LF driver recommendations for 4 cu ft

[speedle]

I've got a 4 cu ft box that used to have a Madisound 12" DVC in it, with a 150 watt amp that has some lf boost built in. The Madisound was always the wrong driver for that box, but the box is really great looking and I'd like to get some use out of it as an extreme LF sub. What driver can I put in it to get as low as possible? It's sealed now, but I'd put a port in if need be!

[joecarrow]

If you want to play as low as possible, and keep up with your bass bins and Natalie Portmans, you'll want to get a more powerful amp. For that matter, in order to keep up you'd really need a larger enclosure like a sonotube- but I completely understand why you want to keep the nice enclosure. A Dayton Reference RSS390HF would get you down to 22 hz in that box, with a 4" x 18" port.

Around here, that's not exactly what we call "extreme LF". You might be able to get a pair of 12"s or a 15" with long enough excursion to give you what you want sealed, but it's going to take some serious power- like 500-1000 watts. Do you have a budget for the total project?

[ThomasW]

Look around at some of the places that sell high quality car audio woofers. They'll have the greatest number of drivers with a low Vas, high Xmax and high power handling. That what's needed if one want's to force low frequencies out of a small box.

SoundSplinter.com, FiCarAudio.com and TCSounds.com are 3 good suppliers.

As JC indicated, doing this the right way means a BIG power amp and and use of Linkwitz-Transform circuitry.

[speedle]

Thanks for the tips! This would be for my other room, a projection HT, where my Paradigm 60's are sitting. It's a very well built box, so maybe high power is the way to go. Would one of those PE 500 watt bash amps be a good place to start? I'll do some L-R transform research and see what comes up.

[ThomasW]

I wouldn't use a plate amp. The ButtKicker amp is good if you need a quiet amp. If you can live with fan cooled the Behringer EP1500 or 2500 are good low buck choices

[Inu_Yasha]

I wouldn't use a plate amp. The ButtKicker amp is good if you need a quiet amp. If you can live with fan cooled the Behringer EP1500 or 2500 are good low buck choices

I just did the fan mod a few days ago and man did that really help with the fan noise of the EP2500. I did a new fan (more efficient) and put in a 40 ohm resistor; now I can barely hear the thing. If you want something that has great bang for the buck, you can't go wrong with the EP2500.

As far as sub, I would say RL-p15 but with some of these newer subs like the 15" tc driver, you may be hard pressed making a decision. I have my 5 ft^3 box sub with a RL-p15 tuned to 16hz, you may be able to get a 22-25hz tuning with a ported 4 ft^3, but I don't know how hard it would be...

[ThomasW]

Unless one uses PRs it's virtually impossible to get a low tuning in a 4 cu ft box. This is the reason for recommending the use of an LT circuit.

The RL-p15 is a good candidate for this situation given it's high power handling and longish Xmax.