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Post by flyingv74 on Jul 10, 2009 20:39:51 GMT -7
I have a rehearsal room for my band. This room has a closet that is about 3'-4' deep and 15'-20' wide. So in order to save some money and space, I decided to go IB for a subwoofer to provide support for the kick drum. So at the advice of a vendor, I went with an Eminence Alpha 15. It worked great........that is until the cone pulled apart from the voice coil! So I need help coming up with a woofer that will reinforce the kick drum in an IB configuration and not rip itself apart in the process. The woofers are being mounted to a 3/4" thick baffle that is then being mounted in one of the door opening of the closet. I appreciate any advice that you all can offer me. Thanks.
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Post by ThomasW on Jul 11, 2009 6:19:55 GMT -7
A single woofer won't come close to doing the job unless you buy one of those multi-thousand $$$$ Jackhammer things designed for car audio dB drag-racing. Buy 4-Fi IB318"s, mount them in a heavily braced baffle no less than 1.5" thick, 2" thick would be better. Line the closet with fiberglass insulation. ssl.perfora.net/www.ficaraudio.com/sess/utn;jsessionid=154a5890e19efe2/shopdata/0050_Speakers/0050_IB3/product_overview.shopscriptFi offers a nice discount when 4 driver are purchased at one time If someone's playing keyboards or synth, consider running a high pass filter set just below the lowest frequency being played. That will help protect the drivers. |
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Post by chrisbee on Jul 11, 2009 14:04:04 GMT -7
I hesitated to respond to this question earlier but after a search online found there there is much advice to be had on kick drum reinforcement.
The special nature of the kick drum suggests that it be selectively filtered to avoid poor sound quality and to allow it to cut through the mix of a live band performance.
Your problem with a single driver was its inability to match the sheer output required. Output is a function of displacement. Displacement is cone excursion times cone area. Go outside a single driver's performance envelope and it will rip itself to pieces. You can't increase a single driver's Xmax (cone excursion) by very much and still remain affordable. So you keep adding affordable drivers and eventually individual driver cone excursion falls to a safe limit as the total cone area increases instead.
In an IB you always need enough displacement to avoid driver self destruction. That means lots of cone area with enough stroke to reproduce the peak sound levels required. Which means lots of very big, fairly long throw drivers. In every day terms you need the IB subwoofer equivalent of a big V8. Just to handle the enormous loads and to have the bottom end power to survive the challenge unscathed.
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Post by flyingv74 on Jul 11, 2009 22:02:41 GMT -7
I appreciate you guys chiming in a sharing info with me. One thing that I forgot to mention is that I was powering the Eminence woofer with a 400W Peavey with a 40Hz HPF engaged. When the woofer failed I was experimenting with running it without any sort of LPF. So perhaps that was a mistake. The real problem that find myself having is that I am a guitar player and a live PA sound guy and somewhat of a cheapskate! So when I see $169 for a driver that has a sensitivity in the mid 80's, I have a tough time swallowing that. And I have guitar gear that is calling my name! So I am trying to minimize my investment on this IB setup for the kick drum. I don't need to get down to 20Hz for the kick to sound good. I need roughly 40Hz-80Hz to get a nice little thump. Are there any less expensive woofers that you would recommend? Thanks.
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