SubSam

First off I don't intend to violate any copyright via design or brand infringement, I was just bored and really wanted to visualize what is coming next from Fi. That being said, I decided to share: I just want to know if the NSG is to be similar to the Ascendant Audio supergauss woofer, with N3 motors in anti-pole configuration. Theres some scaling issues, didn't bother with the heatsink (tho I am sure it is probably the most delicately designed feature in the BtL NSG), ignore the spider location... I really just wanted to see it in its glory, decided to use SolidWorks to whip up a model (I spend enough money renewing my license annually might as well use it right?). Am I close? Look forward to seeing the final design!

but what exactly does ""maximum operating temperature" even mean? The magnet doesn't lose magnetism until like 500+ degrees, that is really the important number right? The magnets could never get to 500 degrees. Is that the curie temp?

The heatsinks are monstrous on the N2. When mine was inverted I ran it hard for about 30 minutes, felt the motor/heatsinks and expected it to warm my hands... it was cold. It was about 45 degrees out, but I was bumpin hard at idle with the car nice and toasty Since then I flipped the sub around, so I can't tell how warm it got, but I did some pause burps and 30 sec music runs at 3200 watts off a SAZ-3500 with no issues. I'm going to run around 3k for NESPL, don't foresee any problems... I'm sure I could run 4k+, but I'm saving that for my world record run for stock class with a N3 woofer

Aah the excitement. I think I might order another 15 after I take down this seasons Slammin class in NESPL. Got a hella different sort of build in mind, including a double 24" flare

@stefanhinote they have two way and three way xovers on the site, the lpf for the midrange and the hpf for the tweeters usually coincide, same with the woofer lpf and mid hpf on a three way. I strongly recommend the 3.5 k or higher xover for a supertweeter. If I had a choice I would run my mids, highs and tweets off all different amps and only active xovers, but I'm not ballin like that. Yet

also check DaytonAudio.com they got ts parameters like WHOA for all their effin 200 speakers http://www.daytonaudio.com/loudspeaker/crossover_components.html lots of crossover components available

Love the Q! It's not the BtL, and I do run a BtL currently in my daily, but the Q gets plenty loud and sounds awesome. I don't think you can go wrong either way... its like getting offered a bj from beyonce or a tug from Megan fox. There's no way you can screw up that decision. There is "front bass" too lol that always made me smile. Sure it sounds 3% better, but do I want a sub in my dash? Hey while I'm being inappropriate anyways I might as well ask you this: if a light sleeper sleeps with the lights on, what does a hard sleeper sleep with? Lol

Overkill on the tweeters but not the mids... I just put in two cadence 5.25" components with tweets and two 8" mids along with two Dayton 2.5" pillar speakers and infinity kappa 6x9s in the rear deck and I still need more mids. I AM A get four or eight 4" Dayton mids from parts-express for like $15 each, hopefully that does the trick. It's just a test fit for the doors/tweet locations, panels are still rough, and the sub is OFF Check out those Dayton speakers for some quality inexpensive mids, they have all sorts of sizes and alignments... no coaxial bs either. Assorted crossovers to match. go easy on the tweeters: two supers tops.

Fact: 75% of Americans are practically retards compared to the average person of Asian origin, ESPECIALLY if you have gone through the American school system in the last 17 years (the dark ages for domestic schools), but moving on I think you should find someone with a BL to give you a demo before you grab onto false expectations. Not that the BL won't be louder than those two type R 10s, but maybe you would want to consider two (or a few) Qs or SSDs to get you loud like you seem to want.

