Bass isn't just for cars :)

[Hometheaterbasshead]

Hello All,

New to the forum, but a huge fan of Steve and all of your works. I know I might not fit in here, as I don't have huge bass in a ride. I have 4 daughters, gets crowded, and I don't see myself as a "Mini Van Dad" lol, to have room for the family and subs. Me and my 4 daughters however love to jam here and there, and they love bass. Anyways to start with I bought a set of Cerwin Vega MX 400s, and was more than happy with the sound of them, years of use, the surround of the cones were nothing short of shot. Decided to start looking for replacements, this brought me across a set of Audio Pipe TS PC-15s. Now car audio, more of my style, bought them, and brought them home and wired them up. Was shocked at the difference the sub made, however now running 4 ohms instead of the traditional 8, not good for the receiver, however the Sony receiver I had at the time didn't really seem to mind much. Was a little disappointed that the amp wouldn't work any harder beings it was half the resistance, however no noticeable increase in volume, however the bass was a lot cleaner. A short time later came home to my daughters saying they blew my mids and highs in the MX 400 cabinets. Now I am a small business owner, they guy that did the lettering on my truck, also does stereo installs. I went to him and was looking for new mids and highs. Ended up with audio pipe mids and highs, came home, trimmed the boxes some for the bigger mids and highs, and jammed out, was really impressed with the sound. The issue that I was having was the MX 400 series has a protection circuit in the crossover in the box, and would shut the mids and highs off anything past a certain volume, even though were only getting a 100 watts tops off the amp, and were rated much higher. My oldest daughter wanted to get even more bass, as did I for those low bass explosions in movies (also are movie nutts) so the more realistic it sounds the better for us. Went once again went to my stereo guy, in which since I so loved the TS PC-15s he suggested doing 4 subs in a box pointing at the floor, as my man cave is huge.

We ended up experimenting more than anything with the box, that's why it looks rather shitty in the pics, we are trying to figure out the best scenario for a box and how high it should be from the floor for the best bass response. After creating a fast put together box, tuned to 30 hz to house 4 15s, we threw some legs on it and have been moving it up and down as well as back and forth closer to the wall, when we get it just the way I like it, I am gonna redo the box to something that looks much nicer (keep in mind this is the man cave with pool tables, ping pong, ect)

Anyways down to the bare bones of the system I use my "Main" Sony receiver as a Preout in a sense, it runs the main switching for xbox, tv, blu ray, ect, as well as sends signals out to the other receivers. I use 3 receivers, and 2 amps in my scenario, I like the ease and the convienience of being able to control the volumes of each of the surround channels (front, center, and rear) independently.

The amp driving the 4 TS PC-15s in the frankenstien box is a Planet Audio PX 3200 D.

The amp driving just the subs of the MX 400 cabinets is a Pyle Pro PQA 3100

The center channel of the system is the same as all the mids and highs in the system which consists of Audio Pipe APMB-6 (6 inch mid range) and a Audio Pipe ATR-4061 (Titanium Tweeter). The MX 400 cabinets are sporting these as well, they are run off a seperate receiver and all crossed over at 200 HZ.

The rear surrounds are the same as the mids and highs in the center and channel, and are ran off the rear surround output of the main reciever.

That is a total of 6 Audio Pipe TS PC-15s, 5 Audio Pipe APMB-6 (mid range), 5 Audio Pipe ATR-4061 (titanium tweeters), Planet Audio PX 3200 D rated at 3,200 watts, a Pyle Pro PQA 3100 rated at 3,100 watts (ya right!) and 3 home receivers rated at about 150 watts per channel.

I am currently running a gel cell, a 100 amp battery charger, a 1/2 farad cap, that keeps up with the car amp rather well, people have asked why I just didn't buy a home amp, the things I found, most are badly over rated, and lets face itcar amps are a ton cheaper. The system does quite well, it pounds pretty decent for what I have invested, will make cups jump sitting on the edge of the couch which is roughly 15 feet from the subs.

Anyways, love all your posts, not sure if I fit in with the rest of you, but I am running car audio as home theater, so just thought I'd share my ambitions with you all.

Happy Booming !

[White Lightning]

Welcome to SMD

Yep, there are a few of us that love home audio / video too ...

[MaxVolume]

Home audio is awesome, since cars are technically speaking one of the worst environments to try and create clean, powerful, cheap audio systems (not that it stops any of us ). I bet it's a blast to play RockBand in front of that setup

[Krakin]

I can either work on my truck or a perfect cube of a room.

I get the shaft either way, lol.

[Hometheaterbasshead]

Lol, me and the daughters love to rock out on some rock band, the neighbors don't appreciate it much though lol.

Thanks for the comment krakin, that's part of our issue, I am trying to decide how to do the man cave as a room, instead of a huge open space, its about 1200 sq ft, was thinking of putting up a few walls around the "entertainment" section, but still trying to play with it some, I built a couple fake walls around it to see how it interacts with sound. I mean I have done a lot of research with reverb off walls and corners, good thing about the building it is in as the walls are 2x6s stuffed with insulation, the man cave is on the 3 rd story, which firing the subs down was a good idea at first, but I really think I could benefit more by a different box set up. The subs firing down (obviously) sends most vibrations, as well as pressure down, the theory was to make the bass disperse through out the huge area, however the floor is not insulated, so I might imagine that is part of the issue, as It makes the 6X8 plate glass windows (on the first floor) flex worse than Steve's video on you tube in front of I guess his store. That's another thing that concerns me about my setup, the MX 400 boxes are not tuned properly for the TS 15s, enough air space, but the port is wrong, however this combination makes bass that is in a mid range say 40 - 60 hz rattle your eyeballs, which I like because the box with the 4 15s lacks in those frequencies, however tears it up on 40-30 hz. However if the sound gets lower in frequency the 4 15s in the box seem to fade out, or get sloppy in a sense, playing notes of about 25 hz, everything in the building is shaking, along with my clothes, but the sound seems sloppy. Was thinking of doing a room 10X12, to contain the sound pressure, instead of 1200 SQ Ft.

