end table subwoofers? (1 Viewer)

[perry web]

I am going to make a 110ish liter down firing subwoofer that will be an placed as a endtable. (waf) I have never personally seen a subwoofer of this size in use. I am wondering how much the cabinet will vibrate. I do not want the lamp to vibrate off. I can take everthing off of it when in use or put rubber pads on the bottoms but would rather not. I am using a shiva iv 12" w/ 250w amp. I can make a very stiff cabinet but it will still vibrate, right?

I am currently playing w/ designs to use rubber vibration isolators to mount the cosmetic top and curious if I am wasting my time.

thanks for any input
perry

 

[Stephen Weller]

Hey, Perry.

Awesome! If/when I get around to a DIY sub, this is exactly what I was thinking. I've only seen one other person do this. And when I went back to have another look, I couldn't find it.:frowning:

>>>...110ish liter...

Forgive me. I'm [rant]extremely[/rant] metrically challenged. What kind of dimensions are we talking about?

>>> I do not want the lamp to vibrate off.

Are you resistant to putting sticky rubber pads on the lamp? It would seem an instant solution.

 

[Ronnie Ferrell]

My sub is a 122L Tempest "end table" with a 250 plate amp. It will shake the pictures on the wall in the next room but the top of the sub does not vibrate. We have a lamp and some pictures on it now and they do not move at all when playing LOTR. One thing though... the top of my sub is 2.25" thick, (doubled .75 MDF for the cabinet with another .75" of Hard Maple for the table top. If I knew at the time of building the MDF box that I was going to add the .75 Maple top, I would have not doubled up the MDF.

Now the return air duct above my sub will vibrate, but I have dampened it with blue-tac.





Ronnie

 

[perry web]

stephen

what i have drawn up is approx 17t x 18.5w and 26.5l internal dim's w/ 4" legs. and rubber isolated 3/4" maple top.

here is wonderful conversion page.
http://www.unitsconverter.net/
and here is a page to calc. cubic root.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/cuberootcubecalc.html

ronnie-
did you go 1.5" thick everywhere? I was going to double up on the face w/ the woofer and brace everywhere else but I might just 1.5" on all walls. mdf is cheap and you only save 2 or 4 pieces of mdf w/ lots of more cuts and cirles by bracing.

 

[Stephen Weller]

[rant]WOW![/rant] Ronnie, that's drop-dead GORGEOUS!

You guys are WAY out of my league. I was thinking Sonotube.

 

[Justin Ward]

An end table would be a good idea. My Tempest shakes the room plenty, but if I position a coin on its side on top of the sub it will not fall over. And I only used standard 3/4" MDF on the top.

 

[Ben L C]

Ronnie,

That is awesome. That looks very similar to Brian Bunge's tumult based sub. He has the same look except he has a granite top to it. Great job.

 

[Aaron Gilbert]

I can agree with the others who have said that vibration on the top will not be a problem. I am using a Dayton Quatro 15", extremely close to Shiva in terms of output capability. My enclosure is only 3/4" thick plywood, except the front and back which are 1/4" hardboard screwed to 3/4" particleboard. The cabinet is heavily braced and weighs about 130 pounds even though there is no amplifier in it. At full volume, I can barely feel any vibration on any side of the enclosure. I would be more concerned with a lamp falling off somewhere ELSE in the room.


Aaron Gilbert

 

[Ronnie Ferrell]

I only went 1.5" on the top and 1.5" on the bottom baffle. The side walls are .75" MDF. Besides that, the box is "straight by the book" Mid-Q sealed Tempest.

Here are the build photos of the cabinet if you are interested.

http://www.meettheferrells.com/tempest_project/

The first one is a CAD drawing of what I wanted it to look like before I started any building. I like the outcome A LOT better than the CAD drawing!

Thanks everyone for the nice comments! :b

I actually like the sub better before I stained it.



BUT the only way I got to have a sub in the first place was to promise the wife if would blend in with our current entertainment center.


rf

 

[Brian Bunge]

Ronnie,

Only 2.25" thick? Mine is 2.625" thick!

