Ricci

Figured I might update the old amp list. Mackie M1400i Repaired still powering JBL compression drivers Behringer EP4000's (Sold) Long gone... Crown CE4000's (Sold) Long ago Crest 8002's (Still have 4 of these.) Still a great bass amp. PFC! 66lbs, basic black, no light show. QSC PL9.0's (Sold) AETechron 7560's (Sold) Sort of wish I'd have kept these now. Powersoft K10's (Sennheiser KPA2400's) / Sold...And going to a good home Behringer Inuke-6000 non dsp (Bought this to see what $400 could get these days. it does have a good amount of power but the old Crest 8002's are rated at only 4kw yet seem to be quite a bit more powerful on big subs. Tried it on full range duties and did not like how it sounded in the upper midrange and treble. Tried it on full-range bass guitar in place of an 8002 and thought it did ok but the guy playing bass said it sounded weaker and the tone was different. It's his call so that was swapped back out quickly. Then tried it on a stereo pair of GH's and it abruptly died. It was not being pushed hard at the time. Got it replaced under warranty. Moved it to mid-bass duties covering 70-750Hz wired at 8ohms stereo running 4 very efficient 15's and it has been fine ever since. Overall I was a bit disappointed in the amp. It felt very cheap, was ugly, gaudy lights, blew up once, and didn't seem to sound very good except when used below the mid-band. Plus the fans are really loud. The best thing going for these is the DSP. Still a great bargain for the money but I'd look to other amps if the DSP isn't needed. Sorry if I offend anyone with this but that's my impressions of it. I am a bit spoiled in the amp department though. Dayton PSA-1000/SA-1000 I've reviewed a number of subs using this amp. Offers a pretty good amount of power for the price. Has a nice range of adjustments on board. The built in rumble filter is easily modified or defeatable. I wish they had an XLR input. (I avoid RCA's like the plague, virtually none of my equipment uses them.). Gain is crazy high on these. Can be a bit noisy due to that if care isn't taken with gain structure and grounding. One other thing of note is that it appears that these are allowed to go all of the way into hard clipping rather than employing a clip limiter, which will generate a lot of power but lots of distortion as well. Not really a big deal in the scheme of things just something a bit different from most other comparable amps. Wish list for this one would be a speakon connector on the rack version. Emotiva XPA-5 Class D, SMPS amps have come a long, long way but they still seem to sound a bit harsh in the upper mids and treble to me. The Powersoft K series is about the best sounding I have heard run full range but I still like older school amp technology for full range or upper bandwidth duties. That is why I bought this a few years back. I really like this amp and think the Emo amps are a pretty good bargain for the most part. No fans to worry about, XLR inputs, very well built weighing near 70lbs and it offers plenty of dynamic reserve for most situations. I wish they would dump the silly consumer audio connections like the IEC detachable power cord and go with powercon and add speakon outputs. I also wish there was an adjustable input sensitivity as well, but still for the $800 I paid it's been a nice amp. Speakerpower SP-4000 plate These are the real deal. Brutal amounts of power in a plate amp. More than most single or even dual drivers will be comfortable with over long periods unless some long term limiting of current is invoked. I know in one case a driver, that many people brag about as being able to handle the biggest amps around without issue, was summarily torched and the coil turned into a burnt slinky in short order on one of these. No it was not by me! Very simple layout too. Only thing I wish it had was a more user friendly DSP interface and system. Speakerpower SP2-12000 see the SP-4000 comments and multiply by 2. This is a very powerful amp no doubt. One of the most powerful on the market. I like that the fans won't turn on until the amp starts to develop some heat which takes a bit. Nice and light weight too. Very efficient. The version I have has the input trims on the front panel thankfully. Having them on the back would have been a bit awkward so I am glad that move was made. Much like the plate version I wish the amp had a more user friendly dsp system. I also wish that there were a few other things such as universal voltage capability and bridge capability (for those times when you really need to let your Danley TH812's loose). Also the amp looks rather pedestrian. I'm not a huge aesthetics guy but this is a $3.5K amplifier. On the amp I have there are grounding wires to the chassis and adhesive that can be seen right through the front grille. This is because there are no air filters?! That seems a bit odd to me because the grille slits on this amp are quite open and it does have fans. I would think that without filters that all manner of dust and debris may easily be pulled into the amp in short order. Maybe they just weren't in place in this loaner amp. Minor gripes aside this thing makes huge power. There is no doubt about that. It seems to handle 2ohms nominal pretty easily so far as well. Also for anyone wondering I measured the response of this amp and it is -3dB down at right about 4Hz. Good enough for the bottom dwelling IB and sealed power users out there me thinks. I also have a few new amps I'm working with or will be working with soon. I've got a Powersoft K20-DSP or 2 on the way, I should have an M-Force module soon and also an IPAL module. Lately I've changed my tune about dsp being built into the amp. I used to not care. I'm starting to realize that the more cables and power cords I have to run the more complicated and messy things get. I'm a fan of condensing things into as few electronic units as possible now. With that said I wish someone was making old school torroidal power supply amplifiers with DSP front ends and large channel counts. Does anyone know of any? I would imagine there aren't because at that point you are blending consumer/ "HiFi" with professional traits. I mean you have Lab Gruppen PLM20000Q's and such or Powersoft's new X8 8 channel amp with DSP but these are $10K amps.

