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I had an SSA Icon 12 in my car for about a year on 1200w RMS. The sub was in a 2.5ft^3 box tuned to 33 hz and it was definitely the most musical sub i have ever listened while dropping an insane amount on lows. I sold the sub a few months ago, ordered an Xcon 15, and built a 5ft^3 box tuned to 33hz again. The sub arrived yesterday packaged inside a crate that was inside a box lol. This thing must not have moved an INCH. The suspension on this sub is STIFF. Most definitely the stiffest suspension I have felt. Anyways, after hooking it up to my MB Quart Onx2000.1, I can say this thing is...well for lack of a better word...a MONSTER. The move up in cone area and power defintely made a huge difference in the amount bass. The xcon seems to the play the higher bass notes with more authority as well. Overall, this is one kick-ass sub and I cant wait for the suspension to loosen up and spend more time playing it. SSA has never let me down.

you must be a loanly sad mother fucker to go thru my thread and mark my shit negative... any time you want to debate why you love me so much you take time out of your date to hate on me.. we can talk about it publicly.... ..... but im sure your a weak minded child, that will have nothing but fat insults and uneducated assumptions about my stereo and its performance..... but any time you decide to stop being a sneaky hating pussy ill be here to talk about it

Marking negatives...hmm.childish

so as alot of you know, i have ran sundown for many years in the lincoln, and recently the Zcons, and then back to the sundowns.. well after following the long coming of the ethos i decided to give them a shot....... i was very impressed with the packing, first off.. i have bought a lot of big subs.. but none were packed like these, .. they didn't move an inch in shipping, ill show you why!! gotta love wood ! and this idea i liked alot, it keeps the motor from moving, and of course wood on the bottom now lets look at the sub, first thing that caught my eye was the raised lettered dust cap, its classy and different, and the cone its self is nice stiff and very hard, thick if you will, second thing i noticed was dat ass!!! its massive, this sub is heavy!! also the matted black basket, its so very sexy, and again . different i think the QC guy forgot to look at this one after it was glued, the glue comes off with a little work.... leads are nice, tethered and heat shrunk a peak into her gutts lastly is the black chrome basket ... some bitch is sexy!!!..... this one has some glue but comes off i was a little sad to see that the builder didnt protect the black chrome back plate while assembling not a huge deal to me.. as im not inverting them... ok so lets get down to it, so i dropped them in on the NS1 at 1 ohm.. left the settings where they were from the nightshade V2's and let them eat on some music for a while.. about 6 songs right off the bat.. at full tilt... got them nice and hot and smelly... as to be expected straight out of the box... so after about 2 hours play time they are broken in and the spiders are softer, ill say it right now.. I AM NOT BEING EASY on these subs.. i know i WILL find the limit on them.... but until then lets have some fun!!! these subs are really nice on music, they are punchy quick and carry lows like a beast, its hard to explain, but its like some how they have the best of both worlds, it has made some of the songs i liked but never played with the nightshades because they would not respond fast enough a joy to listen to once again , these subs are taking power like a boss, im going back thru all my music folders looks for new songs to play because the realm of lows and response of these subs is unmatched and i cant wait... i will keep playing them, and tell ya'll more about them as i learn about them... were still getting to know one another i can tell you i am very pleased at this point i have some videos but uploading them is proving to be a challenge, but i wll get them posted ,

I don't really have an opinion of the Amp Dyno, or any products made by your company as I have never used any. I would caution on a few of the points made in this thread though, the main one being head room and the burst testing. I worked for Audioprism in the mid to late 90's building tube amplifiers, pre-amplifiers and FM antennae. I did a lot of modification, measuring and design work while there. We tested many designs, both our own and many others. We built extremely high end, well measuring audio equipment. One of the things we were know for was complete solid state regulation of all power supplies (9 in each of our mono-blocks). This leads to an overall design with little headroom, as all full class-A amplifiers have (I have owned several Krell and PASS Lab amplifiers). These are also some of the arguably best sounding amplifiers in the existence, Stereophile rated our Audioprism Mana reference mono-blocks as Class A back in the day, or best of the best (in the world) in other words... This is why headroom is of little use to sound quality, unless you are constantly pushing the voltage output limitation of the amplifier. I guess my point is, don't get hung up on headroom. As Carver, NAD etc are OK amplifiers, they have never been know to sound great. On the flip side burst testing is done on many amplifier reviews out of the car audio realm and is a useful indication of maximum output levels, but not of sound quality. The nice thing about testing into a good, non-reactive stable load is that measuring is easy, and it makes sense on why you put your Amp Dyno together. I also understand the cost involved. I just think that the point of what it is intended for may get skewed because of marketing, I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.