Any thoughts or suggestions on the room or box?

2 heads are better than one and would love an outsiders opinion

Thank you

[Krakin]

Lol, me and the daughters love to rock out on some rock band, the neighbors don't appreciate it much though lol.

Any thoughts or suggestions on the room or box?

2 heads are better than one and would love an outsiders opinion

Thank you

For the sub I think a Q would be great, try to go with a 4-way setup (tweeter, upper vocal, lower vocal, subwoofer/woofer).

As for a room, try to set up the room in a rectangle fashion and don't try to make the walls rounded. This is because even though rounding the walls "does" decrease room modes it does hell for trying to trying to map out room modes and trace sound delays.

The most important thing you can do besides picking good drivers/enclosures is making the room as optimal as it can possibly be. Some people will try to say that you can fix room affects by using the EQ, well, you can't. You can't EQ a room, lol.

Some of this may get into some heavy stuff, but check out Arthur Ludwig's website here: http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/Room_acoustics.html

[Hometheaterbasshead]

Not really sure what you meant by "For the sub I think a Q would be great, try to go with a 4-way setup (tweeter, upper vocal, lower vocal, subwoofer/woofer).

However after taking a few hours and reading the site you posted (great material btw thank you), doing some calculations from that site, have determined after rearranging the system some, we removed the legs off the box, and laid it flat into the corner. Funny thing about this was if you can see by the picture where the amp is mounted to the box, directly behind that is the port for the box, originally we faced the port into the corner on the left side, which made the bass bounce off two sides of a corner, but made the sweet spot in the opposite direction of where we wanted it, basically far left side, almost against the wall, and made the right side very sloppy. We decided to reverse the box, putting the port on the right side, and believe it or not made the bass come straight and center of the TV, they say bass in non directional to a sense, but subwoofer placement is about everything when it comes to home stereo. Laying the box on it's side firing into the corner as we have it now, increased almost 8 DB, and made the frequency response 10 times better, there are very few "dead zones" now, and will make your eyeballs vibrate.

After further reviews and calculations from his chart on that website, and existing walls, I have determined that I need to build a wall on the right side 8 ft from the subs to give more of a box like room, and should contain, and increase sound the way that I want it too.

I have also decided to get rid of the Pyle PQA3100, as it is way underated for what they claim, the 15 s in the MX 400 cabinets are barely moving, I have decided to swap it with a Boss Audio CER2600D, cheap amp and only need about 1600 Watts to drive the Audio Pipe 15 s in the MX 400 cabinets. So today have a trip planned to get some more 4 gauge wire, another gel cell battery, going to wire both gel cells together, and add another capacitor for the other amp. I just wanted an inexpensive amp for the 2 other 15 s, plus I am going to use the Pyle Pro PQA3100 to drive the rear surround, as they are not currently amped, and get drowned out fairly often.

I appreciate all the help, and will keep you all updated on how all this works out, overall I am very satisfied with the way it is all working out, although still debating on my box, some have suggested a T Line box, as far as research I have done, a transmission line box for 4 15s would be humongeous, not to mention very complicated, there is no plans for a box of that magnitude that I can find anywhere.

[Krakin]

look forward to it man!

[Nealon14]

wow epic set up man. I cant stand watching a movie or play games on a tv/pc without some form of surround sound. i have a 5.1 set up with 2 12's ported with everything on 1000 watts. Gets pretty loud for only 1k watts.

[Hometheaterbasshead]

So as an update, sorry didn't get to it sooner, but was busy with work, yesterday was my birthday, so decided I would spend some of it working on my excessive home stereo habit, it's an addiction, I don't think there is a "Home theater addicts" program though. Oh well, guess one day I will over dose on it. LOL

Took a trip down to the local boom shop, needed to get some more 4 gauge to wire up the additional Boss amp that I mentioned in the earlier post, as well as a couple bigger capacitors, was gonna go with 2 (1 Farad) caps to help with the addtional load of the amp. Low and behold they had new toys in. I seen something I had to have which I had to have which is a Cadence Cap50F, wow a distribution block, and a 50 farad capacitor, I have died and went to power supply heaven. Anyways got what I needed and brought everything home, and went to setting everything up. Wow I must tell you all, that if you have a chance to get ahold of one these beauties, I would highly suggest it, very nice setup, was rather impressed.

So all said and done, everything is hooked up, and good god does it shake the house, 6 15s running roughly 6000 watts, the Pyle DJ amp is now running the rear channels of the surround, added the other gel cel, voltage never dropped below roughly 12.2 Volts, driving really hard and low bass and 2 amps. Only thing left to do on this part is to redo the frankestein box into something I can stand to look at. I do believe I am going to go with spray on bed liner coating on the box, like I seen on a recent forum post.

I have learned a lot from doing this lil venture, and I think for the sake of having the cops knock on the door (again LOL), I am done adding to the system, love the sound, awesome on video games, and movies.

Hope you all enjoy checking out my setup, and HAPPY BOOMING!!