Exodus Audio Maelstrom-X(XJ-18) new high excursion 18" driver

[anidabi]

It seems that Exodus Audio XJ18 final engineering sample parameters are ready. : Finally something very promising against mighty LMS-5400. It doubt it will beat LMS, but I think it will be the next best thing, and you will actually be able to buy it some day. The price is supposed to land around 350$. Not bad compared to LMS. Looking forward to see this thing at Ilkkas sobwoofer shootout. Production should start sometime during april, so it seems that there will not be XJ18 for spring subwoofer shootout.

Anyway, it models great in both enclosures, sealed and vented. Here are my quick examples:

Sealed



Vented





Anyone else ready for experience some serious bass?



Here are the parameters:
Re: 3.1
Le: 0.87mH
Fs: 17.7 Hz
Qms: 7.8
Qes: .38
Qts: .36
Mms: 494g
Cms: .170 mm m/N
Vas: 324L
Sd: 1182 cm^2
BL: 21.17
Xmax: 33mm
Xmech: 42mm

Source

The whole XJ18 thread

[SQBubble]

That looks good, any pics of the actual driver?

[WillyD]

Finally something very promising against mighty LMS-5400.

Well this driver isn't even Exodus' answer to the LMS-5400. Its really the Rl-p 18's contender.

[anidabi]

SQBubble wrote:

That looks good, any pics of the actual driver?

Kevin Haskins at Audiocircle:

The engineering samples don't necessarily have great cosmetics so rather than post something that looks bad, I'd rather just wait until I have production units.

WillyD wrote:

Well this driver isn't even Exodus' answer to the LMS-5400. Its really the Rl-p 18's contender.

Yes I know that. I even doubt that they are ever going to build one. The price performance ratio is just too low. Only a handful of people are able to buy one, but it would be nice to see something like LSM from exodus audio. When simulating it comes very close to LSM in every aspect. Except LSM is not ideal for ported solution and XJ-18 seems to be a lot better for that. I doubt XJ-18 has as low distortion levels than LMS. Still it sure should have low distortion levels too, so says Kevin at audiocircle:

The motor BL is linear to within 10% out to about 27mm with the 30% down being our X-max. The inductance is managed with our AlCu motor technology that balances the Le curve for symmetry using variable width & thickness shorting rings made of either copper or aluminum depending upon the need. The VC is a 3" all copper design with black anodized aluminum former for maximum heat dissipation. Overall we pulled out all the stops on this one. Notice in the sectional drawing below both the notches cut for the XBL^2 motor and the two shorting rings of differing size/materials. This is all carefully designed to minimize inductance & BL based non-linearities. Not your run of the mill motor design.

[justin.kerr]

I am very interested in this driver, it looks great in WinIsd, with a small sealed enclosure!

Kevin says that they are still going to build the super duper 18" model, but it will be a while.

[Geoff St. Germain]

The Sicko-18 from Exodus is on the design table. It looks like it might be at the LMS level. Of course it will be ~$1000 per driver.

The Maelstrom-X should be a cool driver. There are certainly a lot of reasonably priced 18" solutions coming out. $350 for an 18" with XBL^2, 33 mm Xmax and 42 mm Xmech? To me that is quite a deal.

[anidabi]

Geoff St. Germain wrote:

The Maelstrom-X should be a cool driver. There are certainly a lot of reasonable priced 18" solutions coming out. $350 for an 18" with XBL^2, 33 mm Xmax and 42 mm Xmech? To me that is quite a deal.

Yeah, hard to find any better price performance ratio in 18" high excursion class.

[Exocer]

Geoff St. Germain wrote:

The Sicko-18 from Exodus is on the design table. It looks like it might be at the LMS level. Of course it will be ~$1000 per driver.

The Maelstrom-X should be a cool driver. There are certainly a lot of reasonably priced 18" solutions coming out. $350 for an 18" with XBL^2, 33 mm Xmax and 42 mm Xmech? To me that is quite a deal.

Certainly a deal in a half. Looking forward to seeing projects with them.

[anidabi]

Geoff St. Germain wrote:

The Sicko-18 from Exodus is on the design table. It looks like it might be at the LMS level. Of course it will be ~$1000 per driver.

You are right, I completely missed that sicko thing.

Here is a snippet from AVS forum:

Project Goals:

*18" Driver with Insane amounts of output, and the world's best linearity.
*X-max 40mm one-way, over 8.6L of Vd.
*X-mech 50mm
*4" VC with a few tricks to improve power dissipation. Dual 3 Ohm voice coils because your going to need a pro-amp to power it. No plate amp on the earth has the power necessary to fully take advantage of this beast. I'm optimizing it so that it works with the Face Audio F1200-TS that has two channels of 1775W into 3 Ohms. That gives us 3550W of power (not continuous but should get peak power without tripping anything) that functions on a 20A breaker and cost only $785. Car audio competition guys get a 1.5 Ohm load.
*Some incredible tricks to minimize Le & Le based distortion/flux modulation with power, VC position and frequency. Counter-coil rather than shorting rings which doesn't saturate with power.
*World's most linear suspension components, 12" tooled spider with some special tricks, stay tuned. RevSurround with symmetric Cms curve for the surround. Tinsel leads integrated into the spider for zero lead-slap or noise.
*Same T/S parameters as the Maelstrom-X. So... should work great in 7-12 cubic feet PR or ported, >5-6 cubic feet sealed.

*Projected Price <$1000 ea
*Projected Weight: 40-45lbs (we are using neo motor to keep size/weight under control)
*Projected Availability: Fall 2008 Shooting for November

[Geoff St. Germain]

Yeah, I think Kevin has since bumped the Xmax to around 55mm and the Xmech to around 70mm (he talks about it later in that thread). He may also have discussed using a 14" spider. There's a model of the motor at the end of that thread now and it seems to use a triple split gap (three gaps). Needless to say it's gonna be nuts.

[anidabi]

In case you shacksters havn't heard the maelstrom-x pre-order has started. 299$ for one, when the normal price should be 350$. Pre-order special ends april 10th. http://www.diycable.com/main/product...roducts_id=681

Note that the picture is not from the final product. That is only modified engineering sample picture.

[Larry McConville]

Good Afternoon All,

I pre-ordered four Maelstroms this week; they will be driven by a pair of Face Audio F1200 amps (already in hand). I'm still deciding on alignments though...

Regards,

Larry

anidabi wrote:

In case you shacksters havn't heard the maelstrom-x pre-order has started. 299$ for one, when the normal price should be 350$. Pre-order special ends april 10th. http://www.diycable.com/main/product...roducts_id=681

Note that the picture is not from the final product. That is only modified engineering sample picture.