sealed CSS SDX12 SubDuction build

[rojo]

I built a Creative Sound Solutions SDX12 into a 3.0 cubic foot sealed enclosure. I bought:

• this clearance cabinet
• this sub and plate amp combo
• Poly-Fil, foam gasket tape, and other miscellanea.

Bob and Jim of Creative Sound Solutions were great! They tested the amp to make sure it wouldn't be DOA. We sent about a dozen emails back and forth discussing modding the amp for a built-in EQ, which they offered to do for me for $15. In the end, I opted to stick with the default resistor values. But Bob and Jim have been an absolute pleasure to deal with.

The driver is massive! The box looked like it was delivered by Ace Ventura, but at least its contents were packaged well enough to escape damage.

The cabinet looks better in person than expected. The color is richer than the Parts Express pictures show. It came well packaged and in perfect shape. It even came with a magnetic grill.

I had a local car audio shop cut holes for me in the baffles and glue them on for me. I recommend not using Gorilla Glue for this for anyone who might follow in my footsteps.

The glue expanded outside the seams like a muffin top over a waistband at Wal-Mart. Hindsight = 20/20 I guess. I covered the seam with some vinyl tape. It looks better, but I wouldn't call it a professional finish. Still, I can live with it.

It's good enough to sit behind my seats; and if I ever sell it, it'll be someone else's problem. The magnetic grill doesn't fit over the driver. I might have to use some washers to shim out the front baffle screws a bit. Maybe. I doubt I'll bother with the grill, to be honest.

The whole thing weighs over 100 lbs. I'm glad I assembled it in my home theater room. It's a struggle just to move the thing a few feet across the room.


Tom V. of Power Sound Audio graciously offered me advice and tips, and generally let me waste a generous amount of his time. Thanks Tom!

One bit of advice he gave me was to simulate an anechoic measurement by putting my mic very close to the driver.

These measurements are taken with the plate amp's gain at 50% and the sound card volume at 50%. No smoothing has been applied. SPL may not be accurate, as I don't own an SPL meter to calibrate REW properly.

Measurements with room gain and DSP correction / house curve will come later. My daughter is in bed right now. Initial impressions: the one sweep I did sounded great. I haven't put it in my system yet. Hopefully soon though!

 

[rojo]

I took a little vacation leave this afternoon so I could get my sub put into my system and get it corrected. Holy crap!

Well, first of all, here's in-room response, flattened with miniDSP with a house curve applied. As before, the SPL range is pretty much meaningless since I didn't calibrate it with REW. I have no doubt it'll play cleanly above 100dB with the appropriate signal.

It flattens up nicely with a bit of a house curve, and it has plenty of headroom. So how does it sound?

Well, Funkenspelunkin gave me a proper headache. It walks all over my Paradigm sub for subsonics, of course. I need no subsonic high-pass filter to keep the sealed CSS from bottoming out, even with sweeps in single digit Hz. But otherwise, I daresay I may never uncover the full potential of this sub for fear of blowing my other speakers.

For more audible sub bass, it blends very well with the rest of my system. It does what a sub is supposed to do without being rumbly or boomy -- not that any worthwhile subs are if they're in a proper enclosure and have been corrected for room response, though.

Janet Jackson "Come Back To Me" sounded very balanced while the sub maintained its authoritah. Maxwell "Sumthin' Sumthin'" gave me a kick in the rear. The opening music of "Shrek" sounded very symphonic. Vivadi "Winter - Allegro Non Molto" sounded like a proper string ensemble. The opening organ music in "Sweeney Todd" was satisfyingly full-bodied. The sub is as controlled as it ought to be with plenty of headroom. Listening critically, I hear no flaws.

It's a grown-ass subwoofer. It fills my 2300 cu. ft. room with plenty of throttle to spare. It has seemingly limitless low end. It's controlled and musical with a Q around 0.5. The cherry veneer gives it high WAF. And it was a good price at well less than $700, all inclusive. *shrug* It's a keeper.

 

[GO-NAD!]

The box looked like it was delivered by Ace Ventura

LOL! The boxes my drivers arrived in looked the same way. I couldn't believe they actually held together in transit. However, the foam inserts were substantial enough that there was no damage.


I'm not surprised that you got that performance from your sub. You have been a bit keener than me on the testing side of things. I still haven't tested mine in any meaningful way. But it really rocks the house when playing anything with substantial LFE.


Glad to hear you're happy with it.

 

[rojo]

I still haven't tested mine in any meaningful way.