I want to see 2 Phonebooks 1 Cup, 1 Subwoofer

judging by the first videos vs the last video I'm guessing it would have metered higher with fresh subs. Brutal no doubt. Can't wait to hear it in person. The meter, nor videos do this car any justice.

not if its 6 of em

well jon needs another sub to put to the ropes... i just got a big swinging cock of an amp

Nor one that is $355 shipped. Are you still going to make the 3500 rms version of the ethos? lord i hope so!!.... thats what i was just about to remind you guys of.. this is the first run of the first sub of this company... if this is the lowest sub in the series .. shits about to get fucking real ... in a major way.

Nor one that is $355 shipped. Are you still going to make the 3500 rms version of the ethos?

im very very confidante that with fresh subs and testing i could match the sundown scores... but at any rate.. the nightshades could never be as musical or as cheap or honestly handle the abuse that i dished out to the ethos..... i have slinkied many nightshade coils..... the etho coil did not fail... it failed in another manor.. im not sure what gave yet.. but im shocked that the coil didnt unwind ...... ill let yall know what gave... but just know.. its my fault.... before i ever got these subs i told Q.. i would need recones .. because i was going to abuse the shit out of them.. and i did. i caused these to fail.

Nor one that is $355 shipped.

so after abusing the Ethos for far too long.. on far too many watts... i finaly got the time to meter... so i wired the NS1 at .25 ohms. and burped a few times.. .. for the last few days it has not been as loud as before..... and the number reflected it.. with out testing or even burping at my two known peaks Frq .. i hit 45 hz,. and popped up a 149.3.. a great score for my trunk on 1800 watts subs that have been ran ragged.. so after that i tried to street beat.. i did 20 seconds of the wrong track.. then back doored it with a rull run of 30 hx track... then i smelled it..... i had released the majical smoke.... and the game was over..... or so i thought!!! later that day me and dani went to the store and for the fuck of it i flipped my switch on.. and BOOOM they were both working....YES!!! after one went up in smoke and surly blew.. it was still playing!! so i pulled over and did a hair trick on music at .25 .... VIDEO CLICK IT!! from a lincoln town car truck son!!! 7K on two 1800 watts ethos on music! mother fuckers are CRAZY SON!!!! changed it to a youtube video because no one was clicking the photobucket one... http://youtu.be/v824oivEgp8 by the way my love didnt want me to post this video because she didnt have make up on.. i kinda tricked her into doing to out of no where

This gets me kinda rubbery too.

You love the 928, but that isn't attractive?

Another car you'll hate that I absolutely love Can't tell you how many times I've almost bought one.

The interior needs work. Exterior and Eclipse I find funny, but perhaps different views of the sexiness Even riced out they look good Better interior shot too, much easier to imagine the fixes here

Thankful that it is finally Friday.

Well understood. The tool lets the user decide if they want to setup the system with no possibility of clipping whatsoever if they choose. Most people don't prefer this setting in practice though.

The Amp Dynos are all hand-built and calibrated by D'Amore Engineering in Tempe, AZ. Tested against several references including an audio precision, and a HP8903A

The Amp Dyno is a pro level tool. Yes it has 2 independent DD-1s in it. We have a consumer level tool coming out in a few weeks. It is called the AMM-1. It's a audio oriented multimeter. It measures dc voltage, ac voltage, ac current, phase angle, power factor, VA, Watts, Impedance, and frequency. It's a handheld device.