Mine came with a 30A powercon and 10/3 with a 30A 250v twistlock plug. Sure yours wasn't 120v Luke?

Hey John, I’ve done a lot of thinking on it, but I still have many unanswered questions myself. For one thing observance of polarity at the driver connection and placement of the DPC sensor are both critical. Otherwise system stability issues can result. Polarity must be reversed in the software if needed. This gives a clue. The system tracks the input signal, the output voltage, the output current, back EMF from the driver and the pressure from the front of the driver cone at the baffle. A great many things can be calculated from this information when combined with some user input data such as driver parameters, SD, RE, MMS, etc... Impedance, peak and average power applied, driver excursion behavior, probably impulse response, etc…Can be gathered. All of this information is gathered and electrical feedback plus the DPC sensors acoustic feedback can be compared back to the input signal in nearly real time. Let’s say that you have a tapped horn with all of the crazy impedance spikes and resonances inherent to that type of design. How could the IPAL feedback possibly work with that type of system and know what the system is supposed to behave like? Let’s say that the input signal for a kick drum comes in and the fundamental is near a resonance in the TH pass band at say 70Hz that would typically ring. The IPAL system can sense that there is significant difference in the buildup of pressure near the driver and ringing after a “perfect” reproduction of the input signal would have stopped and can adjust the driver cone movement to better match the actual signal and dampen the ringing somewhat. This is how I think it would also damp ringing of ports a bit. It isn’t perfect obviously but their measurements do show that it makes significant improvement. I’m still trying to piece together other parts of what is going on that allow it to work with vented and horn systems. As far as the TSP modeling aspect. I will probably not use this aspect much. It is interesting but not what drew me to the technology. Sure you can modify the driver behavior but like anything else it is still subject to the physical limitations imposed by the amplifier and the driver and cabinet it is working with. Basically you cannot force a $200 18” pro woofer to perform like an IPAL driver. You would come at it from the other direction with a really strong driver and dumb the parameters down a bit to make it have response like a more traditional woofer design and cabinet. You can make the IPAL drivers respond like an Eminence Omega pro in a 7ft vented cab, but you would not want to do the reverse. Basically you wouldn’t want to force a driver to act like it has a more powerful motor, or lower qts than it naturally does. Compression ratio I am still going back and forth on...Yes it is even more aggressive than the Othorn however the driver could potentially have 3dB greater excursion limited output and higher power handling. All of which pushes things even further. Folded up cones or massive compression could be a real issue. However increasing the throat volume loses a lot of sensitivity and makes the response much rougher. 6 of one half dozen of the other. I've been doing a lot of second guessing. I will have to make a move and go for it in the next couple weeks if I want the cabs done in time for spring. BTW if you can guess what is going on in the cab I will give you a cookie.

I've got an SP12k on hand too. I'm going to do much the same type of testing versus a k10. I'm going to use CEA2010 bursts for the short term test and very slow sine sweeps for the long term. Probably going to use dual 21Ipals for a 2 ohm load and dual XXX for a 4 ohm. Thought about wiring up 4 drivers but that starts getting to be too much to drag outside. Dual of either aught to handle a single channel of either amp.

Welcome aboard. I think it will be worth checking out...I mean we are talking about an active, feedback loop controlled tapped horn that should be even more powerful than the OT after all. All of the cool kids have one so yes.

Really Scott the reason has to do with the fact that this cab is very sensitive to the driver and even more than most subs you can't just throw any old driver in there. The drivers out there with enough motor are very few even moving down in cone size to 18's or 15's. All of them are expensive. I can't tell you how many emails and pm's I got asking what $200 driver works good in the GH or OT. I even had a guy who build an OT cab which may or may not have even been braced all the way or built well and used a driver completely unsuited for it and then said it wasn't very good. DUH! Plus I can't have anybody building my new cabs before I thoroughly wring them out first! Plus I won't know whether further tweaks are needed or whether it is a total fail until I do.

