3stagevtec

Here's the rest of my review.. - The line drive was not as powerful as I had hoped. I prefer to keep the gains on my amplifiers at a minimum and feed them with a strong signal (since that helps with keeping noise to a minimum), but I still needed to raise the gain slightly on my sub amplifier for the bass to match my front stage. I currently have an Audiocontrol Overdrive on my front stage and that is a far more powerful line driver. (I'm not saying the RA has weak line drive, it's just not as strong as the Overdrive I used for comparison..) -The Compressor feature works pretty good. It kicks in on peaks in the bass and attenuates those peaks according to the Threshold settings. It can be set up in such a way to protect your subwoofer from over excursion when pushing your system to the limit. - The Sub Harmonic Synthesizer is really only for the bass heads out there. For those who appreciate SQ, this is not for you. When I raised the 45Hz band and fed in the SHS volume, I got noticeable unnatural bass being produced. This unnatural bass was noticed with most music I tried. The 32Hz band works alot better IMO and does not have such a pronounced unnatural sound to it. With the 32Hz activated only, the deeper bass notes got extended lower, giving a cool rumble with an almost natural sound! (I only tested the 32Hz band on 80's pop / rock music. Did not try it on any bass heavy material) The RA has some nice features some would require in a sub amplifier line driver, but it's not for everyone. The build quality issues make it a hard recommendation, especially for a product in that price range.

I just got me one of these and my 1st impression was slightly disappointing. I did notice the same problem mentioned before with the alignment of the potentiometer knobs and the face plate. The faceplate was not properly centered at first, so I slackened the two Allen nuts on both sides of the plate and repositioned it. That allowed all the knobs to rotate freely with no resistance. The 2nd problem I found was the knobs themselves are not perfectly made. When you turn them, you can see a wobble in the movement.. similar to having a bent rim on your car. They also stick out at different heights from the faceplate, which looks unprofessional. I do like the general look of the unit through. It is much smaller than I originally thought, the unit itself is 4.25" across while the faceplate is 4.75". The faceplate has a nice thick beefy look to it and the print for the controls looks very clean. The RCA connectors at back looks 'high end'. When I get it hooked up, i'll give my personal view on how it sounds..

Any updates on this?

update us when you do.. a 1000A flux cap you say! that would work great with my pair of 1500Ds!

the biggest i've seen is 100A flux caps.. http://store.hlabs.com/pk4/store.pl?section=5

You have to charge higher than what your float voltage it. That was the whole point of my post. agreed, but i remember Jacob saying not to run the amps beyond 18V..

isn't it recommended to not surpass 18V on those amps??

soo tempting!

With my pair of Audiopipe 15"s, the 1st boxes i used was around 4cu.ft net tuned around 42Hz each. powered by a pair of Sundown 1500Ds, i made 149.0dB I rebuilt those boxes to ~5.6cu.ft net tuned the same 42Hz and scored 150.5dBs with an estimated 1600 - 1700W going to each. The subs did not reach their mechanical excursion limit my take on the above is i gained sensitivity by using the larger enclosures, hence the increased score.. Now if i was running both 1500Ds to just 1 15", chances are that 5+cu.ft would not have provided enough damping to the sub and it would have quickly reached its mechanical excursion limits. In this case, a smaller box (=stiffer air) will be needed to keep the sub under control.. but if only 1 1500D is used, the larger box should be superior.. so i figure power has something to do with it as well..

i had a pair of Audiopipe TXX 15"s in separate 5.4cu.ft boxes tuned approx 46Hz, 111sq.in of port area.. my best score with that setup was 151.6dBs i then made a direct swap over to a pair of DC Level 4s and my score dropped to below 150dB (149.x).. i then lengthened the port to lower the port tuning, the longer port reduced the net internal volume to 4.1cu.ft and the tuning freq dropped to approx 41Hz.. ended up making the exact same 151.6dB with that new setup.. those boxes were very tall though, so there were considered a wall by the IASCA rules.. judging from those results, i'd say that driver design plays a factor in box size.. after saying that, i've seen competitors obtain crazy scores from using the small box / huge port formula.. Jacob (Sundownz) has hit in the 154 (or was it 155) dB range with a single 15" nightshade in a pretty small box..

check through this thread..

got a question, with the above settings, wouldn't this cause alot of distortion during the burp? and possibly resulting in less power output?? or could it be more? i have a Pioneer HU, Soundstream 10V preamp, and an Audiocontrol 6XS crossover.. the gain on my pair of strapped 1500Ds is set to the minimum (least sensitive). all bass controls are set flat. i get my best SPL score by burping at 31/62 on the headunit.. when i try burping at 36/62, my score decreases.. i figure the reason for the lower score at 36/62 is because the amps are distorting.. could that be true? (i have a 140A alt with 2 powermaster AGM batteries)

just checking which is the most under rated SAZ.. 1000D - 104% 1500D - 131.3% 2000D - 122% 3000D - 109.3% 3500D - 104.6% I love my 1500Ds

we gotta get some videos of that setup in action! looks insane..

http://www.talkaudio.co.uk/vbb/showthread.php?t=282188

nice motor!

boxes are 4.1cu.ft each tuned around 35Hz.. power comes from a pair of Sundown SAZ1500D amps at 0.5ohms each.. My front stage is a pretty quiet pair of CDT components, they get drowned out quite easily...

thanks for the confirmation!

can someone please verify my choice of options for my intended use.. i.e. mainly SPL with very limited music play for kicks P Chamfer - Yes Cooling - No HiXmCoil - Yes (i'm not 100% sure if this is best for SPL use, but more Xmax should be a good thing) Daily or SPL - Daily (for higher reliability / resale value) I Heat Ring - Yes Universal - No

could u provides some links to info that could explain this more then "sounds nasty.." http://www.crutchfield.com/S-MLIdlc3FE4h/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_glossary.html Standing waves Standing waves occur when the sound from your speakers is reflected back and forth between the parallel surfaces in your room: the side walls, the front and rear wall, and the floor and ceiling. This effects amplifies some frequencies while others might get canceled out, creating areas of differing sound pressure or loudness around your room.

perfect cube's are supposed to be very bad for sound quality! it creates some called standing waves i believe, that sounds nasty.. the ideal box shape is one where all sides have a different length...

well, my vehicle peaks kinda low at 45 - 46Hz.. and sometimes, i'll just stuff part of the port to drop the tuning to a safe level.. usually, a port tuning of 40 - 41Hz works quite well for me, and i can play a little music on it just for kicks.. i know a tight gap will be great for SPL but i'm a little too afraid of getting any rubbing.. question: i currently have a pair of SAZ1500D amps.. (will look into getting another pair later on..) can someone please verify my choice of options for my intended use.. (i.e. mainly SPL with very limited music play for kicks) I can't own a BTL and not be able to play a few tunes.. P Chamfer - Yes Cooling - No HiXmCoil - Yes (i'm not 100% sure if this is best for SPL use, but more Xmax should be a good thing) Daily or SPL - Daily (for higher reliability / resale value) I Heat Ring - Yes Universal - No thanks again!

Looking at the BTL SPL vs Daily Option.. I would like to use a pair of 15"s mainly for SPL competitions, BUT i would like to squeeze JUST a song or two out of them every once in a while.. They are not to be used as daily play subs.. my question is, would i be able to get away with playing music for a short while with them, with the SPL option, or would i be better off using taking the daily option instead.. thanks

nice program! what do you mean by "port area range"? and the program you posted on June 21st above, you have Port Area written instead of Port length..