holtrp

One of my K77 horns gave up on me. Is there an easy way to tell if it is the diaphragm? And if it is the diaphragm, is it best to swap all of them out? I imagine it is sort of a wear and tear item that would benefit from being replaced. I swapped the entire K77 out with one on a Belle I am not currently using, so I am not in a hurry. Crite has some good instructions and it looks simple enough to do on my own. Anyone have experience here that wants to jump in would be welcome. Ebay seems to have some good deals, but I don't know if these replacements are the same you would get from Crite. Thanks

Oh yeah. I am sure it was outside, 3 meters, yadayada 'certified' chart. You know those guys better than me, those guys at AVS are hardcore. I am excited to measure my room, I am sure it is compatible to your setup. I would take this setup over any number of JL's.

As someone who has had the opportunity to listen to a MartySub and a 4.0 cu. ft. 18" sealed sub, can you provide a more detailed subjective comparison? I can see from the graphs that the MartySub is louder, but beyond that, does one sub sound different and/or better than the other? The sealed sub has the advantage of being a simpler build, and it's smaller/lighter, but beyond those two obvious advantages, do you see any other factors in the sealed sub's favor? I don't have any measuring equipment (yet) to take graphs, so it'll just be what I can tell. The sealed sub definitely gives greater extension. Based on reading the MartySub thread a crapload of times, I shot for a tuning closer to 15Hz rather than 17 (+/-). From the 15Hz on up, it's no comparison - Marty all the way. Below 15, it becomes a much closer comparison. Running a 15Hz wave through the Marty causes something in the room to shake in a way that sounds like drywall slapping against studs...it's downright impressive - something the single sealed could never do. If you sit right in front of the sub when the 15Hz wave goes through, you can feel air moving - I never felt that with the sealed. To me, the sound from the sealed and ported were very similar. The ported sounded "closer" if that makes sense, but overall, I can't say that one sounded better or worse than the other. From the back of the room, the Marty definitely still had more presence than the single sealed. All of this listening was done with an EP4000 bridged with the gain nob turned towards 3:00. Just for the heck of it, I hooked up both the Marty and sealed to the EP bridged and turned the gain all the way up. Talk about the best of both worlds...I have kept it that way. Regardless, I can definitely say that I never plan on buying another sub. DIY all the way. What about duel Marty and duel sealed in the same room?

Honestly, I have no idea and haven't heard each sub. This is just the graph the leading bass freaks have displayed on the AVS forum for Marty sub. I have had many subs both ported and sealed. To keep it simple, ported has more SPL but sealed has better quality. If you listen to tons of R&B hip-hop and rap and all you really care about is max spl, go ported. If you like rock, classical or tight LFE content, I would stick with sealed. My old KSW-12 was lots of fun at parties when blasting dance music, but not so much when trying to listen to pick out all the low bass notes with organ music. I have been a sealed fan for the last 7 years when I finally got rid of my last ported sub. It really comes down to what is realistic for your own listening habits. Do you really need 118 db at 20 hz vs 108 db at 20 hz that the measurements suggest you will get? Both subs are insanely loud, especially when you consider running two or 4 of them. I would consider two Martys would be comperable to my 4 sealed.

It does fall off faster, but tuned at 17hz, it is still has more SPL vs sealed. Here is the chart of marty sub vs sealed. Dayton 18" HO driver. Green is marty.

I think the only difference is the Marty has the sealed design beat below 20hz in SPL. I actually am contemplating building a Marty box and swapping one of my HO sealed daytons into it just for fun down the road. I am very, very impressed with my 4 sealed HO Daytons and don't really know what I would do with more bass at this point, I am certainly not itching to do anything for quite a while in the bass department. My system was already good and loud with just one JL f113, 4 sealed daytons has taken it to a whole new level of insanity. These things are ear splitting loud. They rattle my brains in the listening position. And, as Scrappy points out, they seem to be extremely musical and tight. If I want more SPL, I think I would be better served getting a little civic hatchback and piling in a massive ported box, along with ear plugs and a set of muffs for good measure.

I don't think the Airport Express has a 1/4" jack, it's a 1/8"... Whichever... you know what I meant.

1/4" jack to RCA, that is what I have hooked to my Marantz from an Airport Express and it works fine.

You can run one of the newer Harmony that is RF(?) or bluetooth(?) I believe. Or If you are still doing construction, you can pick up a IR repeating system. This is the one I had in my old house and it worked great. http://www.nilesaudio.com/product_selection.php?catcdID=5&categoryID=Ingenious%20IR Can't say enough about good ventilation for a closet setup. I overheated quite a bit at my old house. Ended up cutting a hole in the floor to the crawlspace, putting in a register with pantyhose over the bottom of it for super-low rent filtration and then using a small fan on the floor to keep air moving. It was pretty ghetto, but it worked. This is a great thread because I am still on the fence about what to do with my gear once we remodel. I like having everything visible, but I also like having everything hidden and tucked away. I have the same options with putting the stuff in a wall between the room and a closet. I think maybe a nice black out glass door over the gear or maybe splitting the gear up with amps mounted power strips in a pro rack separate from the AVR / disc player, etc? Tough choice to make. Either way, thermal management is going to be a priority.