Hell yes I love the young guns; I put my first system in at 15 too, before I could drive my car. I started with all sorts of p.o.s. setups: Kenwood 10's in a bandpass, mixed sub sizes/brands, basically made every mistake I could along the way until I met my eventual bosses who taught me everything from the ground up and hired me as a box builder/amp installer, no fiberglassing or working on the nicer cars (ie 355 and 360 Ferrari's, eventually even a Carerra GT), but this was long before Fi, back in the CV Stroker days. They got me on RF and JL, which were tops for a bit, but now a lot of small companies do big things. still nowadays those guys are in their retail brand world, where the W7 is still king and the DD9500 is an obnoxious afterthought. One is still stuck on the time I introduced RDO operation of his dvc 13w7 with a potentiometer to him... luckily I'm a chemist now and I don't have to listen to them too much anymore I brought my Q15s in which impressed them a lot, but my gen 2 BtL and BtL N2 were too much for them... not me tho, I love my N2 anyways its a great hobby and it can teach you some handy skills, but keep it fun, its a crappy job lol.

Fi loaded

Was born in Finland, so it's kind of an added bonus for me to have the known abbreviation for my home country right on the cone. But honestly (and I mean no offense as I'm sure its significant in way more ways than I know) they could name their company anything and I would buy it. Put a giant middle finger in the middle of the dust cap and give me an F U every time my bass hits, I'll take it in stride

The Q is still magic to me Finished the build for my NY buddy, drove it up there a wee bit before he got the woofer so we gotta wait for loaded pictures, but heres so far: What we're shooting for: The results: Dont look at the screwhole bumps i made with sloppy routing Now this is at 1 a.m. before I was supposed to drive it up to him at 7 a.m. so I had to call it I was planning a red stripe across the middle of the box, but ran out of time. Luckily my boy Matt is also a car audio guy so I just dropped him a little mmore carpet to finish the job. I offered to do it for free if he got the Q so he cant really complain about having to put a little effort in Nice snug fit in the trunk of his RSX (which he is painting candy apple red in the near future hence the box), I was a little worried he wouldnt measure it carefully enough but he gave me real accurate dimensions to work with. Nevertheless he was more than happy, threw the JBL logo in to rep his amps as a surprise, he was stoked. Almost couldnt finish it as the paint was NOT DRYING! got a few propane heaters going and a hair dryer or two, but even dried up the paint pooled into the 45 in the port: Got a Q10 being ordered by another buddy, gonna do a real small SQ style setup in a Jeep, that project should be started next month probably. That's another excited Fi customer; his Q12 arrives sometime around the 8th... he called up his entire city to come hear my N215

Actually you didn't read that right either. Average power is a function of TIME which means same Average power = same heat. There is no longer as that is part of the average power equation. Maybe you will see what I'm getting at if I say it this way: yes I know your average power goes up with a square wave obviously without even calculating anything I can see there's more area under the curve. I know. Stop telling me. But what you can't seem to get is the sound wave, traveling through air, is not electrical. It is kinematic. Newtons laws. No Schro. So with a square wave and a sine wave you have the same mechanical period, same amplitude, same DEEBEEZ. But one way much more electrical power converts to heat than the other. Period. A sine wave is the most electrically efficient way to create a mechanical sound pulse. It just comes down to efficiency.

I must say its funny timing too I just got started building a box for my friends RSX, which will house the Q12 we just ordered (Matt Morgan, Albany area NY, Dual 2/Cooling option/Red dustcap). The box is big, like 2.8 cubic tuned to 29Hz with a 15"x4" slot port... gonna build a rounded fiberglass baffle, all smoke-grey colored with a fire red port color to match the dustcap... I am excited for the build, hopefully Nick can get me that woofer a little earlier than expected as the box should be built by the end of Feb. (jk Nick, take all the time you need just happy to support the Fi cause) But are you going sealed with the high Qts option? If so I want some feedback, I have yet to try that alignment with the Q but I have a friend who loved my Q15 response ported but has a F150 with no room at all, like 1.1 cubes total. I told him the freq response would be way different (obviously to ya'll but he's not so sharp on the subject), but I want to find him a decent alternative. I could stretch 2 cubic out of it with a weird box shape, but I still want some feedback. Maybe Nick can tell me; hows a Q10 or 12 with high Qts in a tiny tiny sealed box?

