Epique E150HE-44 Small Cube Subwoofer Project

[tomzarbo]

Nice. I skimmed the thread and didn't find mention of a power source. Have you seen the little single channel sub amps Mr Bezos is selling?

I was thinking in the back of my head that I might give the Dayton DTA 2.1 amp a try and see if it had enough oomph. It certainly did with a sine wave signal generator as a source, even at 8 ohms. If I were to use it with my laptop, which has a decent output level, I suspect it just might work well enough.

That little nobsound amp looks nice, though! I see they have 100 and 300 watt versions. I like the subsonic filter on it too. Says the power supply is 240 volts, but reading some in the questions section, I see that it's switchable to both.

Seems like a neat little sub amp! Man, what they can't do these days!

Thanks for posting that.

TomZ

[tomzarbo]

I usually try and get everything buttoned up in my mind before applying a finish to a project, but I still hadn't quite decided on how to get a signal into this box.

Didn't really want to disturb the beautiful look of the veneer on the rear, even if it will likely be hidden most of the time....

So, I'm going to put this little terminal cup on the bottom of the enclosure and just plug the 'nanners into it that way. The line will just come out from underneath the cabinet which will be off the floor by 1 1/8" or so.




I didn't want the wire vibrating and making noise where it rests against the driver, so I made my own wire padding by using contact spray adhesive on a piece of flat poly material (like for doing upholstery with) and just wrapping the wire with it. Hey, I already had this stuff lying around so...




Necessity is the mother of invention... and cheapness is her second cousin.

TomZ

[Scarface1]

I wouldn't disturb the beautyfull look either Tom, looks like a nice solid expensive sub , the veneer is from aliexpress you said .. it looks really exclusive !

[tomzarbo]

Last loose end to tie up tonight...

In order to add the needed 120 grams of weight to the PR's I needed to use a bunch of the smaller weights I had, and I fear that will put the center of gravity too far from the center of the cone on the 'Z' axis. I found some larger washers at the hardware store and they did fit though the opening, but just barely.




I used a diamond disc on my Dremel to grind a groove around a larger hole size, then used pliers to bend/break the pieces off.




Now the larger washers fit with enough room to spare, and the weight is considerably closer to the spider.

I'm actually making progress on this, surprise, surprise. I hope to have it assembled and running by mid-next week depending on how many coats of poly it tells me it needs.


Any ideas for a name for this? I can't think of a thing.

TomZ

[Steve Lee]

Wild Side Sub

[djg]

Ten Cubed.

[Wolf]

Tom, zip-tie the leads to the legs of the driver's frame. This keeps them secure.

As to a name...

The largest earthquake in Ohio occurred on March 9, 1937, in western Ohio in the Shelby and Auglaize Counties area. This earthquake followed a smaller one on March 2, and is estimated to have had a magnitude of 5.4.

Since it's the 'Little Auglaize River' (North of Dayton), why not "Auglaize 5.4"? Suits the area for seismic activity, and the 5.4 is close to diameter as well as Richter.

Later,
Wolf

[tomzarbo]

Tom, zip-tie the leads to the legs of the driver's frame. This keeps them secure.

As to a name...

The largest earthquake in Ohio occurred on March 9, 1937, in western Ohio in the Shelby and Auglaize Counties area. This earthquake followed a smaller one on March 2, and is estimated to have had a magnitude of 5.4.

Since it's the 'Little Auglaize River' (North of Dayton), why not "Auglaize 5.4"? Suits the area for seismic activity, and the 5.4 is close to diameter as well as Richter.

Later,
Wolf

Man, that's a creative suggestion! And I like the history behind it. And the matchup with the quake rating and the size is cool too. Thanks!

I measured the front of the driver just now to see if there was anything that was exactly 5.4 inches... nope, but the surround to surround distance is only a speck over 4 inches! Such a little bugger.

Steve, Wild Side Sub... much better than I came up with for sure. It does have passives on the "Side"s also, so it works.

TomZ

[tomzarbo]

There's always something...

Well, I got this buttoned up today, and as usual, I have some bugs to sort out...





The driver is making a LOT of noise, non-musical stuff. If you watched my YT video (the last one I think) I pushed it pretty hard, though only with the Dayton DTA2.1 mini amp which should have been okay as it's under 100 watts. I have two of these Epique drivers, so I'll pull this one out and put the other untested unit in there to see if that clears up the noise issue. I suppose it's possible I goofed this one up by pushing it too far.

Also, one of the PR's is making a clicking sound that begins under mild excursion. Took it back out and flexed it fairly well and I'm not sure what that is... all the glue joints on the unit look sound. I did remove a bit of the back of the steel frame on them, but I can't imagine that did anything to it, I didn't let things get too hot. I felt the spider for areas where the glue joint is bad, and I can't find any obvious problems.

