JL 12W6V3 DIY HOME DRIVER HELP (I'M NEW)

L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
2 JL 12W6V3 Fell in my lap and id like to make a sub for my home audio setup.

Where do i start?

Its Dual 4ohm voice coils so id need an amp that will drive 500 rms at 2ohms. I was told plate amps were out the question. I was looking at the inuke but beyond just looking im lost at what will actually work.

Sealed or ported. (space vs SQ)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

or i could just sell em and buy something off the shelf ( a little boring)
 
Last edited:
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Those drivers are for car audio and will make poor home audio subs. JL have always been strong in the car market. Now they have gone pretty much exclusively to the car market.

They are high Q drivers, so for home audio will not be tight. In addition they do not play particularly low. They do not reach below 31 Hz ported.

They are not worth the effort of a build for home audio. I would sell them and buy drivers more suited to home audio.
 
L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
Thanks for the heads up. I thought for sure I'd be able to utilize these for a DIY. Well now where do I start? Lol I'll probably get like 600 for them both. What can I do with that budget?

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lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Look at various builds in this diy subforum for ideas on what drivers work with what boxes unless you want to use software like winisd or similar to design your own box for a given driver and its T/S parameters. Also check out the diy subforum at avsforum.com and diyaudio.com etc. Parts-express.com sells many popular Dayton drivers used in diy builds.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
For $600.00 you can do a good DIY build.

Do you have any size constraints?

I have quite a few designs on my web site ready to be the basis of a build.
 
L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
For $600.00 you can do a good DIY build.

Do you have any size constraints?

I have quite a few designs on my web site ready to be the basis of a build.
Not really. I'd say I'd like to keep it against a back wall that's why I was considering a sealed enclosure but I really like the idea of a passive radiator. 12" driver/ 15" radiator. Be my first build so I'm not sure if that'll be too advanced

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NINaudio

NINaudio

Audioholic Samurai
Are your subs already in boxes? If you so, you may want to try an upgrade path like what I'm in the process of doing. I started with a Def Tech SC4000 with an 8" driver and 2 8" passive radiators. I wasn't happy with that and decided to use an old car sub I had sitting in my attic as a stop gap until I could build something better. I bought a crown pro amp for about $400 that I could use with the 12" IDMax and also use with my future plans. I'm now waiting on the final parts for my first 18" sealed build to arrive.
 
speakerman39

speakerman39

Audioholic Overlord
Are your subs already in boxes? If you so, you may want to try an upgrade path like what I'm in the process of doing. I started with a Def Tech SC4000 with an 8" driver and 2 8" passive radiators. I wasn't happy with that and decided to use an old car sub I had sitting in my attic as a stop gap until I could build something better. I bought a crown pro amp for about $400 that I could use with the 12" IDMax and also use with my future plans. I'm now waiting on the final parts for my first 18" sealed build to arrive.
We used to carry Image Dynamic subs. Never really sold many, but the ones that we did sounded pretty darn good. Not even sure if they are still around. Those were the days.....LOL!!!!! :):):)


Cheers,

Phil
 
NINaudio

NINaudio

Audioholic Samurai
We used to carry Image Dynamic subs. Never really sold many, but the ones that we did sounded pretty darn good. Not even sure if they are still around. Those were the days.....LOL!!!!! :):):)


Cheers,

Phil
Mine is probably a good 12 years old and it's working wonderfully for me right now. I may have to put it in my car when I get the 18" built. :D
 
L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
Are your subs already in boxes? If you so, you may want to try an upgrade path like what I'm in the process of doing. I started with a Def Tech SC4000 with an 8" driver and 2 8" passive radiators. I wasn't happy with that and decided to use an old car sub I had sitting in my attic as a stop gap until I could build something better. I bought a crown pro amp for about $400 that I could use with the 12" IDMax and also use with my future plans. I'm now waiting on the final parts for my first 18" sealed build to arrive.
This is what I have. Ive recently put it up for sale. I'd prefer a home audio sub vs car audio if the audio quality will be better. I though have radiators would add to the low end but starting from scratch looks like the best bet


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NINaudio

NINaudio

Audioholic Samurai
If you're going to go down the build your own route anyway, why not get an amp to power that up and see if you like it? The Crown XLS gen 2 series are super quiet and will have plenty of power for whatever you want to use it with in the future.
 
annunaki

annunaki

Moderator
Those drivers are for car audio and will make poor home audio subs. JL have always been strong in the car market. Now they have gone pretty much exclusively to the car market.

They are high Q drivers, so for home audio will not be tight. In addition they do not play particularly low. They do not reach below 31 Hz ported.