So I should formally introduce myself, the name’s Sami O., I am a citizen of the mighty (or mightily small) country Finland. I live with my fiance, and my dog. Im big into fishing, as well as car audio and electronics of all sorts. That’s my dog out on the boat, hes a cool dude, and loves to be in anybodys lap. I started doing car audio work professionally at the end of high school, and went to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic, before going overseas to begin my military service. I am 26 now, I work as an organic chemist at Connecticut College, and still maintain my car audio career as well. I served in the Finnish military and am an active U.N. reserve as a mobile light-mortar infantry soldier. When I began my military career I was told I should stick with military police, but as many of you could relate I fell in love with the mortar bass When I say I’ve heard some of the loudest/most ridiculously earth shaking bass in the world, it wasn’t in a car. Now what would a 120mm grenade register on the term lab? Now that you know a bit about me, I will start my build log; the special thing about this build is that it lacks anything that special. I planned originally to put my gen 2 BtL in this build, but decided to wait on the N2 when I discovered it was being released. I had a MB Quart DSC2000.1 and 450.4 laying around, already had Infinity Kappa 6x9's rear with Infinity Gold 2.5" pillar and Rockford Power 6.5" Coaxials in the front doors. I decided it was time to drop something into this car, make me have some incentive not to trade it in for another Jeep or something. Knew I could get a few batteries in the trunk on a battery isolator to feed my power demands, the rest was just an issue of space. The equipment list checked out, now I knew I was in for some akward, tedious work, just because this car is particularly difficult to work on (who designed that battery compartment? i want to talk to that guy at chrysler seriously) and I had an ambition plan to make a big box and still have easy access to my full spare tire, and still be able to enjoy the way it looks and sounds. Its easy to do anything if your budget/resources are endless, but its hard if you have a tight budget and minimal fabricating equipment. All the work was done in my house (garage/driveway), no work while in the shop or even one bit of helps from a friend (arsehos, they just drink beer and watch ). As you will see, I built the box inside the trunk (mostly), using minimal tools besides a pair of cordless drills, a pair of jigsaws, and some squeeze clamps (and gorilla glue). Without counting the cost of equipment, total cost in wood, fiberglass resin/cloth, screws and glue was only around $250, most of which is some fancy thinned resin I bought down at industrial supply since it was around 45 degrees during most of my fiberglassing. The point I’m making is that you can create very stream-lined, potent sound systems with little cost and few tools, just a general confidence with your hands. Lets begin shall we? It’s a deep trunk, almost 50 inches deep with 38” width at its narrowest. This part is the problem; I only have just under 13” clearance… that’s not gonna do for what I have planned. A quick shot of the 1/0 going to the trunk… I bought 50ft ground and wrapped the pos with blue tape since im cheeeeap. Also spot the 8 ga running to the center console. Ran the 1/0 under the car and up under the rear seats. Caulked it like crazy later on (I get paranoid about water… a rusted ground caused by a little moisture cost me about $2500 in amps on another build). Alt wire, some leftover dB link 1/0 cable I had… stiff as hell but nice and thick, did the trick. This car has the most absurd battery location, with almost no space for my Orbital exide negative terminals to clear, let alone a battery clamp, so I found a slim profile terminal… looks naked in this picture tho For anybody out there lookin for an easy tip, many will tell you that you can run big wire anywhere and even if it gets hot its no big deal, and though it would be hard to melt the wire without it resting directly against the engine block, the further you can get it from heat the better it will conduct. You wouldn’t believe the difference a couple degrees makes for voltage drop. Im not running crazy big power tho, but its still good practice. This picture illustrates an important design aspect of this particular setup, in that the power wire split in the above distribution block enables me to run one amplifier off the primary (starting) battery and the battery compartment in the trunk is then isolated to run the monoblock off a separate charge, though obviously both the primary and auxiliary batteries are charged from the same alternator. More pics of that later. Stinger gold ftw Test fitting the power inverter, which is going to be mounted above a dual relay housing, which is what all those wires underneath the inverter run to. Another tip for you battery-loaded systems out there run both an accessory powered relay and an ignition powered relay for controlling certain system aspects via both triggers… makes things a lot easier. Im a big fan of having an inverter in your car. You go two years not buying new cell phone chargers for your car and it pays for itself not to mention running music and a term lab off my laptops Its really easy to just start cutting up pieces of wood, but I like to have a battle plan. Cut certain pieces in certain ways and you can end up with perfectly even cuts and exact symmetry. See? Perfect. Then theres the ‘clamp two pieces together and cut them at once’ trick It’s the baffle mount, curved to add little fiberglass shunts since theres so few screws going into the wood in this build. Test fit Another angle Bolted in some angle iron to run a straight line… it was later tacked into place right before I bolted the box to it from below. Warning. Don’t try this at home Last look at the box before it goes into the trunk for the rest of the build Another fit test… Now its time for some gorilla glue and big clamps Got a couple screws in there; gotta keep the ports nice and square. Lots of gorilla glue and liquid nails… the screws I did put in (where I could fit a screwdriver or drill) end up negated by the fiberglass bracing, but extra never hurt. And how is that a woofer box again? Just had to push her in all the way, see how she lines up. Its always good to keep planning and making to do lists; it really helps the build progress. Heres what I have left to do at this point: SolidWorks modeling all the way… really helps especially with the tuning process, and the wood cuts Now for a couple weeks worth of fiberglassing since its so cold out it literally takes 48 hrs to cure sometimes. I buy more hardener than resin Its satisfying laying down a couple layers tho… really makes the box solid as a rock. Tip from a chemist: heat isnt the only thing to cure fiberglass. The catalyst is a peroxide like benzoyl peroxide can catalyze teflon to arrange itself into one long, hard molecule chain, but in this case just the catalytic energy is necessary. A good source? UV light... shine a UV light on that fiberglass and it takes off fast. Fiberglass bracing 101: Double double layers on the corners with fewer screws, and plenty more glass to be added inside. The fan doesn’t help the smell inside the car at all… just keeps me from passing out totally A shot of the bracing on the back of the box. Its also where the amp rack will secure to, so it’s a vital piece. Some more glass why not… Not the perfect acoustic shape, but it thumps so hard who cares. After the angle iron is tacked in, I needed to raise the box a half inch to flush it with the piece it was being bolted to. I didn’t get a picture, but theres four half inch mdf strips that the box sits on, keeps the moisture from collecting too. After its bolted in the box is officially mated to the car. View from the drivers seat Used the ‘angle the box so the resin pools’ trick and got four layers of glass in there to brace the baffle.

