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Close to half the vibration damping/noise mitigation threads on other forums are debates about using asphalt based materials as a vibration damper. I’ve spent way too much time during the last 5 years typing and re-typing responses to these questions. Let’s keep it in one place to reduce litter and redundancy. This topic was my introduction to aftermarket “sound deadening”. I had a noisy car, wanted to quiet it down and started to do research. This was 2005. Several respected “authorities” were vocal advocates for asphalt. Part of this came from the belief that products like Dynamat Xtreme were part of a conspiracy to fleece consumers. Part of it was the often repeated “fact” that roofing materials and vibration dampers sold specifically for aftermarket automotive use were exactly the same thing. One cost pennies per ft² and the other dollars so it was worth investigating. Some of you may remember that Sound Deadener Showdown used to be a testing and review site. Since I wasn’t able to find any conclusive answers on the forums, I decided to buy small quantities of every product I could. Two things were immediately apparent: Nobody had ever had their hands on all of these products at the same time or they would have seen the obvious differences. The people claiming that Dynamat Xtreme and roofing materials were exactly the same thing didn’t know what they were talking about. I discovered a few other things very quickly. Many sellers were making outrageous claims. Some were wildly overstating obvious physical characteristics like thickness and mass/area. Others were either claiming outright that their asphalt products were butyl or were using intentionally deceptive descriptions like “rubberized compound” to describe their adhesive layer. Nobody seemed to be drawing the right conclusion from sellers’ attempts to hide the fact that they were selling asphalt. For several years the argument was about durability. Asphalt had an unhappy tendency to melt or fall off. At the time, there were no reports of butyl adhesive failure – that had to wait a few years until one seller decided to re-purpose some low quality butyl roofing material. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this was happening. All of these materials are asphalt with some sort of rubber added to increase heat tolerance. The generally accepted melting point for these compounds is 180°F. That seemed high enough for use in a vehicle, so what was going on? Our perception of the heat these products are subjected to was wrong. We thought in terms of air temperature inside the vehicle, maybe 140°F-150°F? It turns out things are very different at the sheet metal. Park a car in the sun during the summer, south of the Mason-Dixon line and you can easily get to 180°F+. That explains immediate failures in hot climates. An insidious part of this problem is that many failures were reported during the second or third summer, many in fairly mild regions. The explanation was pretty simple. The rubber added to asphalt deteriorates over time when exposed to temperatures much lower than those required to melt the fresh material. As the rubber deteriorates, the melting temperature drops. Suddenly it doesn’t take much heat anymore. The durability question has been answered to my satisfaction. Many high profile asphalt devotees, including some who went to almost insane extremes to install the material “properly” have had their installations fail over the years. A few of the brave ones have come forward and made their results public. The pennies vs. dollars argument still nags. What if you plan to junk your vehicle after a few years (worse, plan to trade it in and don’t care what problem you are passing on)? Is asphalt a reasonable choice when durability isn’t a factor? Nope. There are two main reasons people believe they can substitute asphalt roofing materials for CLDs: They look alike – shiny on one side, black and gooey on the other. They don’t understand how a constrained layer vibration damper works. See: Caddy Shack, swimming pool scene for all you need to know about point 1. Point 2 needs more consideration. I used to believe that vibration dampers work by adding mass to a panel and lowering its resonant frequency below the audible range. This is completely wrong. They work through a fairly complex sequence of events that occur in the adhesive layer and between the adhesive layer and the constraining layer and substrate. I won’t go into the details here, please see: Vibration Damping By Ahid D. Nashif, David I. G. Jones, John Phillips Henderson The important point is that everything depends on the material property viscoelasticity. Basically this describes something that can be deformed and will then return to its original shape more slowly than it was deformed. The strains created during these events account for the conversion of vibration to heat that we’ve all heard about. Butyl adhesives formulated for vibration damping are viscoelastic. Asphalt isn’t – it doesn’t need to be to seal a roof. Asphalt adds mass to a panel. It may stiffen the panel, but since stiffening raises resonant frequency, the two mechanisms are offsetting and reduce effectiveness even further. Those who claim to have used it and had good results aren’t giving you the full picture. These claims can be better stated as: I used asphalt. It was better than nothing. I haven’t used a proper purpose designed vibration damper so I have no basis for comparison. It hasn’t failed yet. Sometimes the endorsement is explicitly stated: I used asphalt and it hasn’t fallen off. Not falling off is a pathetically low standard of performance. Testing I’ve done has convinced me that it takes between 6 and 10 times as much asphalt to achieve something approaching the same result you will get with a real vibration damper. This puts the pennies/dollars question on its head. Add the durability concerns and the huge amount of extra work required and the answer is pretty obvious. I’m sure some will want to argue the points I’ve made here. If that’s you, please stay away from “I used it and it worked for me”. That’s how we got into trouble in the first place and doesn’t make any more sense than concluding that cigarettes are good for you because your grandfather smoked a pack a day and lived to be 90. If you want to go there, please show us some evidence.