Figured I might as well post a little bit about this sub. I've had the design basically finalized for a year and a half or so, if not longer, but I have not had a chance to get the amplifiers done, the drivers in, the cabs built, testing etc...Things are on the move now though. The goals for this design are similar to the Othorn. The bandwidth of interest is 25-90Hz primarily. The application would be for music or live sound in very large spaces or outdoors,with huge headroom from a cab that is reasonably handled by one guy with some wheels, or man handled by 2 men. Had to be small enough to fit one in a small SUV or a pair in a larger SUV or van. It isn't a typical professional bass bin because of the extra extension. I've found that with subs that do not really get down below 35Hz with power, which is most "pro" subs honestly. I start to miss some of the lowest bass fundamentals in music, which in the last 10 years, has really started to dip into the 25-35Hz range more often. The tradeoff for 25Hz extension is reduced sensitivity and output in the middle and upper part of the bass bandwidth, but by using an extremely powerful and expensive driver, this can be overcome a bit. The goal is not to blow away other high power pro subs on the market with sheer loudness, but to offer comparable headroom in the 40-100hz bass range as a more typical bass system of similar external cab volume, while extending 1/3 to 2/3 octave lower with real power. I also expect low distortion, good sensitivity, and controlled LF decay to go with lofty dynamic headroom. Basically the idea behind this design is to take the performance of the Othorn, which I was very happy with the result of and push the ball a bit further, while also fixing a few minor things I felt I could have done a bit better in the Othorn in retrospect. To that end the cabinet form factor will still be the same 36x36x24" and it will still employ a single 21" driver. However the driver will now be the B&C 21 IPAL instead of the 21sw152. Due to the beefed up nature of the IPAL driver, which offers: Roughly 40% excursion, even better efficiency, a heavier voice coil with higher power handling and a reinforced cone; the result should be a system of comparable sensitivity, slightly better maximum output 40-100Hz, slightly better long term thermal behavior at high power and just a hair more extension with notably more output at 20-30Hz. The Othorn tune is right about 28Hz while the Palehorn will come in slightly lower at about 26.5Hz. Also the cabinet design is entirely different. There isn't a single piece that is shared between the two. Everything internally is different. The cabinet for the Palehorn should be significantly stiffer especially around the driver and should be more immune to cabinet vibration. Additionally the system will be powered with PS IPAL amplifier modules which offer extremely advanced DSP processing and real time monitoring of behavior of the driver and amplifier as well as active feedback of the system both electrically and acoustically with real time correction of the driver behavior. The feedback system has shown to provide some improvements in distortion, ringing, overshoot and overall tracking of the input signal. I am very excited to see some results on a higher order system. How PS has managed to apply tracking and correction to resonant or 1/4 wave systems is very interesting since previously the consensus has been that it could only be applied effectively to sealed or infinite baffle systems. There are a number of questions that have yet to be answered such as how the system will behave with a complex driver loading, how it will behave with ULF frequencies below 16Hz, whether the 21IPAL driver will survive the forces and pressures that will be on the cone in this cabinet, as things are really being pushed very far out in left field (BAD things are a very real possibility with the internal forces involved), how bad of an effect air compression will be on the system at near maximum outputs, etc...LOTS of questions to still be answered. Note I will NOT be sharing DIY plans for this system at this time. I may not even show the cab internals. It is possible that I may at some point after I've gotten all of the testing done on a finished pair and know for sure what the good, the bad and the ugly of it are, but that will be some time off. I will show all of the measurements and other data I collect on them though.

It is likely to have a huge impedance peak. I doubt there is any sort of inductance combating measures in that motor and a ton of steel and coil. It is made to take a lot of abuse mechanically and a ton of power with no regard for suspension or motor noise or distortion. Getting real loud 35-70Hz is the goal and the inductance peak helps with that and so does some extra distortion. Without measuring that driver it would be a crap shoot as to how it behaves and in a horn? You'd almost have to buy one and try it.

Same here Luke...I just sold a bunch of gear off on EBay and hadn't sold anything for probably 7-8 years. After 4% PayPal fees, 10%!!!! seller fees and shipping costs I got hammered on most of it. Oh well. Live and learn. 10%...WTF.

Price drop on the amps...Somebody has to be out there that needs a couple of nasty bass amps. I don't want to have to go to Ebay and take a big loss on them after all of the seller and listing fees and crap. SOLD!!! Klein & Hummel KPA-2400 / Powersoft K10 amplifiers (2 available), bulletproof workhorses. $3150 shipped each.SOLD!!!

Sure thing Mike. The WT2 is sitting in my garage. It's been boxed up for well over a year. No issues. It needs a good home. Somebody should've grabbed that Quest QC-10 SPL calibrator. It sold for $25 on the bay auction. After fees and shipping I think I got $10 out of it. I should've just gave it to someone who needed it.

Amps I may be making a move if I can get enough out of the two. I have to offset the added cost on it. The rest is just stuff that is piling up in my garage and I've had a few things come up and could use the capital.