Energy over time is the definition of power. There is one thing left about this statement that has yet to be explored, and it is the most obvious and explanatory fact that we can learn here: there's two kinds of power at hand here. Electrical, in mathematical terms P=iV (current x voltage) and mechanical, W=Force*d/t. Obviously at the flat end of the clipped curve the woofer just burns (no freq), as Nick was stating above. The electrical energy doesn't translate to mechanical energy ( force x distance ), but increases dissipation energy, as you stated above, iV/t, in electrical terms. Now if the voltage is capped, but the average power has increased (square wave integral vs sinal), where does that power come from? Taking V out of the energy dissipation, where V=IR, E=(I^2)R/t. At clip, the t remains constant over each cycle, but the current increases which dramatically effects heat dissipation which in turn raises R which also directly relates to energy dissipation. Point in case, clipping causes more heat. Period. Over long periods, ur effed. Two kinds of electrical power?? No. In AC it is just average power. Sine or square the wave is described appropriately by it. No. As stated above there's electrical force and mechanical force at play, which are very much interrelated when converting sinal electrical signals into mechanical sound waves. When you aren't creating movement with your output electrical power, the only place for the energy to go is to dissipate as heat, which happens to 99% of the electrical energy that goes into a woofer anyways. To anybody defending whether clipping is worse for your speaker than a normal sine I ask you this: Why would one want to make their speaker even less power efficient (on average) while generating more heat? It's the opposite of appropriate car audio practices.

Night time shot of the new Fi wire cover

I installed a Stinger voltmeter next to the inverter too... almost forgot. Makes reading the voltage a lot easier on the fly, matches my red/blue light scheme too.

