Planar home subwoofer ideas.

[topgun 262]

Ok, I got this idea from looking at Decware's planar speaker design they have up, LINK and was wondering if this could be scaled up for a home subwoofer type setup. My thinking was with the large radiation area could make up for using a smaller driver due to the fact that the displacement of the airmovement is going to be pretty dang big.

What I am wondering is if anyone knows of anything like this that has been done before. I think if it could be pulled off with reasonable degree of sucess it would look really cool with maggies, plus I think it'd be a challenge o build something like this too.

Does anyone have an idea as to what size of panel area I would need for a woofer, and what volume of airspace would be needed in the panel. I really have no idea as where to look on something like this, other than try to build one and see what happens.

So any opinions are welcome

[Acidburn 10]

this is just for a comparison, it might not mean anything but here goes:

a 15" Mag has a xmax of 26mm (we'll call it an inch), therefore it can displace a total of roughly 177 cubic inches (one way)

how much will one of those move? a millimeter or 2?

assuming 2mm xmax, the panel would need to be around 2244 square inches, 15.58 square feet

practical?

[Audio Junkies 3]

Magnepan has a new Magneplanar subwoofer coming out. They are being pretty tight lipped about the details, but here is a picture and what is available at this time...

www.audiojunkies.com/blog/247

I agree that the surface area you need may end up being too big for practical use.

Building your own would definitely be an interesting project.

[///M5 2,833]

A couple of years ago they didn't think it was practical to do at all (Magnepan that is), I guess I should stop in more often.

[topgun 262]

this is just for a comparison, it might not mean anything but here goes:

a 15" Mag has a xmax of 26mm (we'll call it an inch), therefore it can displace a total of roughly 177 cubic inches (one way)

how much will one of those move? a millimeter or 2?

assuming 2mm xmax, the panel would need to be around 2244 square inches, 15.58 square feet

practical?

The maggies have just shy of 3,000 in^2 of radiating space (front and back) and I find the size to not be a problem but also the maggies are a Completely different design than what I am thinking of so I find the only comparison I can make between the two is the size issue.

What I'm not sure about is the decware design has the panel pressurized by the pole vent in the woofer and the air displacement comming off the front of the cone can radiate into open space. Due to this the way I'm looking at this is you get the standard displacement of the woofer and then the added displacement of the panel providing possibly double the air movement. I can see this as an advange for when using a subwoofer in a smaller room and what extra output without sacrificing space due to the fact that a tall thin panel dosen't take up a whole lot of room.

[Adrian_D 520]

the planars are the first summer project i'm going to tackle . standard size, but if it works i could try a bigger version. i promise pics.

steve said he tried bigger sizes but ran into problems because of break-up nodes but GUESS that shouldn't be a concern for subs.

the mj18 has a vented pole piece

[topgun 262]

the planars are the first summer project i'm going to tackle . standard size, but if it works i could try a bigger version. i promise pics.

steve said he tried bigger sizes but ran into problems because of break-up nodes.

I saw that, but the way I look at it is the larger you go, the more limited your high frequency range is and since I'm only going to be running up to ~50hz I figure it would work out.

*edit* I was wondering if the MJ-18 had a vented pole....