Lets see how many likes we can get on this layout. We want to offer some more "in style" colors, we are thinking dark purple, sapphire blue and black. Here is the purple design. Also, if you are at SBN, hunt us down, you will get a free shirt while supplies last "Like" (right hand side of post) this post if you like the design!

Thanks to all that have chimed in on this one. I agree that our lead times have been excessive and are truly sorry for the delays. Just when we dig out of one delay we get right back into another. The current issues are multiple and are being worked through as rapidly as possible. Customers are currently being contacted about delays via phone (or email if messages are left). Now to address the overall issues: Adding employees... 2 new ones over the past month. Neither of which are office staff and are not currently building drivers. It is impossible to find skilled staff that can simply sit down and a build table and go. New staff is handling other aspects of production besides building drivers. They are already alleviating some back up. Need more machines... we just purchased another hydrolathe and will be receiving it later next week. While not an instant cure, it will go onto the shop floor and help our other massively overburdened hydrolathe once it is set up and dialed in. (These are the task specific lathes that run the profiles of all back plates and top plates) Our current one runs non-stop and is backed up. Need more customer service... Again, not the easiest of tasks. We have people tell us simply to hire teens to handle email and phones. Having this approach in the past set us up for significant issues. Only some of the emails are straight forward and can be handled by a tracking number or simple confirmation. Most emails entail something tech related as well and then need to be sent to someone that can handle them. The overall customer service need is for skilled audio industry individuals and not just a warm body. We are working on this one as well. Implementing a new email system will help keep track of emails/tasks that will let everyone quickly know if it can be answered by anyone or if it needs staff with a specific skill set. Seasonal... for us this is normally a busy time, but internationally as well as domestically we have be hit by massive orders. It seems that distributors have really upped the orders and we didn't see this coming. As Fi customers, distributors get put into line with everyone else, but when there turn comes... its a big turn. OEM... while most do not know, we do manufacturing for other companies as well. This normally isnt as big of an issue as we schedule most OEM runs ahead of time and can shuffle them around some when needed. But, OEM has exploded for some of our companies as well and when their turn comes, it takes a toll on the scheduling board. We have seen this coming and are working with our customers on long term solutions for their needs. This will greatly ease the increasing demand from our long term OEM customers keeping the Fi customers rolling along smoothly. And there are other issues that add up... I truly appreciate our customers patience for a quality US manufactured sub. It would be a simple solution to get speakers made in China or to have steel made overseas, but it truly goes against what I believe in (in doing as much work in house and supporting the US economy through manufacturing). In spite of this we are doing everything we physically can to up our efficiency and lower our lead times. I am disappointed too... but look at this as an opportunity to dial in our processes and streamline things for the long term. We are working hard in the meantime to get things back to our normal 10-15 business day lead time (and then back to the older 7-10 day time). Again, I do share your frustration, but thank you whole heartedly for putting your faith in us and our products. Thanks, Scott

I havent recieved a warning or pm or anything? All I do is share my videos, I dont troll or anything That is just it, you only come over to spam your D4S logo all over your videos. We do not approve of this type of behavior. You are only here to promote you own site. We don't let anyone else get away with this, and you shouldn't be any exception. If you remove all of your logos etc in your video's we have no problem with you posting them here. I am sure you can understand this, it would be like us coming to your site simply to promote our store or subwoofer line with out paying your vendor fee's etc. Especially since you have now moved up to "competitor" status selling XS Power, I am sure you see where we are coming from. We protect the house we built here.