Double checked the weights on the PR and the screw is tight and nothing is rattling there that I can tell. Maybe I'll glue the washers together after I double-check final tuning to remove that as a possibility. I ordered another PR just in case.



Anyway, I do like how it came out overall. It can rattle the room a fair bit, it's just a little noisy at the moment.

Also, I probably should have placed the feet farther out -- you can't see them as well as I was hoping for -- but the brushed look on the ABS feet has a cool look that I will definitely use again... probably soon!





TomZ

[djg]

Careful, it may jump off that counter.

[Kevin K.]

Cool project Tom! I like the veneer, it's wild looking in a good way. And nice job on the veneer alignment from panel to panel, looks like it flows perfectly. The textured ABS feet will be a nice addition, like how you did that as well.

Did I miss it, what kind of glue did you use for the veneer since it had the fleece backing?

[tomzarbo]

Thanks Kevin.
I didn't mention it I don't think... but I didn't know how to glue it up since I had never heard of fleece backed veneer, so I just used Titebond 2 applied only to the box and clamped it for a few hours. It worked fine and there is no real line on the veneer to speak of, looks seamless to me. There were a lot of 'fuzzies' floating around after I trimmed the veneer with the router. Looked like little puffs of cotton, or those little white 'floaty' things that dandelions give off in summertime. I think I have 7 or 8 coats of poly on this.

[tomzarbo]

More to report:

I picked up one of those dedicated sub amps (I had been looking for something like that for awhile) that DJG mentioned up there /\ and it seems to be able to do a better job of driving this setup. I still heard some noise coming from the woofer, but only at higher volumes now. Still there, though. I suspect the crossover frequency knob (which is supposedly 40-300 Hz) allows me to dial out some of the upper bass that was causing this thing to sound funny, (The DTA2.1 amp that I was using was the older 'modded' design with a crossover frequency in the 50 Hz range if I remember) along with a higher wattage (and therefore cleaner) signal.

The PR noise is still there, but again, only at higher volumes. I did notice something strange though... although the two PR's are directly opposed, at a very high volume, it seems they were not operating in unison, because the cabinet was shaking pretty hard side-to-side. I'll try and get a video of that, but I've never seen that before. Possibly a small difference in added weight to each PR could cause this?

UPDATE: I just looked at the video footage of me putting this together, and both weights were 125.6 grams on the nose, so unless the built-in weights of the PR's were off, that's probably not it. I should weigh each PR without the washers though to see if the weight of both is off by any large amount.

Anyway, what I need to do is run some music through this and not just test tones, sine sweeps always show the worst in a subwoofer setup, maybe with music only and some speakers to sing along with it all will be well... or at least much better.

I could also reduce the weight on the PR's a bit to 100 grams each. I know 120 is getting near the limit of what these would likely be comfortable with, although their X-max figure likely wouldn't ever be breached. I'm looking at an F3 of 37 Hz with 120 grams... with only 100 grams it only raises to about 40 Hz, still fine with me.

Oh BTW, the sub was just placed on the counter for 'photographic' purposes, no signal was run through it in that potentially dangerous location.

TomZ

[silverD]

The sub looks great Tom! I'm wondering if the sub isn't getting enough clean power. The DTA 2.1 uses dual TPA3116D2 chips which are rated up to 26v (depending on the implementation). As I understand it, one TPA3116D2 is in stereo (BTL) for the main speakers and the other is in mono (PBTL) for 100W. The Nobsound G2 looks to use the same TPA3116D2 chip in mono (PBTL) as well, so you may not see an increase in output (gain settings and power supplies may differ). The compactness of these class D/chip amps is very convenient not to mention their efficiency. I'd recommend looking into an amp that utilizes a higher supply voltage for this inefficient / high xmax subwoofer. I think the TPA3255 chip family is a big step up from the TPA3116 and there seem to be many offerings available, even a Nobsound G2 Pro (I have no experience with). Lots of boards available if you want a bit of DIY too.

[djg]

My picture was just a suggestion, that he consider one of the many single channel units available. I think Tom bought something else.

[tomzarbo]

DJG is right... I ended up getting the Nobsound Pro G2 which is a "300 watt" mono amp that uses the TPA3255D2 chip.

With the included 32 volt, 5 amp PS I suspect in the neighborhood of 110-120 cleanish watts. It sounds like it's probably doing that or close to it, plus the sub frequency knob does its job well, at least second order, it works.

Nate, funny, but I had NO problem driving this sub to the limit with the DTA2.1 amp with hot inputs like from the Marlin P Jones Sine wave/signal generator. Bluetooth and line in from the computer just didn't have as much output. These little amps are really dependent on a good input signal to get the maximum out of them. I guess that's true of all amps, but the small ones tend to be maxed out all the time and maybe a lower input signal just shows up more with them.

