Obsidian Audio???????????

[Bostons94Vert]

I came across a new company that is making some incredible looking subs for cheap money and figured i would spread the word on here. Does anyone have any experience with them? Im looking into a pair of the 15s and from what i can find online they are supposed to be a great bang for the buck but if one of the audio specialists on here could take a look at the specs and give me an opinion on them i would appreciate it

 

Heres the link

http://obsidiancaraudio.com/index.php?id=6

[xtremerevolution]

They seem alright. Decent general purpose/SPL oriented subs. Definitely not SQ subs, but they'll blow away anything made by Kicker or the like. I'd take one over anything you can find retail, but my personal preference is more on the sound quality side of things.

 

Sensitivity is a bit on the low side, but not as bad as others I've seen. The price is indeed great for that type of sub. Good value at the least.

 

My personal gripe is the high moving mass. Definitely puts them more in the "made to be abused/general SPL" category.

 

If you're looking for a daily pounding sub in that price range, it will be hard to beat these. If you're looking for a musical SQ sub, look elsewhere.

[Garrett Powered]

I can't believe I wasted my time looking at those. obviously not worth $15 at a pawn shop.

[xtremerevolution]

I can't believe I wasted my time looking at those. obviously not worth $15 at a pawn shop.

 

I can assure you that you won't be finding any cast aluminum framed subwoofers with stitched surrounds and a respectable sized double-stack magnet motor for $15 or at a pawn shop. Those subwoofers are worth every dollar.

[Garrett Powered]

I am not sure what they are valued at. as far as I am concerned they have no cash value

[Bostons94Vert]

thanks for looking into them xtreme...I am honestly curious as to how they sound for being so cheap...i was thinking 2 15s for the price but i dont think i have the space in the cutty. Im thinking I have about 5cf to play with and my RF T1500BD to run them do you think they should get pretty loud? I found a couple competitions that are in my neighborhood and a loud cutty vert is just cool to me i guess...Garrett i know you have been around a lot longer but i have to say that you are way to biased to comment on an online forum sometimes...i mean no disrespect im just saying

[xtremerevolution]

thanks for looking into them xtreme...I am honestly curious as to how they sound for being so cheap...i was thinking 2 15s for the price but i dont think i have the space in the cutty. Im thinking I have about 5cf to play with and my RF T1500BD to run them do you think they should get pretty loud? I found a couple competitions that are in my neighborhood and a loud cutty vert is just cool to me i guess...Garrett i know you have been around a lot longer but i have to say that you are way to biased to comment on an online forum sometimes...i mean no disrespect im just saying

 

Well, they'll get loud. Whenever you have that much cone area, it will get loud no matter what, and if they're right about them being underrated, then there's no doubt about it. The thing that really gets me as I mentioned earlier is the moving mass. It's simply way too high to be accurate, but for the price, what else would you want, lol. I've seen a lot of similar companies like this one sell products, and the products are generally pretty high quality, but they are often geared toward the masses that want as close to headache inducing raw SPL as possible.

 

I can model these for you if you'd like, both sealed and ported. Two 15s definitely won't fit. Keep in mind that recommendations for box sizes will generally be too small for sound quality and will carry some compromises. Most of the boxes I design for car audio end up being larger than what the manufacturer recommends, but they also end up sounding much better.

 

Let me know exactly what dimensions you have to work with (keep in mind how big of a box you can physically fit through the trunk opening here), and I can figure out how a couple of these would sound with regard to frequency response.

[runt]

You know what. For once I totally agree with Xtreme here. He posted at least a decent review of them and naturally Garrett has to argue with EVERYTHING Xtreme says. So...

 

Garrett...STOP TROLLING. That is exactly what you did in this thread.

 

Cleaning this up. Another instance of trolling (from either of you guys in this section) and it's at minimum a 3 day ban.

[xtremerevolution]

Impedance sweeps are not useless as each amplifier is not equally adept at driving low resistance loads. You might not be able to notice low-bass distortion, but there are others who can. In fact, I'd wager most people are able to.