Well this is odd. My parents called me from back home to tell me my package from SSA came some time last week; only I haven't ordered anything. A 15" DCON was sent to me at my address and I didn't order it. I went to the order status for my account to see if someone had hacked my account and ordered one and... sent it to my house?? But that wasn't the case. Order #5455 and order #5182 were indeed for 15" DCON's, but I've already received them a long time ago. Aaron, what the heck do you want me to do with this?! My old man opened it up and there was nothing on the inside of the top of the box (i was hoping for a receipt to be there). Thanks!

Wow, I go out of town for an alumni event for the weekend, and BLAM! It should be obvious why I don't say what our costs are, but yes, they are drastically more costly to build our sub woofers here in the USA then overseas. It is a mixture of comical and frustrating when competitor's sub woofers that are built overseas. As mentioned earlier, there is few aspects that really effect our build costs that others are not doing. The CNC machining of motors/poles is a huge portion of our build cost per sub woofers. Many brands will just use nuts as spacers between the motor stack and the basket, but our sub woofers are using spiral axis cooling channels on the pole. This does a number of things for superior cooling of the coil, but that is a different topic, what maters here is the time and cost on the CNC machine for each one built. Because of that extra care, time and effort, it cannot be easily done in mass quantities. Also, when not turning a large margin on our products, it means we have less to play with when it comes to expanding our company. It does piss me off when some fool says our products are over priced, they truly haven't a clue and need to be slapped. People have been asking me for a number of years now why we don't have amps or a full line up of mid's and highs etc. This is because the standard now is for someone with no audio background, to just call up a build house overseas, use a credit card and a pre-order, and TADA with in 18-24 months they have a full line up of sub woofers, amplifiers and more. I don't want our brand to be like that. Sure, our growth has been much less rapid as all the new offerings that show up every year, and sure Mark and I are not putting anywhere near what we would like into our pockets due to the higher build cost and much lower volume of sales, but we have near-ZERO warranty failure, a very strong return customer base, and the assurance of one of the highest levels of quality of materials and performance from our sub woofers to every customer that picks SSA for their sub woofer needs. We are trying to take the superior, long term thinking approach to these other brands that show up out of no where, as there is much more time and effort invested into each and every one of our sub woofers. It means we are not killing it in the bank account or hitting the golf course in the middle of the day, or expanding into new major markets overseas etc.. One perfect example, was the beautifully explained break down of the Xcon above. In short, the CNC machining, the addition of a shorting ring (long coil, so inductance was brought down a little) and the much more steel used (instead of a simple triple stack), creates a better sub all around and that is a powerful piece of mind. It is a very good thing to know and to have, even if we are not making much from each unit sold. We run with a very low overhead and keep our expenses to a minimum. Having our sub's machined and built here in the USA (even using steel from California), just does not matter to the masses anymore. The wildfire virus of the American consumer, is the extreme short shortsightedness and only seeing initial price to them, and not the long term. It is more then about keeping more of the money from the purchase price here in the USA, it is also understanding the higher level of quality and performance they are getting. We do gain a number of customers who had a shorter then liked, life span of their prior sub woofer that was made overseas. So in short, to sort of answer the first question, the factors that go into the costs of our products: place of build (USA) {cost of labor etc.}source of materialsquality of materialsquality of partsextra steps taken for better performancethe details in many of the modelslow volume salesmade-to-order production

Stupid question: If his alts are done and have been forever, and you're just waiting to complete the brackets......why not ship the guy his alts (more than likely the most costly part of this transaction), and DC Power contract and pay for someone like tejcurrent, another manufacturer right here on this forum, to build the brackets? It seems like this would go a long way towards completing the transaction on a pretty timely basis. At the very least, this would put the biggest chunk of change back into the OP's hands by having a tangible product in his possession. Then the only thing left is the bracket, which if another manufacturer such as tejcurrent can't produce on a timely basis, it's less of a refund that would need to be made by DC. And the OP can be on his merry way finding someone who can build a bracket for him. With all of the machine shops in the US, and another manufacturer right here on this forum whose explicit business is building alt brackets, I can't believe this isn't something that could have been completed at least since the start of this thread.....much less nearly 2 years.

