Tail of two tempests, Supa Nitpicker's journey. (1 Viewer)

[Andrus_R]

Ahhh UPS santa just dropped off my replacement tempest and this time magnet ain't whacked like the first one. GOOD! Thank you Adire!

Naturally, Yours truely must test the new one vs the original one Now this is the point where the story gets interesting.... well to me at least. So here i am sitting in my little computer room both tempest hooked up identically to one amp(not at same time) and by golly the new one sounds muddier than the original one?

Nahh, i must have been smoking crack while sleeping. I gotta lay off on that sauce. So,I go back and forth, back and forth switching around these two tempests over a same source and same subamp over a course of 1 hr.

I'm not trying to say i have gold audiophil ears. Still, when everything else was same and untouched, just tempests were switched around, I found.

New one(replacement from adire) sounds tad muddier that the old one yet it seems to have slightly more output.

Original one(messed up magnet) sounds tad punchier than the new one yet it seems to have tad less output.

Now I made up my mind even b 4 the replacement arrived, i'll pick either one, settle down and build it. That's it! I've had it. Terms like Vas, Qes, and port lengths swimming in my head... I've learned more that what I care to know about subwoofers during the course of past 10 months.

Adire and ampman have been more than gratious to me and I got no more problems with either one's service . So, i'm sending the replacement back and keeping the original one. I'll just pour a bit of crazy glue on the gouges in the magnet or something.

Drivers do sound ever so slightly different from driver to driver even from the same company. Very important lesson learned today for me

 

[Tim Morton]

Have not read any other posts concerning the magnet thing.BUT...if it is just cometic(which it must bem as i'm sure you didn't remove it or test it to find it defective) AND , it goes inside a presumably opaque box...i'm missing the point of putting super glue on it...and YES 2 identical drivers can often sound noticably different if the QC specs are not tight enough.

 

[George W]

Just a quick thought if you haven't sent it back yet. Is it possible that the new driver is not sufficiently broken in yet? I have heard that some people find the drivers sluggish until they have a chance to loosen up some (the drivers that is). You might want to give it a few days playing time and then see what you think.

George

 

[Cam S]

What kind of a box were you testing the tempests in to determine the difference in sound between the two? Personally, I would keep the one with the normal magnet and send the defective one back. You never know what else could go wrong with it or if the magnet will chip again.

 

[Andrus_R]

George,

You never know what else could go wrong with it or if the magnet will chip again.

Good point... I'll give it more time to think about it. I've not sent either one back yet.

Tim, magnet blemish, to a certain extent is perfectly fine with me. I know these things can't be perfect. My case was a bit severe. Affected portion would flake off a bit when i touched it with my fingers thus the idea of superglue.

 

[Michael R Price]

Andrus, I would break in both woofers for many hours in free air, then build an appropriate enclosure and test them in the setup you would be using. There should be plenty of time to do this before sending one back. I have a hard time believing a damaged Tempest would sound better than a normal one.

 

[Andrus_R]

Michael,

Yeah I'm gonna do just that.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the lumberyard to pick up MDF, 10mil paperbacked veneer, and some tools. I've made up my mind to build SBB4 sub with one of'em. Decision to go with vented sbb4 was an easy one. I like boomy peaky bass. So sue me Besides, high subsonice spl makes me sick to my stomach anyway. Most importantly, I can't hear anything below 30hz even barely at 40hz. All i hear are the things vibrating around the sub..... naw I'll pass. I want my sub to sound good, not knock things off shelves. Sbb4 is already kinda large-ish anyway.

It'll probably take me a week to finish building the box +/- veneer. There will be plenty of time to figure out which one i wanna keep. Strangely, new one seems to settle down over a few hours to sound closer to the original one. I may have jumped the gun too soon. In that case, I'll keep the new one of course.

I'm gonna finish mine in "bubinga" veneer aka african rosewood. It's relatively inexpensive and it has these absolutely gorgeous red and purple natural hues.

Yep this looks like the end of my search for me.

I'll put up some pics when I'm done with it.

btw, tale of two tempests! not tail of two tempests, DOH!

 

[Patrick Sun]

Free air testing doesn't tell you much in terms of sound quality (most of the time unless one driver is simply FUBARed).

 

[Aaron_Smith]

I'm not sure how much of the magnet is missing, but it stands to reason that if a portion of it is chipped off, it will have less output (reduced Bl). This may also create an asymmetrical magnetic field which could create some distortion in the best case, and damage the voice coil in the worst case. The earlier threads were correct, you can't tell very much about a driver's sound in a free-air test. I'd send the damaged one back.

 

[Andrus_R]

3 votes in favor of the new one, 2 neutral and none for original one.

I get the msg