Sony SAWM40 mods (1 Viewer)

[Paul_Fisher]

This is a stupid question, but I also have the Sony and have considered this mod, but when I've tried to take of the grille, it doesn't seem to want to come off. I didn't want to forcefully pull it off, because I don't want to break it. Is the grill suppose to easily pull off or what?

 

[Adil M]

Hope this helps.
Link Removed
Anyone ever thought of tightening up bass in crap speakers w/ these? What would it do to the mids and highs?
(I'm a tweaker at heart, but not ready to jump in the pool yet)

 

[John Garcia]

Excellent article!
Crap speakers, will basically remain crap speakers. I rebuilt some towers with better drivers and had good results.
I built my own monster sub for my car. It was basically the isobaric sub described in that article - 2 10" in a single, sealed volume, wired in parallel and fed by a substantial amount of power. The result - incredibly tight, accurate bass that was also quite low (drivers rated to 20Hz). A small amount of poly fill and a VERY stiff enclosure made for great sound for less than $350. I got compliments from some well respected local car audio installers. Too big, and too heavy, so I dismantled it last year. :frowning: Ready to build my next one though I have the driver and amp, just need time to construct the enclosure...
As stated, stuffing a sub makes the driver "think" it is in a larger enclosure, and the most common application being building an enclosure that is slightly too small and stuffing it to make it suitable for a driver requiring a larger internal volume.

 

[Alex_Santos]

I went out to Lowes and bought 1 acoustic tile for 4 bucks. It worked even better than the fiberfill. Used spray adhesive to put it on. These things are specially designed to block out sound. It seemed better to me than something that was designed to stuff a pillow case. Just my opinion. Im not saying the fiberfill doesnt work, but I definately found an improvement with this stuff.

 

[SteveTomassetti]

Anyone else try the acoustical tile idea? Sounds like it would work just as well if not better...

 

[Robert_J]

Glueing acoustical tile to the side probably stopped some cabinet resonances and absorbed some internal reflections. Stuffing with polyfil has a completely different effect. Here's a good article by Link Removed.
-Robert

 

[shankar]

Does the poly fill work for other subs too. I have the AR S112PS sub. Will I see a change if I did the same??

 

[ColinM]

That AR is a step up from the Sony. Try it if you want, but it's stock performance is likely as good as or better than the mod'd Sony.

- CM

 

[Alex_Santos]

I read that article and it gave no actual evidence of why the fiberfill was better than the acoustical tile other than the material of the tile scratchy for the skin and lungs. Of course it is, its fiberglass, duh. Also, at least for me, the price was the same or even cheaper. I got my tile for 4 bucks where as 2 bags of fiberfill would have cost me the same amount of money.

 

[Paul_Fisher]

Well, I went out to Lowe's and got the acoustic tile and put it in, I haven't tried it out yet though, I'm still waiting for the spray adhesive to totally dry. It was very easy though, took about 20 minutes. I'll post again to let you all know of my results.

Paul

 

[Brett DiMichele]

If it was me I would apply a single layer of Dyna-Mat to all

internal walls (use 3M Spray Adhesive to set it in place)

and then buy 2 Acoustical Tiles from Parts Express. Thier

Acoustical Tiles are open cell foam and will act just as

Fiber Fill acts.

The Dyna-Mat will cure cabinent resonance without reducing

cabinent volume by much (it's about 1/16" thick) and then

the Acoustical Tiles will aid in smoothing out the bass.

 

[EricHaas]

What is "Dyna-Mat" and where do you get it?

Would this stuff called "acoustic dampending foam" from Parts Express work OK?

 

[Adil M]

You can get Dynamat at Circuit City in the car audio section. It's for dampening the resonance from in-door speakers and subs in the trunk. Interesting idea?

 

[ColinM]

DynaMat is big with car audio guys. Its sticky-back rubber sheeting.

Car audio dudes line their trunks, etc. with it.

Good Idea!

 

[Paul_Fisher]

Well, after putting in the acoustic tile in my Sony sub, I really can't tell that much of a difference. I have to turn the sub volume knob up a bit to get the same volume level. The bass maybe seems a bit tighter, and I can hear a couple of different bass notes with music that I couldn't hear before. Other than that I can't tell much difference. Maybe I was setting myself up to expect this huge difference and I just didn't get it. I don't know...

 

[ColinM]

It is what it is, this is just a tweak. Any difference that is good can be called successful. If you can put more in, go for it. This is where Polyfill has an advantage - you just stuff more in till it tunes the box...

 

[Paul_Fisher]

I might just have to go to wal mart and get some polyfil and put some in and see if it makes a difference. You never know...

 

[EricHaas]

Paul: I find it interesting that your experience with the tile was similar to mine with the spray foam. It tightened up the base but now I have to set the level higher for equivalent volume. In my case, those differences were pronounced, I suspect because I used more foam than you did tile. But everyone says I used the wrong thing, so I am going to take it out and try polyfill.

 

[Chuck_C]

I got a nice roll of polyfill in a Craft/Christmas type of store for $2.50. I cut a couple of sheets to wrap around the inside of the Sony sub and glued them into place with a hot glue gun. The bats were about 1 & 1/2 inches thick. Simple mod and the results were very good.

 

[Carlyle]

Someone was asking about the interior dimensions of this sub. I took mine apart this morning to add some poly-fill. To the nearest 1/16 inch, the interior dimensions are: 13" wide x 15.5" high x 9.875" deep. This gives me 1990 cubic inches or 1.15 cubic feet. Based on the information from Link Removed, I added 20 oz. of poly-fill I snagged from the local fabric store for the princely sum of $1.99 (hint--it seemed to improve the WAF when she saw I needed to visit her store). The 20 oz. sure does fill up the space, though.
Well, as to any improvement...it's only been an hour or so, but I noticed the sub-bass seems more musical (precise, that is) on the Diana Krall "Love Scenes" dts 5.1 mix I've got playing right now. There are plenty of hand-plucked bass notes in this one album and they seem cleaner.
It seems like there is less "boomyness" and more "thumpyness" on the one movie track I've played, several scenes from "The Iron Giant".
I did have to increase the sub gain by 1 dB at the receiver to make the bass levels be what they were before the poly-fill. I didn't think that was any big deal.
For $1.99 and 10 minutes of work with a screwdriver, ya' just can't beat it.