Found this guide on another forum, and given the slew of recent threads on troubleshooting noise, thought I would post it here. One word of warning is that some HU's and/or processors nowadays have a zero bit mute, which essentially cuts off the output during low signal passages to reduce noise.....so be aware if this is a feature your unit has. Onward to the guide; How can you eliminate alternator whine in a car audio system? If you have alternator whine in a car audio system and want to get rid of it, there is only one sure-fire way to do it. David Navone and Richard Clark from Autosound 2000 in the USA developed the following step-by-step instructions. If you follow the instructions EXACTLY, you are guaranteed to trace and eliminate the noise in your car audio system. Don’t miss a step and don’t assume that something is OK without checking it. Each time you check for noise, you should do it with the engine running at 1500 to 2000 rpm and the headlights on full beam so that the alternator will be charging. The tests with the CD player connected should be done with a ‘zero bit’ track playing and the volume at maximum. Set your CD player to ‘repeat’ if it has that feature. Safety. Make sure when doing noise tests that the parking brake is on and working, and that the vehicle is in neutral or ‘park’. Perform these tests in an area with good ventilation or use an extension hose on the exhaust to route the fumes outside. Step 1. Check the Amplifiers 1a. Unplug the RCA cables from the amplifier/s and mute the signal at the input by using shorting plugs. This will isolate the amplifier from the rest of the car stereo installation. You can make shorting plugs by taking cheap male RCA plugs and soldering the centre and outer terminals together. This shorts out the input of the amplifier/s to ensure that it has zero signal. Has the noise gone? Yes. Go straight to Step 2. Reduce The System. No. Go to 1b. 1b. Disconnect the speakers from the amp and connect a pair of test speakers to it. Make sure the test speakers are not in contact with the car body. The purpose of this step is to ensure proper isolation of the speakers and the speaker leads from the car's chassis. Has the noise gone? Yes. Check speakers, speaker leads and passive crossovers for proper isolation from the car's chassis. Shift passive crossovers to a location away from power cables and the car’s body. No. Go to 1c. 1c. Isolate the amplifier from the chassis of the car. There must not be any electrical contact between the car's chassis and the amplifier, except for the grounding point. Has the noise gone? Yes. Reinstall the amplifier isolated from the chassis of the car. Make sure that the amplifier is grounded in just one point. No. Go to 1d. 1d. Supply the amplifier with an isolated power source, for example an external car battery or a 12-Volt DC power supply. Has the noise gone? Yes. Noise is entering the amplifier via the power supply, try changing the grounding point and add external power supply filtering. Consider changing the amplifier. No. The amplifier has some severe problems, is totally isolated and still noisy. Replace it or have it repaired. That is the end of Step 1. You have now either eliminated the amplifier and speakers as a problem or you have replaced a faulty amplifier. Now you can go on to Step 2. Step 2. Reduce the System. 2a. The amplifier is known to be OK. It is now time to disconnect any signal processors (equaliser, electronic crossover, etc.) and connect the signal from the output of the head unit directly into the input of the amplifier. Has the noise gone? Yes. The noise source must be either one or more of the processors or possibly the signal route. Go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you didn’t have any signal processors and you are using the signal cable in its normal, installed route then the problem is solved. No. Go to 2b. 2b. Run new signal cables over a new route between the head unit and the amplifier. Has the noise gone? Yes. Permanently route the signal cables in the new route. Go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you don’t have any signal processors then your problem is solved. No. Go to 2c. 2c. Isolate the case of the head unit from car's chassis. There must not be any electrical contact between the head unit and car chassis except for a single grounding point. Beware of antenna grounds and pullout cases! Has the noise gone? Yes. Reinstall the head unit isolated from the car's chassis and any other metal parts in the dash. Ground the head unit at one point. Go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you don’t have any signal processors then your problem is solved. No. Go to 