Sealed AV15 sonotube (pictures and graph) (1 Viewer)

[Frank Carter]

This subwoofer was built for my brother's car audio system but he has no car right now. It the internal volume is 3 cu ft with 30oz of polyfill. It still needs to be covered with a grey cloth he bought. He tried to match the aluminum cone with aluminum paint.

I just sold my CS Ultra/Samson S1000 and I'm waiting for 2 AV-15's myself...so I'm using this while waiting.

It's being powered by a Samson S1500(750Wx2 @ 4 ohms), I picked it up for $369 shipped. Quite a good deal for that much power. Like the S1000, the fans are silent.

It's my first sealed sub and I like it better than my Ultra for music, it just seems to disappear a little better with music(this bass is very addicting). It's great for HT as well but it's missing the low end ferocity of my Ultra, this was expected since the Ultra was ported and I had it tuned to 16Hz. On with the graph...





Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3

 

[Frank Carter]

Forgot to add, the blue is response before BFD, pink is after.

 

[Ben_E]

Great job Frank, makes me want my AV15 even more . Those AV15s sure do look sharp. I was wondering though, I'll be using my AV15 in a 5ft3 PR setup, would you use polyfill with it?

 

[Bryan Michael]

i cant wait for my av15 to come i am going to put it in my car. post back how it sounds in a car.

 

[Allen Ross]

i see they still havn't figured out the scratches on the driver issues,

BTW what kinda car are you putting that in? hopfully not a civic, you don't want to replace all your glass HEHE

 

[Frank Carter]

Brian,

I tried it out in my car for a few days. My car has trouble getting bass through too the cabin because there's a solid metal plate behind the back seat. I was powering it with a Rockford Fosgate G800AII(800Wx1 @ 4ohms) and I also have a 1 Farad capacitor. It was like...Wanna go deaf? Listen to this. It was nothing short of INSANE. I can't even begin to describe the pressurizing feeling.

You all might not believe me but after a little high SPL torture, it even made me kind of sick. The only time I've had the feeling of pressurization is when I heard some car audio's stores competition truck with 8 Earthquake 15's right behind the seats.

Besides the high SPL, for music it was buttery smooth. I didn't take any measurement when it was in my car though.

 

[Jeff Meininger]

If you go by the pictures you see here at HTF, the scratches on the dust cap look really bad. But in reality, they're much more difficult to see when the driver is not in direct bright light (sunlight, camera flash). You can still see them in indoor ambient light, but they are MUCH more subtle. Kinda like fine scratches on a compact disc or something.

I'm not telling anyone that they should be happy with scratches or anything. Yeah, I'd prefer a driver without ANY scratches, but they're not as bad as they look in the pictures.

 

[JoelTW]

wow I like the look of that driver...

About polyfill: I was worried small objects would fall through my port and into the hole in the bottom of my woofer.

Can I stuff a little polyfill in there? (without blocking the port air)

 

[Frank Carter]

This AV-15 was from the original 1st batch that was made. Like Jeff said, it doesn't really look that bad in person.

My brother's had it for a while, I just decided to take the pictures and graph the FR after I sold my last sub.

My brother's trying to get a 97'or 98' Maxima to put it in. The car I tested it in was my BMW 330i, I have three MTX Blue Thunder 10's in some cheesy box from MTX. I didn't really need them but somebody sold me the 3 10's in a box with a MTX Blue Thunder amp(Pro 150x2) for $150 for both. I've been wanting to sell it, but I can't find anyone that's interested.

 

[Frank Carter]

Joel,
I wouldn't block the port. If you worried about something "going down the tubes", take look at what I did for my brother's home sub. We covered the entire top and base plate assembly with acoustically transparent grill gloth. It has a nice finished look with minimal work.


We had a problem at high SPL's, the cloth was flapping up and down and became audible. Originally the cloth was only glued down on the sides. To avoid this, we put a very thin layer of glue on the on the top MDF plate. This way it was glued down everywhere but the port opening, this took care of the problem completely.

 

[JoelTW]

how much should I stuff it? what negative effects would it have, if any

 

[Frank Carter]

Joel,
Here's some guidlines on how much to stuff. I did my guestimates according to this:

http://www.win.net/~audtatious/audio/fiber.html

It even gives you an example where ever stuffing can have a negative effect, but that's was at over 3lb of stuffing per cubic feet of enclosure space.

 

[Bryan Michael]

i have a 2001 alero woth a alpine mrv1000 1000 wats rms by 1 into 4 or 500 rms by 2 at 2 ohms i have a set of kicker xpl 12 but i has very bad suround dammage and would have cost as much as i spent for the woofer to get it fixed. so i ordered a 3rd av15 i have 2 allready on my ht and they are sweet i call it Stryke Force