They are not worth the effort of a build for home audio. I would sell them and buy drivers more suited to home audio.
No offense but with first hand experience on their drivers in the home I will say you are wrong.

They can do well with the right alignment and it takes a little tweaking in the model.
 
annunaki

annunaki

Moderator
I will model up an enclosure for you, probably tomorrow for that driver and let you know what I can come up with.
 
L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
I will model up an enclosure for you, probably tomorrow for that driver and let you know what I can come up with.
So if I use passive radiators would that help get the unit below 31 hz. These subs hit hard but I want that rumble in my movies along with the crisp bass for my music. Don't need it to be musical. I listen to electronic music, reggae, hip hop, and Latin music.

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speakerman39

speakerman39

Audioholic Overlord
So if I use passive radiators would that help get the unit below 31 hz. These subs hit hard but I want that rumble in my movies along with the crisp bass for my music. Don't need it to be musical. I listen to electronic music, reggae, hip hop, and Latin music.

Sent from my SM-N950U1 using Tapatalk
Passive radiators function just like a port. They are not active. However, they can be designed so that they can help with extension. More specifically, they allow the enclosure to be smaller w/similar output when compared to a ported (larger) enclosure ALL things being equal. :):):)


Cheers,

Phil
 
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speakerman39

speakerman39

Audioholic Overlord
If the OP wants to use a car audio subs for his HT needs, then I recommend the 12" Infinity Kappa Perfect and/or the 12" Diamond Audio D3 which have been employed w/great success. Of course, the Perfects are no longer being made. As such, the OP may can find a used one on ebay. I do believe that the Diamond D3 is still being made. If not, they should be fairly easy to find. These are the two that comes to mind. Just thought that I would add my .02 here given I have been in the car audio business for many years.

I have very little direct experience w/JL subs. But, we did have a TC Sounds Rep come in one day claiming that their subs were better than the W7's. The literature sure looked impressive. Dealer cost was ridiculous though so the boss man said no way. So, the OP may want to research the sub line from TC Sounds. Just saying........


Cheers,

Phil
 
Last edited:
L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
If the OP wants to use a car audio sub for his HT needs, then I reccomend the 12" Infinity Kappa Perfect and/or the 12" Diamond Audio D3 which have been employed w/great success. Of course, the Perfects are no longer being made. As such, the OP may can find a used one on ebay. I do believe that the Diamond D3 is still being made. If not, they should be fairly easy to find. These are the two that comes to mind. Just thought that I would add my .02 here given I have been in the car audio business for many years.

I have very little experience w/JL subs. But, we did have a TC Sounds Rep come in one day claiming that their subs were better than the W7's. The literature sure looked impressive. Dealer cost was ridiculous so the boss man said no way. So, the OP may want to research the sub line from TC Sounds. Just saying........


Cheers,

Phil
I don't want to use car audio subs I just have 2 $500 car audio subs I have no use for in a car and a recently gotten subwoofer in my home audio setup.

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TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Well, I have been playing with models of that driver.

Clearly this is a car audio driver. For a car it would be a good driver. However there is an alignment that would make it be an acceptable home audio sub driver.

First the Thiel Small parameters are strongly biased towards a sealed enclosure. However The F3 point is high at 50 Hz, and the driver does not have the excursion to really support the equalization required for decent spl in an average or larger domestic space. In a car with cabin gain a small sealed box would work very well.

A ported enclosure is not practical. Although you can get bass extension on a model, the length of port required to keep vent air velocity acceptable is impractically long. So a ported enclosure will not work.

However I have modeled an acceptable sub using a passive radiator. This one.

The model is attached to this post.

A 2.5 cu ft inside volume enclosure with the above passive radiator gives an F3 of 29 Hz. Not great but OK. However as with passive radiator designs the bass rolls off like a brick wall below F3 at 29 Hz.

The are some significant caveats however.

Again, and this is the case with passive radiator designs for high Q drivers, the driver explosively decouples from the box below tuning, in this case 29 Hz.

The result of this is that the excursion of both driver and passive radiator rise to mechanically damaging levels astronomically fast. This means that although the drivers are 600 watt, their power drive needs to be limited to 300 watts for this alignment, otherwise driver damage will occur.

Associated with all this driver and radiator become 180 degrees out of phase below tuning and cancel each other. This can be seen in the group delay.

Of course this out of phase condition is the reason why the response falls off like a brick wall below and f3 and cone excursion of driver and radiator increase to mechanically damaging levels.

Because of this inclusion of a high pass filter at 25 Hz at least 12 db per octave and preferably 24 db per octave at 25 Hz would be mandatory.