I have to tell you, I actually regret not finding out about DIY 18" subs before now. I have had Klipsch subs, Velodyne subs and JL subs for the past 20 years. After doing this little project, I am convinced that nothing on the market will compare to a DIY 18" build. I put together my 4 for less than what I would have paid for two SVS PB13 Ultras, which is a serious setup all by itself.

I used Dayton 5 way binding posts. http://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-bpa-38g-hd-binding-post-pair-gold--091-1245 I used just over 16 oz (2.3 bottles) of Titebond III wood glue (for all 4 boxes) http://www.titebond.com/titebond_wood_glues/Ultimate_Wood_Glue.aspx 5 24" wood clamps and two 4" C clamps. Mine weren't as fancy, only $15 a piece at Lowes. Probably could have left the tags on them and then just took them back. http://www.lowes.com/pd_31564-1073-KR3.524_0__?productId=3057143&Ntt=24%22+wood+clamp&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3D24%2522%2Bwood%2Bclamp&facetInfo= 32 #10 Panhead 1" sheet metal screws for mounting the drivers. 64 oz (4 lbs) of poly fill per box. http://www.amazon.com/Polyfill-Stuffing-Polyester-Fiber-Pounds/dp/B0085A87NY A full tube of GE premium silicone and about half of a 3 oz tube of the same for making sure everything is air tight. Nice to have the smaller bottle after you put the motor board on as using a caulking gun in that space is a nightmare. Also, either use gloves or have some Gojo around, this stuff doesn't wash off. http://www.caulkyourhome.com/sealing-to-save-time-and-energy.php Nice rubber mallet. Everything goes smooth until you start putting in the last 3 panels, then it is nice to have a little help get things in place before clamping. Used a bunch of 14 ga speaker wire I had sitting around and a few pigtail connectors. Two Speakon two pole connectors http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=115&cp_id=11509&cs_id=1150903&p_id=601500&seq=1&format=2 Then the two Behringer iNuke 6000 DSP amps but that is about it.. Probably spent roughly 16 hours total on construction & putting everything together. I could have thrown the boxes together much faster by gluing more together at a time and spreading my clamps out but opted to take it slow and really make sure everything was over clamped.

Oh yeah, obviously the format can easily support 7.1 discrete. All I was saying is that right now only 5% of all blurays actually have 7.1 discrete recordings. Most are still just 5 or 6.1. I wonder if 7.1 will every really take off or if something like 11.2 will be the new thing

I have heard of scruple-less people using programs like Transmission for bit-torrent downloads. Everything from FLAC files to the latest HBO series in 1080p can be had for free. It probably all works out well right up until you get sued.

I think only like 5% of all bluray discs have 7.1 soundtracks right now.

Any noise over 85 db for more than 8 hours will cause a threshold shift in your hearing. There was an interesting article about babies and prolonged use of white noise generators causing hearing loss in kids. http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/white-noise-machines-could-hurt-babies-hearing-study-suggests-n41416

Pretty sure the Marty is just an enclosure that is tuned to 17hz that can accommodate just about any driver. Homeskizzle, what sort of problems are you running into tuning a marty and a sealed together? I am not interested anytime soon, but I think converting two of my sealed into marty box's would be easy enough, one sealed stacked on top of a marty would looked pretty cool flanking the center channel. Running them through the DSP it would probably be easy enough to tune up.

I bet your Ib set up is insane. I saw that photo a while back but didn't know that was your system. I actually thought about doing Ib. I have a large crawlspace behind my front wall. But the boss wasn't interested and when we remodel, we're planning on changing g the layout so ib wouldn't work. Anyway, 4 sealed 18s is plenty for me so far. Pretty idiot proof set up and should provide years of enjoyment. If I really get bored, I'll probably just go to Home Depot and get the stuff to build 4 Martysubs. http://www.avsforum.com/t/1491319/diy-sub-to-match-hsu-vtf15

Here's what data bass says about them: "The driver does not have a huge amount of displacement but it is certainly has more powerful low bass output than the geometric 12.75mm xmax rating might suggest. An effective useful excursion rating would likely be more like 18-20mm." I really don't know enough to speak intelligently about the xmax, xmech, q, or any to the other metrics associated with subs. All I know for certain is that these things absolutely have delivered the low end I have been looking for. Totally reminds me of my two 15 ID q's in my old toyota Tacoma ext cab. Sitting at the airport, it's going to be a long two weeks waiting to play with them again. Any thoughts on outboard USB sound card and mic combos? Sort of lame behringer software is only able to run on PC, luckily I have my work computer for that. Looks like REW works on iOS. I want to flesh out an actual procedure for tuning these subs as I am prone to just making adjustments and playing around.

Sorry about the confusion. I have 4 Dayton subs all in individual seal enclosures. When I was testing everything out and heard the grinding, I only had one sub turned up with all the other amps turned off.