2d. 2d. Move the head unit ground to a quieter grounding point. Test a number of points and also try grounding the head unit to the same point as the amplifier. Has the noise gone? Yes. Reinstall the head unit using the quiet grounding point. Go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you don’t have any signal processors then your problem is solved. No. Go to 2e. 2e. Move the head unit as near to the amplifier as possible. Then connect output of the head unit to the amplifier with the shortest possible RCA cables. Has the noise gone? Yes. Reinstall the head unit one step at a time. Check for noise after each step during the reinstallation. Once you have the head unit installed, noise free go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you don’t have any signal processors then your problem is solved. No. Go to 2f. 2f. Supply the head unit with an isolated power source, for example an external car battery or a 12 VDC power supply. Make sure that car chassis is not in contact with the head unit. Has the noise gone? Yes. The head unit is sensitive to noise in the supply voltage. Add power supply filtering to the supply voltage for the head unit or use an isolated power supply. You may be better to change the head unit. Once you have a head unit installed noise free, go to Step 3. ‘Add Signal Processors’. If you don’t have any signal processors then your problem is solved. No. There is a serious problem with the head unit. Go to Step 4 'Check the Vehicle' and/or change the head unit. Step 3. Add Signal Processors. At this level the amplifier is known to be good. The car's electrical system is OK and the reinstalled head unit is working fine when connected directly to the amplifier. 3a. Connect one of the Processors back into the signal path. Has the noise gone? Yes. Go to 3a for the next processor. If there are no more processors, the problem is solved. No. Go to 3b. 3b. Run new signal cables over a new route between the Head-unit and processor and between the Processor and the amplifier. Has the noise gone? Yes. Permanently route the cables on the new quiet path. Go to 3a for the next processor. If there are no more processors, the problem is solved. No. Go to 3c. 3c. Isolate the processor from the car's chassis except for a single grounding point. Connect the processor ground to the same grounding point as the head unit. Has the noise gone? Yes. Provide isolation between the Processor and the car's chassis and permanently route the cables on the known quiet path. Go to 3a for the next processor. If there are no more processors, the problem is solved. No. Go to 3d. 3d. Since new cables and re-grounding does not help, it is time to relocate the processor very near the amplifier. Connect the output of the processor to the amplifier with the shortest possible RCA cables. Has the noise gone? Yes. Reinstall the Processor one step at a time. Check for noise after each step in the reinstallation. Be careful when routing the signal cables. Remember that the car's chassis is a conductor. Go to 3a for the next processor. If there are no more processors, the problem is solved. No. Go to 3e. 3e. Power the processor with an isolated power supply. Do not let the processor touch the chassis of the car. Has the noise gone? Yes. The processor’s power supply in not sufficiently isolated from its audio circuitry. Either replace it or consider the permanent installation of an isolated power supply (1:1 DC/DC converter). This type of device provides a permanent power source that is well isolated from the car's chassis. Go to 3a for the next processor. If there are no more processors, the problem is solved. No. Go to 3f. 3f. Physically separate the processor and the isolated power supply from the rest of the system by many metres. Use long signal cables. Has the noise gone? Yes. Something is seriously wrong with either the processor or your install/test procedures. Please repeat this level from the beginning. No. Change Processor -- this one has design problems. Go back to 3a for the new processor. Step 4. Check the Vehicle The suspect car's charging and electrical systems can be checked by using the previously installed sound system in a "known quiet" car. 4a. Connect jumper cables between the batteries of the two vehicles and start the engine of the suspect car. Turn on the headlights on the suspect car and listen to the stereo on the "known quiet" car. Is there now noise in the quiet car’s system? Yes. Have a qualified auto electrician check out the car’s charging system. No. The suspect car's alternator and charging system is now proven to be quiet. The problem must lie in the car stereo installation -- not in the vehicle.