So while these drivers could be used for domestic subs, the design is not simple for a first time builder.

There are reasonably priced sub drivers that would be a less complex build and also offer more bass extension.
 

Attachments

L

Lebron1775

Enthusiast
Well, I have been playing with models of that driver.

Clearly this is a car audio driver. For a car it would be a good driver. However there is an alignment that would make it be an acceptable home audio sub driver.

First the Thiel Small parameters are strongly biased towards a sealed enclosure. However The F3 point is high at 50 Hz, and the driver does not have the excursion to really support the equalization required for decent spl in an average or larger domestic space. In a car with cabin gain a small sealed box would work very well.

A ported enclosure is not practical. Although you can get bass extension on a model, the length of port required to keep vent air velocity acceptable is impractically long. So a ported enclosure will not work.

However I have modeled an acceptable sub using a passive radiator. This one.

The model is attached to this post.

A 2.5 cu ft inside volume enclosure with the above passive radiator gives an F3 of 29 Hz. Not great but OK. However as with passive radiator designs the bass rolls off like a brick wall below F3 at 29 Hz.

The are some significant caveats however.

Again, and this is the case with passive radiator designs for high Q drivers, the driver explosively decouples from the box below tuning, in this case 29 Hz.

The result of this is that the excursion of both driver and passive radiator rise to mechanically damaging levels astronomically fast. This means that although the drivers are 600 watt, their power drive needs to be limited to 300 watts for this alignment, otherwise driver damage will occur.

Associated with all this driver and radiator become 180 degrees out of phase below tuning and cancel each other. This can be seen in the group delay.

Of course this out of phase condition is the reason why the response falls off like a brick wall below and f3 and cone excursion of driver and radiator increase to mechanically damaging levels.

Because of this inclusion of a high pass filter at 25 Hz at least 12 db per octave and preferably 24 db per octave at 25 Hz would be mandatory.

So while these drivers could be used for domestic subs, the design is not simple for a first time builder.

There are reasonably priced sub drivers that would be a less complex build and also offer more bass extension.
Will thank you for the info. In going to go ahead and try and sell these. Once I do I'll look into a build or purchase. Thanks for all the help Gents! It's been a pleasure and though a lot went right over my head I did also learn a few things.

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annunaki

annunaki

Moderator
Overall, I see no reason why you need to buy a new sub. I do see that you would be most benefited by purchasing some passive radiators (though it could be done for under $130). The W6v3 series drivers are some of the most linear sub drivers out (looking at BL and KMS curves). They are capable of dynamic and accurate response. Granted there are other woofers that can match performance at a lower price, however they give up a little bit in linearity and thermal compression in some areas. Is that noticeable for most people? Highly debatable. In general they are more well suited to car audio environments but they can be used in the home with high levels of success.

I Modeled the 12W6v3-D4 with the parameters found here: http://www.jlaudio.com/12w6v3-d4-car-audio-w6v3-subwoofer-drivers-92141

I used WinISD for all modeling. All of my models assume the driver(s) and/or passive radiators stay within excursion limits and that any vented enclosures stay at or below 17m/s vent velocity. All models also assume 600w input power with an 80hz 2nd order low pass filter and a 18hz 2nd order infrasonic (high pass) filter applied.

First I ran the sim using the program recommended enclosure which was a 3.3 ft^3 vented enclosure tuned to 22hz. Overall this provided a very smooth response curve and a -3db point at 21.8hz. The downfall however is keeping the vent velocity in check which would require a huge vent (2.375" x 16" x 58") (as TLS Guy indicated and what is pretty typical for JL drivers). That does not mean you should give up hope however.

12W6v3 vented.jpg


Because of the venting issue, I opted to look at the passive radiator route which yields nearly the same exact response curve (steeper rolloff -24db/oct than vented) in a similarly sized enclosure, 3.4 ft^3 with a net tuning frequency of 21.88hz. The -3db point is 20.8hz with a fairly flat curve out to 85hz with the filters provided. In order to achieve that performance I modeled with two of these passive radiators below with 400g added mass.
https://www.amazon.com/Earthquake-Sound-SLAPS-M12-Radiator-Subwoofer/dp/B00K1GV8RM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1515982653&sr=8-2&keywords=earthquake+passive+radiator

If I were to do this driver, I would go that route (passive radiators) as it would yield very good performance in-room with 500-600 watts of power for the vast majority of applications. As you can see from the graph +111db performance is possible (anechoic) with 600 watts in this alignment. Obviously you don't need all of that all the time but it would provide a high level of dynamic capability in a home theater setup.

12W6v3 Dual Earthquake passives 400g.jpg
 
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