 

 

[/color]

First off, since you can tell what they will sound like by looking at Thiele and Small parameters, you should have no problem realizing that with a QTS of .55 and .6 those drivers have no business being in a ported box anyway. Also you should be well aware that manafacturer T/S params should be checked anyway as they rarely match what the buyer gets when the put it in a test box and measure. And yes, group delay is worse, but it doesn't mean we can entirely discount the distortion figures of the driver.

 

 

[/b]

My only response is I will let the moderators decide how far to let your ad hominem attacks go.

 

 

 

 

Impedance sweeps are useless. Amplifier impedance ratings are not absolutely strict and set in stone. Chances are, if an amplifier is rated for a 4 ohm load, it will take a 3.3 ohm load without a problem. I work with home theater speakers on a daily basis, so don't lecture me here. I know perfectly well how many "8 ohm" speakers actually measure in the mid-6 ohm range on a WT3 woofer tester.

 

I might not be able to notice distortion? Don't insult my intelligence and experience. When you start designing home theater speakers on your own from scratch, measuring each individual driver on a nonechoic baffle and taking your own distortion, frequency response, and phase measurements, you can come back and tell me I can't hear distortion in subwoofers, but until then, don't assume I have no idea what distortion sounds like.

 

A Qts of .55 shouldn't go in a ported box? Funny, I don't recall that being a horrible Qts for a ported box. Maybe when you've designed a few home theater speakers and modeled over 500 car subwoofers, you might learn how important it is to actually model a subwoofer before you open your mouth. Every person who built a box that I designed came back and said it sounded exactly as I modeled and predicted.

 

Since you didn't care to actually back up your statements with some proof, I've taken the time to design a quick box for the 12" sub to prove my point. I even applied the cabin pressurization gain and boundary loading simulation for you (black line) to give you an approximate in-cab frequency response:

 

The model is at 1.51 cubic feet net, with two 3" round ports (or equivalent area slot port) at ~27.5 inches in length for a tuning of ~29 hz. I don't know what school of audio you studied, but this a pretty respectable frequency response.

 

 

Excursion and vent velocity is modeled without fill or any high pass/subsonic filter, at 600W. Looks pretty good to me here too. Vent velocity is a bit on the high side, but I don't think it will be a problem if using double flared precision ports.

 

The above demonstrates that this sub would sound just fine in a vented box. Group delay is a bit high near the tuning frequency, but what else would one expect from a ported box? I doubt you'll hear it very well at 30hz anyway, and if you do and are concerned about it, perhaps you shouldn't be looking at $138 12" subwoofers anyway.

 

The truth is we can in fact discount the distortion characteristics of the driver. Why? Because it's a $140 12" driver (read: budget) that's designed to be abused and get loud, and that's all the OP is wanting out of it. I made that adequately clear in my initial response. If we were talking about an SQ sub with a significantly higher cost, perhaps we could send it to someone with a Klippel for some further analysis, as if even 1% of the population would know how to interpret the information. Even with regard to distortion, if you've spent any amount of time with customers, you'd find that the absolute lowest distortion subwoofers with faraday rings, underhung motors, and flat BL curves, you might find that some may consider such subs lifeless, dry, and raw, instead of warm and musical.

 

Remember the target market. Budget SPL.

 

Few people have a woofer tester, let alone be able to accurately measure Vas. We go by what the manufacturer provides us with regard to T/S parameters because that's what we have. These generally will not vary by any consequential amount with regard to the sound you get when building a particular box. I personally test and measure all of my home theater speakers simply because I'm not going to spend $300 on drivers and crossover parts without knowing exactly how they measure, but I have yet to run into an instance where the T/S parameters of a given subwoofer needed to be measured when the manufacturer's specifications were available.

 

I have a pair of very rare and special Focal 8" subwoofers being shipped out to me within the next two weeks for testing and box design, utilizing their multiferrite motor and a limited production of woven glass and carbon fiber cones; a bit of a separation from their polyglass cones. I have people placing orders for subwoofer boxes from across the country and as far as Australia. I can assure you that I'm not here giving advice simply to be argued with.

