preorder woofers. I believe you'll be hearing much more about them soon. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif
John