Finally retired the reliable Exide Orbital I've had under the hood, put an XS Power D1200 under the hood, still got the HC800s in the trunk. My voltage stays above 13.8 no matter how hard I bump it. Got a few shots of the akward battery compartment, and the big glob of petroleum jelly I put on the terminals. Made a new wire cover for the left portion of the amp rack, finishing up work on the false floor and then its on to the door panels once it gets warmer out

Energy over time is the definition of power. There is one thing left about this statement that has yet to be explored, and it is the most obvious and explanatory fact that we can learn here: there's two kinds of power at hand here. Electrical, in mathematical terms P=iV (current x voltage) and mechanical, W=Force*d/t. Obviously at the flat end of the clipped curve the woofer just burns (no freq), as Nick was stating above. The electrical energy doesn't translate to mechanical energy ( force x distance ), but increases dissipation energy, as you stated above, iV/t, in electrical terms. Now if the voltage is capped, but the average power has increased (square wave integral vs sinal), where does that power come from? Taking V out of the energy dissipation, where V=IR, E=(I^2)R/t. At clip, the t remains constant over each cycle, but the current increases which dramatically effects heat dissipation which in turn raises R which also directly relates to energy dissipation. Point in case, clipping causes more heat. Period. Over long periods, ur effed.

Double post football sucks! Must be an American thing

No, it's not. Nick: Have you managed to determine a higher (quicker?) rate of failure for a clipped signal operating at equivalent average power levels as a non-clipped signal? Obviously a heavily clipped signal of the same RMS voltage as a non-clipped signal is going to cause a driver to fail sooner (if you breach the thermal or mechanical thresholds) as the clipped signal will deliver significantly more power over time. But I've not yet seen a test that determined a quicker failure rate for a clipped signal vs a non-clipped signal at the same average power level.....and I've never personally had enough drivers on hand to intentionally blow stuff up just for shits and giggles Yep...which is the only reason why I'm debating it. Same 4kw crown amp in the shop...sine wave, very cool sub is not pissed. Flip the signal generator over to square wave form...not so cool. The time value of the 'flat' part of the wave at the two extremes literally makes the coil sit there..and do nothing, it is not in motion. It's just hanging out burning, like bouncing the Kia off of the rev limiter and dropping the tranny in reverse. I can't shift anywhere close to 20 Hz tho lol. It's too frequency specific to really put it that way, although its entirely an accurate comparison, in the aspect of the non-rev limit period. Obviously that analogy can apply well to visualizing the scenario, but in a waveform at very low frequency. I guess if we are sticking to SUBWOOFER frequencies, which I wasn't but ok, it would be appropriate to think of it that way. When comparing 20-80Hz to15kHz or 5Hz square waves the normal subwoofer frequencies have more in common with the 5 Hz wave, although even cracking the car back and forth at 5 Hz would be close to impossible. But if you look at the frequency as it approaches 0Hz (dc) the cone obviously cannot generate instantaneous acceleration so there is a "rpm lag cycle" but as frequency approaches 0 even from 15 kHz the cone spends more and more time in a "dc current cycle", which could even be calculated by the wave period minus the rpm lag cycle. By this argument you could prove that clipping is worse for subwoofers than any other speaker since the higher the frequency, the less time the vc spends under straight current. This reinforces Nicks claims towards his speakers, as he builds SUBWOOFERs.

Exactly. With even that small of an amp if you run a square wave esp at low low frequency the coil will not like it. I can't say it will destroy your coil in every case, but why try. Overhead power is what would help this guy, I'm pretty sure he isn't testing for numbers. 4 ohm power ftw

Instead of averaging the two points from each corner, and creating a sine from the average amplitude, my first attempt managed to turn the clipped portion of the sinal into a 15kHz wave... I called it the bass whistle, it was pretty funny, but very power inefficient, and obviously not what I was going for. I've learned so much about digital design since then lol. I'm still waiting for a magnetics lecture from you Nick