SOLD!!! Also adding a Smith & Larson Woofertester 2. $110 takes it. SOLD!!! SOLD!!! And a Quest QC-10 / 20 acoustic calibrator. 114dB at 1khz calibrator. With a 1/4" microphone adapter. $60 shipped. SOLD!!!

Ok here are some more things for sale...I need to clean house a bit I just have too much equipment gathering dust. SOLD!!!Sundown Zv4 18d2 $470 shipped SOLD!!! SOLD!!! JBL 2242HPL $200 shipped SOLD!!! SOLD!!! B&C 21sw152-4 $580 shipped B&C 21sw152-4 ( glue on cone to repair crack, driver functions 100%, All of the tests for DB using these drivers used this one after the repair. It is cosmetic only. If it is going in a horn or other cab where the cone won't be seen you can save some cash. ) $480 shipped SOLD!!! SOLD!!! 2 Othorn cabs. The originals. Duratex coated, 18mm BB 13ply void free, corner protectors, speakon jacks. Will have to be freight shipping or local pickup. $400 each plus shipping. If someone wants the B&C drivers and a cab or cabs we can make a little bit better deal. SOLD!!! ALL SOLD!!! TC Sounds VMP passive radiators (original packaging, washers, nuts) 12" (2 available) $110 each shipped 15" ( 2 available) $130 each shipped 18" (2 available) $150 each shipped SOLD!!! Klein & Hummel KPA-2400 / Powersoft K10 amplifiers (2 available), bulletproof workhorses. $3150 shipped each.

I did not...

Still need to sell the Zv4 and the 2242HPL guys. Somebody make me an offer. I need to free up the cash for other drivers to test and don't want to have to hit the Bay with them.

I plan to look at the Alpine at some point. I am going to upload the RBH SX-1212 measurements in the next day or so and then I have the results from the BMS 18n862 in the sealed box to upload. That is a really nice driver. One of my favs at this point. Not going to compete with the XXX, LMS or Zv4 for sub bass output but it's still respectable and it does everything really well. Still don't have a box for the 24". Haven't heard from Nick in a while. I figure he is busy. Have some Reaction Audio subs up for testing next and following those will be Chane HT's new subs. Already have some interest from other manufacturers for tests after that. On the DIY front I want to get a Dayton UM-18 in...

SOLD!!! Also for sale Sundown ZV4 18D2....$470 shipped to the 48. SOLD!!!

ALL SOLD!!! JBL 2242HPL $200 shipped to the lower 48... Blown 2242HPL (motor and frame intact in good condition. Gap is clean) needs reconed...$50 plus shipping... SOLD!!!! Blown RE Audio SX18 D2...Coils rub badly...Needs reconed. $30 plus shipping..

Good score Mike! I keep meaning to keep an eye out for one of these but it's just one more in a long list of projects. I have to get a few others done first. That's my problem is I start a bunch of things but I get distracted and never finish them! Definitely interested in keeping up with your project. Oh and about the HTS SI driver...I'm testing it because it was sent to me before the whole "we aren't making it for sale" thing happened and I committed to test it. The next time I go out to the field it will be... JBL 2242HPL SI HTS18 Mach5 UXL18 (2014 version) Sundown ZV4 18 The next time after that will be... 2 new subs from Chane Reaction audio vented sub AE TD18H+ Apollo (hopefully)

It may be awhile on the 24". I haven't heard anything about a box for it lately. I have a bunch of other things coming up though. I have a Sundown Zv4 18" to test and another UXL18 so I can get the distortion results. I also still have the SI HST18 driver so those are the next 3 tests. After that there is some more commercial offerings coming.

I hope not to...That's a lot of time and effort and money for something that will probably never be used again. Nick is working on sourcing an enclosure. I hope it works out.

Might as well give an update. Tons of things coming in. Have to put my personal tests on hold again. The next few things in the test que according to the order recieved are... 1.) Sealed JBL 2242HPL 2.) Sealed SI HTS-18D2 3.) SVS SB13-U (For AH) 4.) Sealed UXL-18 retest for distortion 5.) Powersound XS15se 6.) Powersound XV30se 7.) SI 24" (Just got it yesterday. This is just dumb!)

I could but not really in an IB alignment. I'm not digging a pit in the ground or building a 30 cu ft box for one test. I think the biggest enclosure I'd have on hand is somewhere around 10ft.

Yeah same here...I didn't realize how big that gtg was going to turn out. A lot of the guys I'd like to be able to put a face to a name were there. I sort of burnt myself out on audio over the last couple of years so this winter I stepped back and got into some other hobbies and got away to the point of not even really reading the forums anymore. I needed it. Now I am ready to get back to it this summer.