[evilskillit]

I'm helping a friend from work build a subwoofer for his home theater system. He said he was going to go to best buy and buy one for $300, so I convinced him we could build a much much better unit for about the same price. He has his own wood shop so the cabinet is going to be a piece of cake. However we want to keep the cost around $300 and probably keep the thing to a reasonable size so his wife will let him keep it in the house.

Previously I built a unit for a friend with similar goals that we have been pretty happy with. It used the Dayton 12" High Fidelity woofer in a 5 cu ft enclosure ported to about 20hz and sounded decently musical and does a good job of shaking the whole house when watching HT stuff. We used the PE 300watt Bash plate amp.

I'm trying to decide for my other friend from work if I should have him build the same thing or use the Creative Sound Solutions SDX12. They plot out about the same and the cost is about the same so the question is if anyone knows which one will actually sound better.

I know I am pretty happy with the Dayton in this setup, the SDX12 would handle more power but he won't want to spend more than enough to buy a 300watt plate amp so thats a nonpoint. However the SDX12 will be alot further away from its Xmax with the amp turned all the way up so I'm wondering if it might sound even better than the Dayton or if the RSS315HF-4 is just such a good woofer that the SDX12 would not sound any better. Oh and I've heard the O-Audio 300w plate amp is better than the PE bash so I'll probably have him order that too unless everybody here thinks otherwise.

Thanks in advance for any help and or opinions.

 

[Mike P.]

Since the Dayton 15HF is maxed out with 300 watts I'd go with the SD12. It's no where near it's Xmax with 300 watts and has a slight advantage over the Dayton with a 300 watt input.

Oh and I've heard the O-Audio 300w plate amp is better than the PE bash

Not sure what you heard but the PE 300 is a very versatile amp with its changeable high pass filter and boost. Modeled below is the PE Bash 300 with the default high pass filter at 17.7 hz and 1 db of boost between 25 and 30 hz.

 

[WmAx]

Since the Dayton 15HF is maxed out with 300 watts I'd go with the SD12. It's no where near it's Xmax with 300 watts and has a slight advantage over the Dayton with a 300 watt input.



Not sure what you heard but the PE 300 is a very versatile amp with its changeable high pass filter and boost. Modeled below is the PE Bash 300 with the default high pass filter at 17.7 hz and 1 db of boost between 25 and 30 hz.

View attachment 12254

Here is the thing: the Dayton RS 12" Subwoofer has been Klippel tested. It is extremely linear out to rated x-max and compliance is linear as well. That is, it has a near flat response/performance curve of motor/mechanical behaviour with small and large signal input. Most drivers do not have this characteristics. It will, as a result, turn in out in real life pretty close to modeled performance if you use ports with sufficient cross sectional area(use slot ports). The CSS SD sub has not been verified to my knowledge; even though it models a certain way it can turn out to be substantially different/less performance than the modeled result. Now, the CSS SDX has been real-world tested here in Illka's testing, but that is the SDX, not the SD. The SDX seemed to have very good performance over-all. Also, if a driver has a fair thermal continuous rating of X amount, it can easily use at least 2x that amount with music program. Music is not a continuous signal. For a sealed cabinet, the CSS would certainly be the better option just because of the increased safe amount of travel; but for ported use the Dayton should perform spectacularly in the properly engineered cabinet lined with the appropriate high density and high thickness absorption materials.

I would use the O Audio 500 Watt amplifier if you can convince your friend to pay a little more. It also has a subsonic filter, which is critical for driver safety with ported systems when used for home theater purposes. I am not sure if the 300 Watt one has the subsonic filter?

-Chris

 

[Mike P.]

The Dayton and the PE Bash 300 would cost $287 + shipping. That would be the closest to the $300 budget. The SD12 and Bash 300 from CSS would be $304 + shipping. The advantage of the SD12 is the amp can be upgraded in the future and the SD12 can produce more output, compared to the Dayton which is maxed out with 300 watts. It all depends on what you want.



-Chris stated:

The CSS SD sub has not been verified to my knowledge; even though it models a certain way it can turn out to be substantially different/less performance than the modeled result.

The majority of sub drivers that are available for HT have not been Klippel tested and you don't hear any complaints about them. Not to open a can of worms, but the importance of "linear out to rated x-max" is over rated in my opinion. Yes, it's a good thing to have, but is it necessary in a sub that's designed for a HT application? The sub is producing cannon shots, explosions, etc., mostly from 25 hz and down. Musical reproduction is a different story. Yes, get the most linear sub you can afford. But for HT where the goal is to make the walls shake, it's not all that important. For Ht subs I have two IXL-18's, two Atlas 15's, a IXL-15, a IXL-12, and I had a pair of Shiva Mk III's. All do the job they were designed to do, and they do it well.