Hmm if this guy needs help with a box design ill see if they're gonna be buttholes and not give me t/s specs. I'm sure if I told them it was to calculate the port area they would.

yes .. her hair was shorter in this video, and the light was way better... this was done with the 4500D at .25 if i recall correctly the lighting was poor today .. ill try to get a better shot.. with the same song.

just no rear speakers when i run in the lanes i un bolt my back seat and lay it flat

hair trick anyone? For the peeps on mobile:

with layaway options that should be super easy !!

lol no doubt... funny hes a memeber here now.. the first week i worked at this place we didnt talk.. then one day he seen me and he said " hey! .. i guess i should not judge a book by its cover " and i was like WTF. .. what does that mean? " i heard your pretty loud with the car audio" and i said yeah.. some might say.. and he said " yeah im an old school bass head, back when we used to wall everything" .. and i told him .. we still wall! but i try to get loud with out walling.... a anyway .. that was the start of our friendship,. and now we talk audio in passing all the time lol... hes a SQ head at heart, but he gets that SPL itch some times i see it in his eye lol his screen name here is "budman" or something along those lines

indeed you do.. these are way different subwoofers..im having so much fun going back threw my library and re discovering what sounds good on these subs.... its wild how many more options have opened

30 to 39 seems to be my sweetest spot with as much power as im throwing at these things.... if i dial back the power the subs will go lowwwwwww 25 hz or so with no problem.. its pretty fun .. everything moves slowly

i was having a hard time getting videos posted.. but i got 1 uploaded so far.. ill add them as i get them up... this is a friend of mine kyle.. he owns one of the local car audio shops here in town.. he does all my wood work on my boxes hes always tries to act like a hard ass in my cars... but you can see hes having a hard time breathing i was trying to talk about the subs while backing up, i got a bit flustered but i got my point across

HBD

still no pics of Dani's either. She must have him in the dog house by now. were both crazy busy , with my new job and she started a new office, but soon.. shes buggin me about it

I'd be very surprised if he's running it at full output. The Ethos are only rated at 1,800 rms. i told you i would give them hell.... i simply pulled out the nightshade V2s .. and dropped in the ethos... i didn't change a thing... they take it as it is... i will how ever dial it back.. as i know im clipping the shit out of them at this point.. i plan to wire down to .25 this weekend and see what they do on the termlab.

a few small chips,. and also the slugs are not perfectly aligned as you can see in these pics but maybe they are slightly off perfectly round to start with.. im not sure.. im super impressed with the sub and the price point is just amazing he definitely over build and under hyped this sub IMO

to the ear they sound louder, plenty louder.. it hurts my ears now.. something that was never an issue.. but only the TL can put the proof in the pudding, i hope to meter then soon. im just so busy with my new job

yes it did move a bit,.. and one of the other cups came unglued from the board .. so it was able to move around, but not much, yes the scratches on 2 out of the three were a shame to see on such a sexy sub, that black chrome is a huge plus on the sub.. and for it to come out of the box already scratched if i wall i will be inverting them BTW

sorry i mistakenly posted half way thru me being done... check back in on the first post i finished

