SubSam

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?

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

Going to disagree with that. When I have time or when Scott has time we'll make a graph with what we found. Power is power..but what isn't being considered is your time value of a 'square' or 'clipped' wave over the cycle period. You are at the extremes of the wave form MUCH longer which induces a significant amount of more heat to build up...which..kills the sub. Seen there...and below in the following 3 images. Yes the 'power' is 'power' and 'watts' is 'watts'...but you are not considering it over a given period of time where the coil is literally standing still burning and then immediately slamming in reverse and standing there and burning until it gets slammed forward by the fets. It is like trying to change gears without pushing in the clutch while traveling 70mph forward and 70mph rearword. Clipping...induces a SHIT ton more heat over this period of time..the heat and the coil bouncing off of the switching frequency of the output transistors..causes it to melt. Lots of people probably think an amplifier pumps a dc current back and forth at a given variable frequency. It's not like that at all. These people belong on the team that built that mechanical MTX woofer (tards). One thing in terms of amplifier topology I should have mentioned is the nature of digital processing, which is evident in the majority of most amplifiers these days. The beauty of the digital design is that any waveform can be broken down into pieces, almost unlimited times, and processed "piece by piece" if you will, which also becomes one of the design flaws. The square waveform above, if looking at the two 'corners' of the wave, is basically a dc current running hard through the coil. Obviously not good for the vc. What separates good amplifier processing from bad is a frequency sensitive regulator. The INPUT signal, if square (100%), can still be processed as a normal sine. In square, out round. If you are talking strictly input signal, then I'm not on the same page. With a poor amp (with analog or simplistic digital topology), at very low power (less than thermal limit), a dc current through the vc won't kill it, depending on the ratios I suppose, and may lead to mechanical failure, but can't really be a definite "coil killer". Especially since apparently Fi uses great materials for their winds. But when you start to add extra power and square waves then you got definite problems. Lesson: Buy good amps dammit, that HiFonics POS is only gonna get you laughed at. Pm me and I will turn your HiFonics to a Stetsom, for a price

I'm not talking signal, I'm talking amplifier output. I am agreeing with you that "clipped" (inappropriate term but anywho) signals can not break a woofer, without excess power, which could tear apart a coil without a clipped signal. And I won't venture further into woofers, as I don't know much about them except the obvious; I was talking strictly amplifier failure, I'm not into building woofers, but amps, mmhmmm But I really can't dumb it down enough, if anybody really cares buy an dual analog/digital amplification textbook, might wanna brush up on fields and waves if ur calc is rusty... pay attention to signal propagation under distortion, which is one of the easiest scenarios to model mathematically (obviously), and watch what happens when you compare the power OUTPUT of the amplifier with a high uncertainty (non linearity), to what it should look like. And model the phase plot while ur at it, its ugly to say the least. I can hopefully post a graphic when I get home from work, basically the amplification can fail in a way that the signal is totally non-sinal, and the slower the recovery of the electronics, the greater the currents through each component (Just like low Hz LRC circuits). Current doubles, heat dissipation quadruples. That's some V=IR stuff right there. I'm just trying to explain how his amplifier failed, so nobody blames the sub. my N2 is my new baby.