Nah, man, you did your measurements more meaningfully than I did. I just basically did sweep, export to png, imgur. Yours actually took time and effort.

 

[GO-NAD!]

Nah, man, you did your measurements more meaningfully than I did. I just basically did sweep, export to png, imgur. Yours actually took time and effort.

Yeah, but I'm such a luddite, that the time and effort I expend could probably be considerably shortened by someone who really knows what they're doing.

I should spend some time this fall trying to dial them in better so that they integrate with the rest of the speakers better. Don't get me wrong - I really like how they perform, but I'm sure that with a bit more effort, I could even out the FR a bit more. And, it would be interesting to find out the full FR and SPL capabilities are. I need a few hours with nobody home but me, as subwoofer testing can be somewhat annoying for those who aren't involved, of which I'm sure you are well aware.

 

[rojo]

LOL yeah. One evening while I was doing some sub sweeps, my daughter got scared and thought I was being attacked by monsters. I told her the monsters didn't stand a chance.

 

[afterlife2]

Nice Rojo how are you liking it thus far?

 

[rojo]

I have yet to find anything my sub can't play. Granted, my TV room isn't exactly Grand Central Station in size. But it is so musical and smooth, and it will handle any song or any movie without effort.

 

[afterlife2]

Glad you're enjoying it. What bass line made you go DAMN from a CD?

 

[rojo]

Several, really. For punch, I really dig Mint Condition - From the Mint Factory. For full bodied symphonic I thoroughly enjoy John Williams & The Boston Pops - By Request. (Believe it or not, my favorite track is the NBC Nightly News theme.) But even older stuff that I'd previously discounted as sounding top-heavy and weak, stuff that I associate with transistor radios, dashboard speakers, and mullets, sounds better than I've ever heard it before -- stuff like Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers, and old school Stevie Wonder is always fun. I really like Bruno Mars, too -- Treasure, and Uptown Funk are a couple of my favorite tracks.

Then there's stuff that I would think would sound amazing, but just sounds poorly mixed now that I have a worthwhile system. I used to listen to jungle and DnB music -- Blu Mar Ten, Aquasky, Squarepusher... but stuff like that has lost its luster for me. I sometimes listen to the occasional remix (Aruna - Reason To Believe (Fractal Remix), for example) to give my subs a good and thorough workout, but tracks like that are so horribly compressed they're hard to enjoy except in brief spurts.

The most damn-worthy music source I know of isn't really music I listen to for enjoyment, though. I keep those tracks on my HTPC collecting dust and rotting bits, but they're never touched or added to any playlist.

Mostly, whenever I encounter a "damn" moment, it's in a television show or movie -- usually a suspenseful scene where the director has added a low tone that rumbles the room. The opening scene of Edge of Tomorrow was not so much "damn", as "wtf were they thinking?" But my subs still handled the track without breaking a sweat.

Just to be clear, my experiences chronicled here involve not only the SDX12, but also the Paradigm and the Bass Shakers. I never listen to one without the other -- except that I've got a subsonic filter on my Paradigm at about 20Hz, but the SDX12 and bass shakers are high passed at 10 IIRC.

By the way, you got some bass shakers didn't you? What do you think of them? I've got mine at a level for subtlety rather than theme park. I don't want it to be obvious that I have them.

 

[afterlife2]

Nice. I have not been watching too much action movies lately, so the shakers have not been in use. Maybe Fury(Brad Pitt) tommorow?! I gotta try the shakers with music I have not tried that yet. Maybe one day I can put together a speaker set together then try a sub. It must be fun and you must feel good when you get it to your liking. Enjoy it man.

 

[rojo]

You know what the best part is, is when guests come over and they're impressed with the sound. That's when I most feel my efforts have been worthwhile.

I had a bad cable box. Comcast tech was dispatched and paid a visit this afternoon. While we were waiting for the replacement box to download its program data, we geeked out.

I flipped over to the HTPC source and played the intro to Edge of Tomorrow for him. His expression just kept getting more and more elated with each change of the bass tone. We watched a couple of scenes from Tron: Legacy, and he just kept saying, "Holy..." Then he says, "You know, I do a lot of work in The Ridges (a local upscale neighborhood), and all these houses have home theater setups with the theater seats like yours and sound systems the owners have paid thousands of dollars to have professionally installed. None of them sound half as good as this."

Highlight of my week. Tomorrow, I'll realize he could just be a nice guy and was being friendly. But tonight, I'm enjoying the hell out of the compliments.