Help needed with Tempest.

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

 

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?

 

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?

 

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?

 

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.