Help needed with Tempest. (1 Viewer)

[Christopher Fisher]

I just got my new Adire Audio Tempest up and running and I have to say I am pretty disapointed. I built an Adire Alignment Ported Model, 214 Liters tuned to like 15 Hz I think. I had a cabinet maker locally build the box for me and it is out of Void Free Oak Plywood with MDF for the bottom baffle and braces. Seems to be very solid and then joints are sealed tightly. Here is how I hooked the amp and woofer up, off the plate amp AVA 250 I bought some radio shack connectors crimp male to female. Took some regular speaker wire and crimped the connectors on and hooked one end to the red and black wires coming off the plate amp.

On the woofer side, I noticed that for each voice coil there are little tabs coming off each side. Basically, I made two short wires, running positive on one Voice Coil to the positive on the other voice coil. I'm assuming the voice coils are on opposite ends of the speaker. I did the same with the negative. Finally I ran cable from the amp to one of the other free tabs on one side of the woofer. This is how they diagrammed it on the Adire Website, positive-positive and negative-negative. Then run the wires from the amp to one Voice Coil. It sounds okay for music but for movies has been very disapointing. I'm packing up to go home for the summer, college student and just listening to the sub right now, not Mids and Highs. With some rap it sounds okay but nothing earth shattering. I also played the beginning to Phantom Menace with the THX and the exploding ball. I read about someone else with this exact same sub cofiguration and he said it was like a wave of bass, rattled stuff upstairs and several rooms away. I'm in a tiny room like 10 x 15 and when the ball exploded there was nothing. No vibrations and hardly any sound. Help me here guys? What could be the problem?

Chris Fisher

 

[Cam S]

somethig sounds drastically wrong with your setup, can you give us a few more details. do you have the volume nob on the amp turned up, how is the amp connected to the reciever? The tempest should be WAY better than what you describe. I have a AVA250/Shiva, and it friggin pounds.

 

[Greg_R]

Could you measure the in-room response with an SPL meter for us (or at least some max SPL readings)? How did you calibrate the sub?

 

[jeff lam]

How's the bass management on your reciever set up?

 

[Dustin B]

You should get in touch with Dan to do some trouble shooting. An Adire Allignment Tempest in a 10X15 room should be capable of well over 110dB down low. And if you aren't impressed with that, ouch.

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

haha, that's the same thing that happened to me. I wired up the tempest with my 250watt amp and all my friends were there. I turned it on and we heard nothing but faint sounds.

I said, "Somethings is wrong, I must have wired it incorrectly cause it was playing fine with one voice coil being used"

So it turns out my wiring was incorrect I connected the positive to negative and negative to positive between the 2 voice coils (parallel wired). It played a little but not much.

What I did next was connect the positive to positive and neg to neg, the wires will criss cross eachother when going to the opposite voice coil. The tempest driver has + and - signs so as not to confuse the polarity yet I still messed it up.

BTW, are you using a computer to play dvds? Because you will have to turn up the gain on the amp significantly to hear bass during a movie as compared to music. Try calibrating it, check the receiver and amp settings, no loose wire connections etc.

I have a feeling you might have wired the tempest wrong. I have yet to find somebody to tell me an adire alignment tempest is disappointing.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Either the 2 voice coils are wired out of phase, and/or your speakers are set to large, and you're not getting much LFE signal sent to the subwoofer output.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Okay,

Few more details, I am not able to check the wiring right now actually packing to head home for the summer from college but will be able to do some more testing. I did not calibrate don't have the equipment but do have it in Houston so it will be available tommorow. I have a Sony ES reciever and I had my speakers set to small with the woofer ON. It was set to 0 DB on the receiever flat. The amp was on with gain typically about halfway. Crossover was set at about 80 Hz.

The strange thing is that I played some rap like Dr. Dre and it sounded okay, I heard some bass but nothing outstanding. My bookshelves were disconnected and I could hear the bass foundation. But on DVD's it was a major disapointment. I have a cheap Daewoo that is being run analog for now, didn't have a Coax cable only optical but I will replace that soon. I will try the sub in my parents setup tommorow and see if it something related to my reciever. The way I remember wiring it was two short pieces of speaker wire. One from positive to the other positive on the other side of the magnet and the same with the negative. Then I ran the outputs off the amp via some speaker cable to one of the Voice Coils, Positve to Positive and Negative to Negative. I'm really at a loss hear guys, I'll get back tommorow and try to run a sweep to see what kind of SPL's I'm getting. Any other ideas? Possibly a defective amp? Why would I get some bass for CD's but hardly any for DVD's? I expected the THX intro on the Phantom Menace to floor be and I didn't feel a thing. My old Boston Sub blew this thing out of the water.