Most people think that the Xmax for these drivers is extremely conservative. Yes, all 4 are in sealed boxes. Not entirely sure, but one either bottomed out or was very distorted during the lighting scene from war of worlds. Everything else was off and I was just playing with one sub when it made that grinding sound and the clip light came on. Gain on amp was about 75%, subs 4db hot from AVR. Fine tuning is absolutely in order. Not really looking for maximum SPL, but just flat response and even. Ideally, and I think this is normal, I would just like to know the ranges I can play with and hopefully get to the point where I can have all the control I need from the sub +/- on the AVR only. I really need a solid 6 interrupted hours with no distractions to eq these things. Wife will be out of town next month for about 4 days, so if I can convince grandma and grandpa to take the boys for a night, I will have a great chance to really dig in.

Couple of other random thoughts here. The shipping issue didn't go my way. As near as I can tell, shipping to Alaska just happens to be about twice as expensive as shipping from Alaska. Still, I am happy I ordered from Parts Express through Amazon which saved me about 30%. A handy trick for anyone else looking to buy. All in, this setup is still much less than cost + shipping on a pair of SVS PB13 ultras and obviously the value just goes up the closer you are to Ohio as shipping goes down. I have to go back to work tomorrow for two weeks, but should be able to read up on mics, boundary gain and room effects to get some ideas of what is going to look / sound the best over time. I will probably ultimately tune these things in around -15 or -20 or a tad lower as that is usually the upper end for me for normal listening. I am interested in playing with the DEQ as Derrick mentions that you can get some decent results at lower volume levels with that adjustment. Many people have complained about the fan noise of the iNukes. I measured it at 45db at the listening position which isn't bad considering I have a cold air return vent that generates about 70 db when the furnace is on. I am sure over time the fan noise will grate on me, but I am not going to do anything about it for the foreseeable future. I would rather keep the warranty intact for now and once I remodel, everything should be hidden anyway. Wish I had more time to blast these things. Bathroom remodel, kids birthday party and some other projects really put this on the back burner. Hopefully in the next month or so I can get some charts put together.

Yes, they are in a basement with pad and carpet over slab. I have each pair co-located flanking the center channel on the front wall. At some point, I will probably play around with moving them, turning them into the wall as suggested by Derrick and putting one mid way on each wall / corner, just for fun. Unfortunately scrap, I don't have either of those flicks. My little demo session was sort of a bust yesterday, not nearly long enough. Got the wife and kids out of the house for only about an hour. Powered everything up and bam, my Oppo 83 tray won't close. Fooled around with that for about 30 mins and never got it working. Luckily, I still have my old Sony universal player on hand so I could get some LFE in. So instead of doing some level matching, running audyssey, etc. I just blasted some demo scenes, making adjustments on the fly as I went - very scientific! War of the Worlds - Lighting and Pod Emerge, Master and Commander - Cannons and opening battle & Blackhawk Down - 'Irene' / Fast rope sequence. My phone was also about dead and I was frustrated with my Oppo so I didn't get my SPL meter out either to measure. Hope to get a few readings today. I started playing around with just one sub on with all the other amps off so I could listen for distortion and watch for clipping. Honestly, just one of these things is more than enough for 99.9% of all listeners, very musical and loud. I have discovered probably a dozen new rattles in the basement as a result. The PEQ has one filter running at 20hz with a +6 db boost as per derrick's setup guide. I played around with some different settings but ended up with subs 3 db hot at the receiver and the gain on the iNukes just past high noon. I found that anything much further than this will bottom out the subs and / or clip the amp while at reference. As for overall output, I am extremely impressed. I have never heard or felt anything that sounded better in a home or from a commercial sub. The bass is just ridiculous. I rattled a 1-1/4" screw and the RS-52 it was holding off the wall yesterday! My jean pants leg and chair back move when the bass hits. This is closer to car audio SPL than I have ever been. Thanks for all the support on this project. I would be happy to answer any questions. Special thanks to Scrap and Derrick for taking the time to really help me out. I am far from done here. I have to make up my mind between Duratex and veneer, get a mic and learn REW / dial in etc.

Lol... Should have the house to myself for a bit tomorrow so I can test drive them. Opened them up with master & commander cannon blasts at -5db and dropped a picture off the wall! The boss even likes them, not anywhere above -30, but she still likes them

LOL... have to let the glue cure up bro! Just took Nelly 'Country Grammer' to -10 db for a second... holy #$%t!

So, I did a very short, quite functional checkout to make sure everything was working then let everything sit for 8 hours. Last night I couldn't help myself and played around a little bit at -30 db. Later today I will try to crank it up and rattle some stuff off the walls. Thanks for info on the iNuke Derrick. I got everything all dialed in. I believe you are right, I shouldn't have to limit anything with these subs, just be careful with the sub channel on the ARV. First impression from last night are, they absolutely are louder and lower than anything I have heard. I never really noticed just how localized the bass was from my JL. I think Scrap and I are really in the same boat. That JL sounded fantastic at our last house when it was sitting in a living room on top of a crawlspace. As soon as it moved into the basement of our new home, it just couldn't do it. I will do my best to check in and let everyone know how this set up is going. Birthday parties, bathroom remodels and summer time might slow things down a bit. Also, I am going to be in the market for a good mic and learning all the REW stuff to really tweak things.