stroker or tempest?? (1 Viewer)

[Stephen Matthew]

i have a chance to purchase a used stroker svc 4 ohm 15 at a very reasonable price, slightly lower than a tempest goes for new. I have been very impressed weith the bass of the shiva and assume the tempest would be even more capable.. The stroker however is a legend and i know it has its roots outside of car audio... i wil be purchasing a home soon and loking for a sub that will shake the entire place silly and im wondering how these two subs compare with as much power as needed and as much room as needed...

thanks

 

[Angelo_Petralba]

Regal-

The stroker is a GREAT subwoofer but I doubt it will make a good HT woofer. I have played around with Stroker 18's and 15's in car but i think that they just don't have the LOW end a Tempest will have PLUS you'll need a WHOLE LOT OF JUICE to get the stroker to move. As you know, most people with strokers have at least 500-2000 watts to get them to sing good IN CAR.

But hey, Experimenting with stuff is HOW we find out if things work out oro not.


Good Luck.

Just my .02 cents.

 

[Dustin B]

Is this it?
http://www.cerwinvega.com/products/p...s/apstkr15.pdf
If so, Tempest all the way. No comparison, a Tempest would walk all over the Stroker.
Stroker Fs is 36hz (way too high), Tempest is 18hz.
Stroker Qts 0.217 (too low), Tempest is 0.38.
Stroker Vd is 1.9L, Tempest is 2.55L.

 

[Stephen Matthew]

the stroker was originally used and designed for use in movie theaters i know, and my reasons for comparing the 2 were that the stroker would take much more power and is designed purely for ported boxes.. given a massive ported enclosure, and huge powerhandling (4kw+) does the tempest still have the edge?? like i said, power i can get, enclosure size is unlimited.. aesthetics be damned, whatever it takes to sound good will be done..


thanks for your input so far!

 

[Dustin B]

Power handling doesn't matter all that much. In a large enclosure you will hit Xmax long before you hit the power handling limits of a driver. The Tempest can take way more power than it takes to get it to Xmax.

Put a Tempest in a 300-340L enclosure, tuned to 16-18hz with a 6" port and 300W will be oddles of power for it.

With a 36hz Fs the Stroker just can't compete with Tempest in the last octave. Not to mention it's a fair ways behind in Vd.

Marshall Joyner is sponsered by Adire for car audio competitions. He started with a single Tempest with 500W in a S10 extended cab. Almost got to 153dB with this. And it was in an allignment that sounded good too (ported and tuned to low 20s).

 

[Stephen Matthew]

you guys might have me convinced.... thinking about the fs of the tempest being a full octave below the stroker's.... might just stick the stroker in a nice 18 cube ported box in car and play with it there instead
now i need an obsene box design for the tempest.. somethign just stupid, i want to come as close to recreating in-car bass as possible... is 130 in a regular sized living room a possibility?? perhaps 140?? or is this going overboard?? hehe

 

[Dustin B]

That will be tough, you'll need a small room. A pair of Tempests in a 500-600L enclosured tuned to 18-22hz with a pair of 6" ports and goosed with 300-500W per driver should get you to the mid 120's in a medium or small room (that is nicely closed in to provide some good room gain).

Check out the DIY Advanced section though. Dan is currently designing a driver that will be capable of more output than a pair of Tempests (16hz Fs, 36mm one way Xmax, 730cm^2 SD, over 5L of Vd, efficiency is a little low though). A pair of these in the right enclosure with enough power should get you past 130dB in a small or medium sized room.

 

[Ron D Core]

If your going to do a stroker you will want to horn load it in an open area. Cerwin Vega used to sell a horn loaded stroker for outdoor PA type systems. The bottom line is that the stroker was designed for high SPL only. I met a guy who showed me his car system, it all sucked except for the 2 stroker 15's with 1000 watts a piece hit about 158dB, at about 60Hz. Impressive number, but it sounded horrible when trying to listen to music. But think about it, if you really want to impress your friends, for the price of one new Stroker 15, you can get 6 Tempests or 2 Brahma 15's.

PS I would be very suspicious of a $150 or less stroker. people like to do crazy evil things to them just for the sake of be able to say they destroyed a Stroker.

 

[Rich Kraus]

"car loud" bass in room is gonna be tough. (unless your HT is in a closet)
we have gone over this before.
take an "average" car sub sporting (for argument sake) 12" driver fed with 150 watts.
that gets you nice but not eyeball rattling bass in what, 50 cubic feet of space?
lets say your room is mid-small like mine 15X17X8 thats about 2000 cubic feet.
some quick math tells us youll need 40X the bass if you have 40 times the space, right?
lets see, 40 12's and 6kw?
(i realize it aint quite that simple, but it gives an idea of whats needed.)
lets also not forget about structural dammage to a "normally" constructed home at those volume levels. (i wont even mention hearing loss. oopse i did...)
IMO "car loud" bass in an HT environment just aint gonna happin withought spending obscene ammounts of money on a dedicated, specially prepared room and tons of woofage.

 

[Stephen Matthew]

thanks much guys!! got any links that will help the transition from car audio to home audio?? the info you have givne me so far is great i really appreciate it..hmm.. the stroker im not worried about, it is coming from a trusted friend.. wondering about possibly adding mass o the stroker cone to lower the fs.. i dont think it wuold affect transient response much as the bl on a stroker is stupid high, something between 29 and 40, cant remember exactly, but either way it has a very powerful motor on it... but i can see how it would stil have trouble hanging with the tempest ont hat bottom octave regardless.. hmm.. really got me thinking here...

so 120 is a reachable goal eh?? is there a standard that smoething like is measured with?? a location that is generally universal?? im guessing the listening position would be where it would be measured from.. im thinking of taknig my spl meter and testing some local ht setups to get an idea what kinda levels we are talking about and how they compare in a home....

thanks!

 

[Brian Bunge]

Stephen,
The big question is what size room are you planning on using this subwoofer in? I just built a Dayton DVC 15" sub (similar to Tempest) with a 250W amp for a customer. Before delivering it, we tested it out in my dad's living room. I was getting 115dB peaks from around 6' away while watching The Haunting. Considering this was using the Rat Shack SPL meter I know it was at least another 2-3dB higher in reality. This was in a room approximately 10x25 and open to the rest of the house.
The customer's room was roughly 10x17 IIRC, and was a fairly well sealed room. While we didn't do any SPL measurements it was definitely louder than my dad's room. And the customer had a huge grin on his face as we were leaving!
Brian