Side note: this amp has a switch "PBTL/Sub" which will run it full range or sub-crossed. The full range setting on this driver didn't sound bad... not all "Subby" like lots of dedicated low-frequency drivers tend to. It needed some tweaking, but I can see this sounding nice as a Tiny Super-Woofer in the right project!

TomZ

[silverD]

Tom, thanks for clearing that up. It looks like the amp has a selectable gain switch (32/36dB) as well.

[DeZZar]

Looking great Tom. Love the veneer.

I just got back from 4 weeks in the states and snagged myself a couple of E180 units for a future sub build as we can't seem to get them in Aus just yet.

Keen to see your final thoughts on this one.

[tomzarbo]

Tom, thanks for clearing that up. It looks like the amp has a selectable gain switch (32/36dB) as well.

Yes, and it does help a bit. I have it set to high gain and it does a decent job of getting the laptop output to a decent level. Guess you'd turn it to the lower gain setting if you were running from a home CD player for instance. It's nice to have choices like that!

Looking great Tom. Love the veneer.

I just got back from 4 weeks in the states and snagged myself a couple of E180 units for a future sub build as we can't seem to get them in Aus just yet.

Keen to see your final thoughts on this one.

Thanks, it is 'different' looking for sure.

Nice on the E180's! After seeing how much air this little bugger can move, a pair of the larger ones should really be fun to see in action and hear.
Yeah, you guys in Australia really have it bad with regards to shipping, I don't know what I'd do if I lived there and couldn't get my PE stuff delivered fast and free!

I hope to have more to report on it by the weekend. I need to get it downstairs and play some music through it with a set of speakers.

TomZ

[tomzarbo]

I've got this project headed in the right direction again... and I can tell you that this is a WOW driver. Yes, you have to throw some serious power at it to get it do perform it's tricks, but holy cow!

This 5 1/2" subwoofer thinks it's a 10" woofer!




I was getting noise on the sub driver itself... but it turns out that it was just some light mechanical noise due to the EXTREME amount of excursion... it's not audible while it's playing full-range music. Flipping the switch from 'Sub' to 'PBTL' or full range while it was playing was enlightening, and it almost made me jump out of my skin as it was playing loudly when I first did this. I keep forgetting how un-loud bass is until you add in the rest of the music. No issue with the sub driver at all.

The other issue was the one PR was rattling. I pulled that one out, replaced it, and adjusted the weight down on both PR's from 120 grams to 100 grams. That did the trick, it's singing now. I guess 120 grams was just a bit too much for it. Going to 100 grams only hurt the bottom line a few Hz, so no big deal really. The cabinet rocking has stopped, it's sitting steady now. I'm going to try to get the video of this out in a week or less, but you'll be able to see the cabinet rocking back and forth, and not a little either, it was literally rocking! Funny stuff. All good now, though.

The surprise was that while playing full range music through it (not vocals yet) it sounds totally fine. Decent even, with no filter on it, even super-loud. Like I said, I haven't played James Taylor through it or anything with hard-to-produce vocals or mid frequencies, but with electric bass-heavy music, it sounds good, so I'm sure it will be able to be persuaded to make beautiful music with the right crossover components.

So this is a HUGE success in my book. I cannot believe how stupid loud this subwoofer gets. I have to tinker with it a lot more, and get it downstairs in my family room to really give it a run through, but I'm impressed even now, very impressed. Turning up the volume louder and louder actually yields louder and louder sound. It's like it has no limit.

Alright, enough gushing. I have a video to make and you'll soon be able to see it going berserk for yourself, but I'm sure you'll be impressed with the Epique 150's performance.

TomZ

[tomzarbo]

I finished the YouTube video for the construction phase of this subwoofer project.
https://youtu.be/e3U6EWnfuMg



I plan on making a second "Digging Deeper" video to go into more depth for guys like us who actually are interested in how this stuff works.

I'm (slowly) learning that most YT viewers just want to see more of the construction footage at a quicker pace as opposed to more of the 'guts' of how it all went together and what decisions had to be made and why... which is more of 'my' thing. Hey, I'm an old dog trying to learn a few new tricks... that doesn't happen fast, but I'm trying anyway.

Short summary... the driver is really worth the money. I think I would be happy with a mini-tower two-speaker setup with this driver as the woofer. It sounds decent full-range -- and I mean not even with any filter on it -- which surprised me a bit. And I'd like to know the X-mech figure out of curiosity, as at times I couldn't believe I wasn't sending this thing across the room.

TomZ

[Steve Lee]

Really well done production, editing and scripting, TomZ!
Quite impressive not to mention the little sub you built as well.

Definitely interested in the deep dive video forthcoming.

Thanks for producing this - I am seriously looking at biting the bullet on the expense now . . . darn it!

:D