While I agree there are some things purchasers in preorders have to deal with, such as the ETA being pushed back some due to customs or raw material outages, I think being given an initial ETA and then being told that there is an indefinite time frame for delivery is way outside of acceptable. We only have 1 side of the story right now, so it's tough to say.....but if they are waiting "indefinitely" for the price of Neo to drop back down to where they are happy with the profit margin then that is complete and total bullshit. They ran the preorder knowing the price of raw materials may change, they are liable to honor that preorder with a reasonable time of delivery regardless of whether or not they lose their ass on the deal due to the cost of materials rising. According to the OP it's not that they don't have access to Neo due to a lack of materials....they simply don't want to pay for it because it's too expensive and they'll either not make enough money or lose money. That's not acceptable. Build the subs you agreed and were paid to build. If that means you lose money because you made a bad business decision, then tough shit. Build the fucking subs.

I wanted to say Thanks to Mark and LaFountain Designs for the hard work and awesome website he designed and did for me. We had a nice site for the last 4 years through someone else and wanted a change. Figured it was a good opportunity to work with Mark and since SSA and his other sites are so nice I knew I wanted to go this route. If anyone has a business and wants a new look definitely give LaFountain Designs a shot. Here is my site http://zoom-moving.com/

Actually he said outwardly the motors appeared to be similar. That says nothing about similarities within the motor, and frankly he doesn't even give any external measurements of the motor itself to confirm they are anything more than similar in appearance. Also, if you look at the actual measured T/S parameters you can see they are different drivers. The Xcon has a higher Q, lower Fs, lower Le and higher Mms. Plus the Xcon has slightly more linear excursion and I believe higher thermal power handling as well. It is still an Fi copy with a couple alterations. Quoted "Any differences from the Q are probably in the voice coil itself and the gap geometry and possibly the pole piece machining." Coil is different, suspension is different, magnet ID is different, dust cap is different, gap is different, pole piece is different, back plate is different, cooling is different. You can step off of your soap box now. -the guy thats built hundreds of them.

BS Eric... You were told exactly what was going on time after time, and when I finally gave you an exact date it would be done, guess what? It was done.. You just pitched a fit the day before, demanded a refund and I GAVE someone else the alt I built for you. Shitty thing is man I bent over BACKWARDS to get that done for you too because of how things went down and how bad you needed it. Too bad for you though man, the XP's for the Hyundai's turned out pretty freaking SICK. You could have had your alt and would have absolutely loved it too... Get over it and move on bro... I don't care how good your alts may be, or how bad your suppliers have stiffed you with delays. You act like a complete douche to customers on the internet forums. This is not the first time I've seen you spout off with smart-ass comments towards a customer on here. It actually seems to be a pretty common reaction from you when a customer says something you don't like. I'm not arguing that you don't have a right to respectfully defend your company. But for fuck's sake, handle it with a little dignity. There's a right way and a wrong way to handle a situation, it seems more often than not you chose the latter. There's always two sides to a story.....but given the way you conduct yourself on here, I'm not surprised by all of the negative things said about the CS from your company given you can't even remotely conduct yourself in a professional manor when interacting with customers here on the forum. Proving a customer wrong isn't winning. DC isn't the first company in history to have supplier issues and unhappy customers.....however a shit load of those other companies are capable of handling the situation with far more dignity, professionalism and respect.

They are getting old and can't run the business forever. So they were seeking someone honest and trustworthy to give the business to. Congratulations, you passed the test. You won Jake, you won! Now get in the Wonkavator and press the red button.