Ben, actually the top is 1.125" thick MDF with a painted faux marble finish. Most people that have seen it in person have thought it was real marble though!

 

[Ben L C]

Brian,

You fooled me. From all the times I have looked at it it sure looks like a piece of marble to me. I kept thinking to myself that is got to be one heavy box. Even without the granite the boxes are quite heavy.

 

[perry web]

thanks for the input
then i will not do my fancy over engineered isolated top. I will just double it up and brace.

ronnie- what software do you use for you modeling?
I use mech. desktop
thanks

 

[Brian Bunge]

Ben,

It's roughly 130lbs. and doesn't even have a built-in amp! I finally broke down and hooked up my BFD that's been sitting in the closet since I bought it about 2 years ago. It helped quite a bit and I'm getting much better low frequency output now that the peaks are taken care of and I can turn it up more. I've got a cordless phone, answering machine, caller ID, lamp and a couple of pictures on top of it and haven't had any trouble with anything moving or rattling.

 

[perry web]

this is what I am hoping mine kinda looks like. I have to match the mission style coffeetable and other endtable I made for the wife. They will look the same, this will just on steriods.

Figure I will paint the cabinet black and put the wood trim on it.
the wife wants the wood to be a free standing so I can take it off and put a shelf in it later if i want.

http://dodgetrucks.org/cgi-bin/index.pl?photo=10855

 

[Ronnie Ferrell]

Perry, I don't have the slightest idea what software I used to do that model. I did it over 1.5 years ago. It was some GNU software I downloaded from http://freshmeat.net or http://sourceforge.net and tossed on my FreeBSD box just to play around with. The sub is the only thing I modeled with it. If the sub would not have been comprised of all "box" shapes, there would have been no way I would have modeled it with the software I was using! The wood grain is actually from a photo of my A/V-1s. The software was not very intuitive so I removed it.

Also I like the look of your render! The black painted cabinet makes the mass of the sub go away and the wood trim stand out like it's all that is there. Looks a lot lighter and daintier than it actually is! Great idea!


rf

 

[Doug_M_Fraser]

I too built an end table sub.

Mine is a "by the book" Stryke 15.2 in a 22 inch cube.

I too doubled 3/4" MDF everywhere including the top. I also have a layer of 3/4 cherry on the top. So the top is actually 3 layers x 3/4 thick". I made allowances for natual movement of the cherry given changing humidity. (glue down one end of the cherry and then use screws through washers in elongated slots to secure the other end). This lets the cherry move without cracking.

I drive this with a Crown K2. Up to 2000 watts into the sub.

I was carefull to size the sub so that it is the height of a normal end table. Wife loves it! The sub is very heavy. Must be over 200 lbs.

I have a wrought iron lamp on the top. I have put rubber pads on the feet of the light (pads are about 1/4 inch thick). This was to keep the light from scratching the finish but it also acts as vibration dampening. The rubber strips were standard off the shelf ones from a hardware store - nothing special.

As a result the lamp is rock solid even with the most demanding low freq material - no noise no vibration.

Doug

 

[Chuck Paskovics]

Here is my oak finished (clear coat) endtable. It is covered in oak and oak plywood, houses 2 15" Subs and driven by 2 MA500 monoblock amplifiers (Marantz). I actually mounted it to the floor with 4 "L" brackets to help the vibrations work with the floor instead of against it.



All my DIY projects...
http://home.insightbb.com/~rogue3ky/hometheater/

 

[TimForman]

Here's mine, although I've since sold it.

http://www.alegriaaudio.com/adire_tempest_subwoofer.htm

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Here's mine... it's an 85L sealed Shiva:

(it's a crappy washed-out picture)



It's a little too tall for use as an end table. I designed it to fit in the corner you see there. I have a lava lamp sitting on it at the moment. The cap on the lamp rattles a bit if I turn it way up.. but, other than that it doesn't seem to move.

I do also have my Indiana Jones box set sitting on top also... the DVD cases will slowly work their way out of the box with the vibrations.