TC Sounds Passive Radiators Just Released

[Amphiprion]

Saw it on their website tonight:

http://www.tcsounds.com/tcvmp.htm

Finally - some good long-throw, high mass 18" passives for the DIY market. Now if I only had the room for an 18

[cobbpa]

Annnnd...they have the SVC and DVC 15" 2000's for $260.

Or the 12" 1000's for $160.

I'm not familiar with passive radiators, so it's easier for me to get excited about these things

[---k---]

$149 for the 15" and $189 for the 18" seems like a high price to pay to make a smaller box. I'd rather spend that money on more driver.

But, I know there are a few people that love them, like Mark Seaton. I guess they do can do a few more tricks than just reducing box size.

It would be interesting to see some good designs for these.

[Rory Buszka]

In my own experience with a well-designed PR system, they can have a "tight", almost sealed-box sound above the tuning frequency. My current sub is tuned to 20Hz and sounds fantastic in the range above 40 Hz where most musical bass lives. Then when it needs serious Oomph, the passive radiators get into the action. I don't know where passive radiators get such a bad repuation, unless there's a lot of really poorly-designed passive radiator boxes out there.

In another thread, I'm experimenting with mating a single TC-1000 12" to a single TC-VMP 12" for a very compact sub. The TC-1000 doesn't like boxes smaller than 2.5 cubic feet. Something tells me the TC-1000 is optimized for sealed use, which may be why it's not playing nicely in the small box with the passive radiator. The TC-1000 in 3 cubic feet sealed is 3dB down at 30 Hz and 10dB down at 18 hz. (10dB down is generally considered by many manufacturers to be the useful LF limit.)

[Jack Gilvey]

$149 for the 15" and $189 for the 18" seems like a high price to pay to make a smaller box. I'd rather spend that money on more driver.

There's definitely a point where that becomes a consideration, especially with the 12's. I don't like to use PR's singly, but that could be feasible just from an excursion standpoint if using a model larger than the driver. You'd want a really heavy box.