So I've made it pretty obvious that I was ordering a 10" ICON from SSA for a while, but haven't really put up my impressions of it yet. Well, just so happens that I got her in this week and have had a couple days now to play with it. But first, the pictures! Was too heavy for the wife to bring in...lol All concerns about this sub not being packed gingerly and braced to survive UPS' typical mishandling can now be dispelled. The foam blocks were glued to the shipping box itself and the magnet was held in place with more cardboard and a wood basin. I ended up pulling the sub out from the magnet side because I didn't want to damage the foam blocks Yay! I has a sticker lol. I'll save this for future use. This sub is sub-stantial (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). That's a gorgeous-looking motor. More on that later... I'm a big fan of these poly rings being used for spacers and the amount of side cooling this sub offers. The wiring is Audio Technix 10ga that I had lying around. Foam pad meant to prevent lead slap. Ends up being quite effective, IMO More shots of those poly rings that I happen to love (inherently resonance-resistant), but what stands out to me is that coil. Just like it's peeking up to say, "hello...I'm about to give you delicious, clean bass." Believe it or not, this is my favorite feature of the whole sub (aside from how it sounds, of course. Instead of just taking a foil sticker and slapping it on the bottom end of the motor, it's encased behind some clear plastic. Now here's where things got weird. I had an enclosure built previously for my 10" DC Audio Level 2 and was having issues getting the ICON to fit because of the double baffle as well as the inner baffle being about 1/8" too small for the basket. At first, I thought I was going to have an issue, but then a voice inside me said "turn it around, man...let that beautiful magnet be the centerpiece." So I ended up with this: And it literally slid right in there. Mounted normally, the rubber gasket was starting to bunch up, causing issues with it seating flush. But I think reverse mounting was the winning ticket. Here's some more shots: Placed in for a test fit. The enclosure is just narrow enough to fit in between the two standoffs for the rear deck. And the finished product: XS D2700 in the stock battery compartment sitting right alongside a Zed Audio Minotaur III. In the future, I will have a second Minotaur and be able to feed the ICON up to 2.6k at 4 ohms. Talk about efficiency and the essques! So here's my first and second-day listening impressions. I'm just going to copy them out of my MAF build log: SO! First day of listening to the ICON in the car. Keep in mind that Aaron actually recommended using the SMS enclosure with its 32Hz tuning and I, stubbornly, went with the dcar box anyway (seeing as how I had it at the house)... Umm holy shit, guys. There's something awesome about this ICON. On paper, it might not look as awesome as some other subs. If all you look at is power ratings, 1250W isn't an incredibly huge amount. And it looks like a Fi . But I'm telling you all that this sub has character. It has low end and in magnitudes greater than I was ever able to experience with the Level 2. I know it's not a fair comparison seeing as how the coil sizes are different, power rating is almost twice as different, blah blah blah, but it was the last sub I ran in my setup. So there. Even running the Level 2 at 2 ohms with twice the power I'm feeding the ICON at 4, the DC can't keep up. This ICON got lower, louder, and cleaner across the spectrum than the DC ever did in an enclosure DESIGNED for the DC. Today's demo discs were Hardwell Presents Revealed, Volume 4 (mainstream EDM) and Chase and Status - Brand New Machine (Drum & Bass). Hardwell's album produced a good amount of bass. Nothing exceptional, but what you would expect out of radio-friendly EDM tunes. The standouts here were Hardwell's own "Never Say Goodbye," Martin Garrix' "Animals," Armin van Buuren's "This Is What It Feels Like," and pretty much all of Chase & Status' new album in terms of bass reproduction. In a contest of lows, Chase & Status all the way, which really helped show how low this sub could dig. Low, loud, and clean are definitely the ICON's M.O. here, but what amazed me was how much more transparent my sub stage has gotten, even over doing everything I could with the DC. If the ID10 was like getting into your car first thing on a cold morning and the DC was like the first few minutes after running that defogger, the ICON is like the same windshield on a perfect autumn afternoon. TL;DR = ICON>Level 2, though not a fair comparison. Gets louder, lower, and does it cleaner with a certain sense of character that can't really be described. --- Yes, yes it is. I still want to do another tune with it, but I've been very impressed with it in terms of clarity of signal and ease of use. You would be tickled pink with it, man. I didn't choose the ICON life, the ICON life chose me --- More ICON listening impressions today. Listened to a couple more albums: Chase & Status - No More Idols Nero - Welcome Reality Excision - X Rated Bass is still full, surrounding, clean, low, and (dare I say) WARM. I have yet to go back in and re-tune the front stage for the increased sub stage output, but there's something almost analog in the way the sound of this sub is. It's never overbearing or as in-your-face as the output should be making you feel, which is something I really like. That's not to say it doesn't get loud, but it does it in a way that just feels nice. Listening to one of my favorite tracks of all time, Chase & Status' "Flashing Lights" was just a pure joy and the ICON handled it effortlessly. Nero's "My Eyes" was just like I remembered hearing it live. I almost closed my eyes and saw Hard Day of the Dead's light show going on from when I saw them a few weeks ago. In a week or two, I'll start putting in some acoustic and live instrument tracks to see how it keeps up with those. --- More listening impressions will come in over time. I'm looking forward to the suspension to loosen up and see how this thing does after a break-in. Also very happy that I'm getting this response with only 750W available for the sub (4 ohms). Being able to give her rated and more is going to be a real treat.

Agreed Awesome, thanks for the input. Any 18s "better" than the evil? Something that could be powered by one BC5500d?Evil can. Could also look at the IA Warden and B2 XC

Lol neither did I until I had it in my hands. The Level 2 was only 20-something pounds, so this is almost double the sub. 2.5" coil to 3" and so on and so forth. Never knew what I was missing...

I would say the Evil, hands down. I see too many X coming up in classifieds to make me comfortable recommending them. My box builder is happy with his, but those X won't have a fair fight against the 4" coil Evil. Plus, I love single-sub setups.

no problem I try to help my friends, <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hey, I try to bump all of you fools when I see them!

Big jump, 2069!

I want to see the answer to this as well...

. more to come!

The first question should be how much room do you have followed by what does your front stage consist of to keep up with the amount of bass you are planning. Unless bass is all you want to hear.