sundownz

"Neo-Pro Prototype 10 in a small sealed box in our shop for demo purposes. First with tweeter and relatively steep subsonic -- then with no tweeter on full range top-end and minimal subsonic filtering. Obviously my Casio camera microphone isn't the most accurate so there is a good bit of microphone distortion especially when close to the speaker."

I'll have more information soon. Ordering isn't open yet.

First post gets updated as new things become available So yes, the 1500Ds are accurate. Anyone interested please e-mail.

I'll put up some specs soon. As for the application -- most people in the market for this type speaker buy LOTs of them. May sound crazy but that is what is going on in many places in the USA and globally

Per driver.

Been working on these for a while but haven't said much... but Andy @ Vex has posted some videos so figured I'll open it up now -- some photos : I have requested spring loaded terminals for production since I hate spades... also will have our logo on them. They are all single 8-ohm so more can be wired to one amp -- the 200.4 can power 32 of them Flat, tied down tinsel leads as I could still hear lead-slap on mid-bass heavy material on our first sample... good quality paper cone... vented neo motor for high power handling. What is different ? Well... we made a real CAR speaker here. They will have great mid-bass in IB or sealed -- this sacrificed some of the sensitivity rating but if you ask anyone that has heard them output is NOT a problem and the gain in mid-bass, especially in IB, is WELL worth it. Most PA style drivers have ultra high sensitivity as they are made to run PORTED in a PA environment... almost nobody ports them in a car. We also chose Neo as when you get several of them in a door weight is a BIG issue with ferrite PA drivers. In any event... there they are. Pricing will be about $99 on 8s and $115 on the 10s on the pre-order.

Had a good time

I may have 12x used 2500s up for sale shortly... if you want to be put down for one if they arrive post in here. They will be 575 each shipped w/ 1-year warranty. I will update if I get them.

12x Used 1500Ds available !

I am back !

I don't have any in stock to send Mike.

For all questions on these e-mail mike at his address at the bottom of the first post.

If you are still having any issues I'd un-strap the amps and run each at 1 ohm as the first troubleshooting step -- occasionally amps just don't like to be strapped in some applications.

Cool story from CES today... I spoke with Jim from Alpine and he worked on both the new Type-R and Type-R shallow drivers; IIRC he designed the majority of both. Very cool guy -- interestingly he was aware of my test and aware of Sundown Audio and our products. Small world ! Talked with him for about an hour and it gives me more respect for Alpine knowing that they actually look at the smaller companies and what we are doing. I may also re-test the Type-R as Jim also thinks it should have fared better in the test; I also thought it would too based on all the solid engineering. So I'll re-do it at some point to make sure there were no errors.

Getting up super early tomorrow to catch my flight... will keep up as much as I can while I'm gone. Wish me luck on the flight

X-Max by motor is the same on all sizes -- around 25mm one-way

You may have an intermittent ground short -- very difficult to find. We had a speaker shorting to ground through it's own frame in Brandon's Bronco a few years ago -- and it was intermittent... huge pain to track down. Of course with any electronic device there is the possibility to fail without good reason as well - this is true with any electronic equipment from any manufacturer ever made.

Hope everyone had a good one ! I'm back @ work trying to wrap things up as much as I can before going to CES.

After getting several e-mails and calls about Sensitivity of subwoofers and seeing quite a bit of forum action regarding sensitivity I've decided to post this up... Sensitivity does not = Efficiency on a subwoofer on LOW bass. This is regarding industry standard sensitivity measured at 1khz -- this is where the spec is measure on 99.9% of speakers in the world. Hoffman's Iron Law dictates that out of sensitivity, small box size, and low-end extension you can pick two and the other suffers. In car audio, especially, you want small box and good low-end so sensitivity will typically be lower than a home audio woofer -- where you can use a large box and then have both high sensitivity and good low-end. Since we have done quite a bit of SA-8 testing recently I'll use it as an example for the rest of the discussion. Some recent SA-8 testing results to demonstrate this... measured in Sean's CRX in a box tuned in the mid 30s: SA-8 / CCAW Coil (83.42 dB 1w/1m) D2 : Frequency / Power / SPL 25 - 430 - 123.9 30 - 400 - 127.4 35 - 300 - 129.0 40 - 210 - 129.6 45 - 120 - 128.7 50 - 90 - 128.5 SA-8 / Copper Coil Stock (78.6 dB 1w/1m) D2 : 25 - 470 - 125.0 30 - 240 - 131.1 35 - 140 - 132.9 40 - 100 - 132.6 45 - 170 - 130.7 50 - 270 - 129.3 Take note low-bass fans... at 30 Hz the copper driver with nearly 5 dB less sensitivity is using 60% of the power and is 3.7 dB louder. So... which one is more EFFICIENT on sub-bass by the real definition... output per watt. The CCAW coil doesn't pull ahead in real efficiency until out of the really low sub-bass region @ 50 Hz. So... sensitivity should at least pan out in maximum SPL, right ? We put in the SPL box tuned very high and still... not as much effect as you might imagine... the CCAW coil achieved 151.0 dB @ 1310 watts and the copper 149.9 dB @ 1600 watts -- not nearly as much as one would imagine by the 5 dB sensitivity different, huh ? Even at lower power... both drivers at 250-watts we have 144.9 on the CCAW and 143.3 on the Copper -- just 1.4 dB down at 68 Hz... for a HUGE gain down low. Is the higher sensitivity driver a better choice for peak SPL ? Yep -- that extra 1.5 dB will win the show... but is it worth a nearly 5 dB loss at 30 Hz (adjusted for power difference the actual loss is about 5dB) for a daily system ? In the minds of most car audio enthusiasts that would be a HUGE "NO SIR!" ----- This testing was done in-house for my own purposes of product development and not to simply prove a point... but since the point needs to be made I have decided to share it. Product design is a balancing act... with an 8" woofer on a standard diameter spider landing you need a certain amount of stiffness to hold up to what people do to drivers in the real world. On a driver like the SA-8 by the time you get to that level of stiffness a bit of additional mass is needed to drop the FS to a reasonable level so we used a copper coil to get there. Can I soften up the CCAW driver spider a bit and help the low-end ? Sure can -- and we'll be testing that too. The sacrifice is you end up with a less mechanically rugged driver that, in terms of VAS, wants a bigger box while at the same time the bigger box further compromises mechanical power handling. In terms of the SA-8 we are working on different spider tools and so forth to try and get around some of these things. So far the combination we have is the most effective for what most people need / want. If we end up being able to improve on it without sacrificing durability then a v.2 SA-8 will be born.

The DTR boards are fairly cheaply made units -- typically put out the power they claim but simply aren't a rugged, over-built design by any means. You pay more for an amp designed to handle more abuse and that isn't throw-away when blown.

That is a pretty big tear -- I haven't tried it on one that big... but we have fixed splits with gorilla tape on the back and goop on front.

They are similar enough that it shouldn't present an issue.

Someone has to take care of things while I'm away : ... and his wicked awesome tool set that I got him for Christmas has an accurate plastic caliper with it so he can measure the gaps, coils, etc

I am leaving January 4th and returning the 12th -- so will be back to work on the 13th or so. While I am gone some orders that can simply be boxed and shipped will be completed -- customized items, re-cones, etc will wait until I get back. Some staff will be here but operation will be at limited capacity.

Nope. The 8s are the only SA unit that has more than 1% or so not pass QC testing -- 8s are pretty tricky to build.