PS: I just got back from seeing Attack of the Clones on a DLP screen, OH MY GOD what an image. Just had to blurt that out somewhere. Any ideas for my sub?

Oh, one more thing, the amp has both a left and right input but I only have one hooked up, single subwoofer cable and I think my reciever only has a single sub out. It's buried right now but I will pull it out tonight as I pack. Any ideas?

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

Your parallel wiring sounds correct.

Yeah your receiver probably has mono sub out and it should go to the "right" line input for your sub if I remember right.

TPM THX intro should easily shake the floor, what could be the problem is only one voice coil is working giving u an 8 ohm load. I've seen drivers where one is broken like if the small silver wire comes loose.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Okay, my room is totally tore apart including stereo so I cannot mess with anything right now but I noticed on the back of my receiver that on the preouts there are TWO for SUBWOOFER and there are TWO on the amp, I have always only used one it seemed to work just fine? Is one preout for left bass and one for right? I thought with 5.1 and DTS it was a dedicated channel. Should I plug in both of them, have to get a second sub cable or would a Y-adapter into one cable at the reciever in, single cable, and another Y-adapter at the sub? Would that do the job?

 

[Patrick Sun]

Are you actually getting a 5.1 signal being process by the receiver from the DVD output? Or is the DVD just passing 2-channel audio information through the optical?

 

[Christopher Fisher]

No,

My DVD player is hooked up thru Red/White analog two channel into the reciever. My old DVD player had an optical cable but it was no longer working. My new one is COAX only which I do not have so I am sending sound into my reciever in 2 Ch. Analog. Then I have a single cable going sub out but there are two jacks. Any ideas?

 

[Kyle Richardson]

Are you playing the CD's from your DVD player too or from a separate CD player? Make sure that no "Night Mode" or "Dynamic Compression" is turned on in the DVD player. Also make sure that you are getting 5.1 passed through from the DVD player like Patrick mentioned.
Edit: You posted 2 minutes before I did! I think there is your problem. If you are not sending digital signal from your DVD player then you are not getting any .1 or LFE signal so it's no wonder its not booming like you would like! Get a coax or optical cable and hook it up...you'll be happy you did.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Hmm,

I am not aware of any compression or other sound modes in the DVD Player, I was using a dedicated CD Player but it was connected the same way. 2 Channel Analog but I'll look into it. Does anybody think the two sub jacks on the back of my reciever would have anything to do with it.

 

[Kyle Richardson]

I don't think your sub outs is your problem. Your problem is that you are not sending the .1 signal into your sub so it is just not getting the bass signal to reproduce. Go buy yourself the digital cable and try it as I'm almost positive it will solve your bass problems.

 

[Brian Fellmeth]

Kyle has figured it out. The 2 channel analog hookup leaves the LFE channel in the lurch.

My new one is COAX only which I do not have

Actually, you do. You can use half of your red/white RCA cable as a digital coax.

 

[Brian Bunge]

Brian is right. Just use half of the red/white combo for digital coax until you can get the appropriate cable. This should at least allow you to test to make sure you are indeed getting the LFE signal off of the soundtrack.

Brian

 

[Jedd]

Try to select stereo audio track from the DVD. It should carry enough bass to enjoy your sub until you get digital cable.

 

[James W. Johnson]

A Tempest in 241l tuned to 15Hz makes a fine subwoofer but

you ar'nt going to get bass that can break windows, play around with room placement and gain adjustments , when you get it right I think you will find the subwoofer quite satisfying.

 

[Kerry Hackney]

in a tiny room like 10 x 15 and when the ball exploded there was nothing

When you get the .1 going there will be. You may not break windows as James said, but you're sure gonna shake them. Don't panic, your Tempest is more than capable of that "Holy SH**" response your looking for.