Jason Dalton

Quatro 15"/250W amp impressions, $250 earthquake anyone?

I finally got to listen to do some serious listening on the sub I built with my friend. I went over to his house Sunday with DVDs in hand. The box is 5.8 cuft (23.5" cubed) and tuned to 20Hz using the 4" Precision Port (268-352) and powered by PE's 250W remote controlled plate amp (300-793).

From the first moment I was impressed with this thing, my friend had rented LOTR:ROTK and he couldn't wait to show me the battle scene with the huge elephant things. Wow, just wow. From there we did the RPG Launch scene from Ronin, this is supposed to have extremely loud bass in the 30-50Hz region, and it did. That was the only scene where the sub had some problems, when we turned it up the amp clipped a bit at the loudest part. No signs of woofer bottoming. Next was the real test, Darla's tank tapping in Finding Nemo. There has been alot of talk about this scene and I couldn't wait to hear it, I never noticed much listening on my setup since I have no sub (damn apartments). Finally the moment came...OMFG!!! Talk about an earthquake! Jeez, it was totally insane, if you haven't heard this scene with a good sub the difference is amazing. The whole house was shaking. The windows were reverberating for 5 seconds after the scene was over. We kept playing it over and over again, one time my friend put it on when I was in the kitchen, which is two rooms over, and the floor was shaking just as much in there. It was nutty.

This sub is definitely worth the money and more. You can make this sub for $250, which to me just seems beyond belief. Anyone who is looking for a value in the subwoofer market should know about this.

Jason

Brad Boydston

I find it refreshing to hear people's ACTUAL listening impressions.

Thanks for the post!

Aaron Gilbert

I'm with Brad, it's nice to hear listening impressions, especially when that person has the same subwoofer driver as I do. I have about 400w on tap, and it's more than this woofer needs, especially since my box is considerably larger. I haven't gotten Finding Nemo yet, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one with houses rattling. Frankly my house would need more treatment and reinforcement before going to a more potent subwoofer. The scene that gets my house going the best so far is The Fellowship of the Ring, in Bhalin's tomb when the Orc drums first start beating after the armor get's knocked down into the depths. Of course the best way to see which appliances and walls rattle is to hook up your computer to your system and download a signal generator program. Then you can tell exactly what frequencies are most problematic.

I agree with the amazing value.

Jason Dalton

Aaron, I'll have to check out that FOTR scene. What size box and tuning do you have? My friend was going to go with the Rythmik 350 amp, but the WinISD simulations seemed to show that you could just about drive it to its excursion limits with 250W (and the 250W amp was on sale). I have Audacity and I'm going to make a tone disc just for fun to see what it can do.

Hopefully, at some point I'll have the money and space to make lots of things that require listening impressions.:wink:

Cam McFarland

Aaron, how do I go about doing this?


- Cam

Jason Dalton

I downloaded Audacity for free, it lets you make custom tone files. Its pretty neat. Plus you can export the Audicaty files to .mp3, .wav or a few others so you can burn them onto a CD. Pretty amazing for a free program.

Jason Dalton

I downloaded Audacity for free, it lets you make custom tone files. Its pretty neat. Plus you can export the Audicaty files to .mp3, .wav or a few others so you can burn them onto a CD. Pretty amazing for a free program.

Jason Dalton

Here are some pics of the sub being built and a pseudo-finished pic. We're still working on the piano gloss finish, but we did hook it up. That TV in the picture is a 36"er.

Quatro Pics

Jason Dalton

Here are some pics of the sub being built and a pseudo-finished pic. We're still working on the piano gloss finish, but we did hook it up. That TV in the picture is a 36"er.

Quatro Pics

TomBarnard

I am a newbie to DIY, but a long time HT junkie and pretty fair with a saw and soldering iron. All that being said, i've never built a sub before and what you guys have described in this thread is right up my alley in price and scale.

I don't want to divert your thread more than one good answer, but could one of you tell me where I could find the plans and parts for the aforementioned subs. I would REALLY appreciate it.

Thanks a ton!!!

TomBarnard

I am a newbie to DIY, but a long time HT junkie and pretty fair with a saw and soldering iron. All that being said, i've never built a sub before and what you guys have described in this thread is right up my alley in price and scale.

I don't want to divert your thread more than one good answer, but could one of you tell me where I could find the plans and parts for the aforementioned subs. I would REALLY appreciate it.

Thanks a ton!!!

Wes