 

If I can expect to be argued with further on these topics, I can assure you my advice and box design services on this site will become very scarce. But hey, I'm sure that's no big deal. Seems like you'd be quite ready and willing to take my place. I've been here long enough to recognize a common trend on this site. Out with the old, in with the new[bies]. At 7,200 posts, I must be exhausting my usefulness.

 

To the OP: I will send you my contact information via PM should you have any further questions. Despite being the only person who has actually designed you a box for this sub, chances are this post will get deleted like the rest.

Edited May 29, 2012 by xtremerevolution

[xtremerevolution]

relax my friend. nobody is going to delete your posts.

 

I don't think anyone is dissing you either. simply you have not tested the sub, only modeled it

 

They disappear pretty often, especially when it comes to car audio.

 

That's like saying, I can't tell you if a car will be fast if I don't drive it. I modeled it off of the specifications that someone else tested and was able to come to the conclusion based on the motor strength and moving mass that it would not be a very accurate or tight sounding sub, but that it had enough power handling capability to get reasonably loud. You act as though modeling is absolutely useless, when in fact I have measured the in-cab response with a measurement microphone on a number of occasions. How do you think I get to the point where I can guarantee someone that what I model for them is almost exactly what it will sound like? Because I've proven that I can.

 

Find a single thing I said that you could legitimately argue with. Seriously, hit me. I said the following:

 

Low sensitivity

SPL oriented

Made to be abused, not for SQ

Low price

 

What more is there to tell? It's an inexpensive SPL oriented sub with a heavy moving mass, designed to take abuse and handle lots of power for every kid on the block who will try to drive it with cheap amp and clip it to oblivion. Where exactly do you think they get all of that moving mass?

 

I've heard and designed boxes for more subs than most people on this board will ever see in their lifetime. After the first couple of hundred, you start to get a damn good idea of what a subwoofer will sound like and what makes one sound different from another. In my entire car audio experience, I have yet to see a single person model a sub box and accurately predict and model cabin pressurization gain and boundary loading as I've been doing.

 

I'm thoroughly fed up with being questioned about every thing I say about car audio. Seems I can't make a single recommendation or give a single piece of advice without someone crying foul. Some of this shit is seriously elementary to me and shouldn't even be brought up for debate. By the time the moderators step in and lock up every other thread and threaten to ban everyone involved, I start to ask myself why the hell I'm even here anymore. I think I've asked myself that question for the last time. Seriously not worth it anymore.

[runt]

The posts that were removed before we're the posts between you and Garett. If they were relevant to the OPs post I'd have left them. Did I delete them some what hastly? Yeah I'm sure that I did, I'll admit it. But what do you think I'm going to do when ALL of the relevant stuff in the thread is/was just bickering between Xtreme and Garrett? Also some of your posts disappear because you are also guilty of flaming on other members:

 

If you care actually contribute something instead of trolling like Garrett Powered did, feel free to provide some input that the OP can actually use or demonstrate why you disagree with my own statements, but don't just come in here questioning me just for the sake of questioning me.

 

Now. He didn't come in here with graphs and all kinds of other hard data that you would post but IMO he did add to the conversation.

 

And I'm sorry. I have tried "picking sides" and no matter what I do it never seems to make a difference or make you happy. The mods can not stop other users from asking you questions. I think that both parties need to just relax a little bit. I'm not sure how you can get fed up with questions about car audio. You seem pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. It's EVERYONES nature to feel that they are the one who is correct and it is something we all have to deal with.

Edited May 29, 2012 by runt
Added stuff.

[White93z34]

I'll sort this out later. No, I'm not picking sides. I'll have to go through this post by post and figure whos in the wrong here. This thread was already cleaned up once and yet it got shit up again.

 

This has to be at least the 5th Car Audio thread that has gone down in flames over a Xtreme/Garret war of some sort... is the solution to kick both of you out of this sub-forum? I'd like to think not, but it's tempting. I do not see what is so hard about not being stupid argumentative. Say your peace and leave it alone. Geeze.