Well Travis is getting a new amp.....that way no mistake can be made, no middle problems if something were to happen in a re-boarding process. It will be an A stock brand new amp, that has been on our bench for a few weeks running every speaker setup under the rainbow, currently a single tower running bridged at 2 ohms both channels. Using all HPF combos, and bandpass too,,,,,we replaced the amp with travis' 1100.4 JUST the same way. After about 3 hours of play time, its gotten fairly warm, as it definitely should be running at 1 ohm a channel, and its working as it should. So we've tried to find the problem, multiple times, the only thing we've seen could be a possible cause was a good sized dent on the heatsink as if it was dropped before. Other then that, hopefully the new 1100.4 recieved works as should, otherwise must be an install problem Thanks for the understanding.

i like to break mine in with a little, wine, perhaps a candle lite bubble bath, some kenny G in then back ground,... i like to relax them.. then poundem hard. no really. just pound them.

That leads to 3 questions: 1) What are these "actual higher results"? 2) What was the test methodology for determining these "actual higher results"? 3) Why is the amplifier not rated at the "actual higher results" if that is the level of their true performance and you're just going to add a disclaimer that the rated power is less than their actual power anyways?

i would like to apologize to the fi and ssa forums for my outbursts at other users language and additude it is not my style.....i got a bit mad and lost my head....i do not like being called a liar for no reason... to doubt me is your right as an individual.....but to just bash me and slander my name is equally wrong but none the less i offer my apology to all that i offended...

Benefit Raffle for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Raffle with all proceeds going to St Jude Childrens Research Hospital$10 a ticketSend gift through PayPal to Saint Jude Childrens HospitalOne lucky person will win a 15" SSA XCON D2Raffle will last one month and end on July 15th, 2013.Link to the original raffle: http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/forum/topic/58082-benefit-raffle-for-st-jude-childrens-research-hospital/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raffle Each ticket will cost $10 each. A number will accompany each ticket you buy. Each number will be written on a bottle cap and placed into a jar. Every bottle cap will be the same size and shape to ensure equal odds for everyone. The deadline for purchasing tickets will be Saturday July 14th, 2013 @ 11:59pm. The next day, July 15th, I will make a video of the drawing and I will post it here on SSA in this thread. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to buy tickets Please send a gift through PayPal to Saint Jude Children's HospitalMake sure to send me a screen shot and the paypal confirmation number to [email protected] acknowledgement of the gift received will be sent and I will provide you with your raffle number/s.Please allow one or two days for me to respond. I will be updating the second post of this thread with a list of who has donated. If you prefer to be an anonymous donor please let me know.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Prize One 15" SSA XCON D2 http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/index.php/product-information/xcon.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital www.stjude.org The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of our founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family's ability to pay. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first raffle did very well. Please support this great cause again and donate! Please share with everyone you know. Thank you -------------------------- People who have donated:

Thanks for watching.

no doubt if you ask him a technical question you will be ignored... and if you ask on a public place other then SSA your post will be deleted !

I want to apologize to any of you who have tried to help me or if i offended any of you in anyway. I hate being wrong and was being bone headed because of it. Could you guys forgive me? I realize you guys know infinitely more about this kind of stuff than I do and instead of arguing with you guys I need to listen and learn so someday i can be in your shoes. so once again i'm sorry guys

LOL....Exactly what I was thinking. Weren't they like $60 for a "6-pack" ? Aaron, I think you guys need to come out with an FPcon in honor of the Funky Pup. Would be a great addition to the SSA lineup I will put in a call to Krypton to see if they have any spider packs and surrounds left. There was rumors that before the Death Star was destroyed, that some special cones were jettisoned off into space for fear of the attack. Supposedly, Ray Liotta can get a hold of some nasty voice coils. That would leave only the unobtanium motor structure, last I saw, the Navi were pretty pissed when humans tried to take their rare metals. Just saying.

Consdiering a 20 dollar hunk of neo previously is now 114 dollars..I wouldn't be bitching if I were you. It's still cheaper then anybody else on the market, you can go pay 1800 dollars for a Z series woofer if you would like...that's known as raping the consumer. The price is only adjusted to the cost of materials going up..which EVERYTHING has gone up. We ate it for quite some time while I was there and the reason was waiting until the SP4 and Team versions of the subs were available, or near available. If you don't like it..it's as simple as not buying it. Go pay 1800 dollars for the Z series woofer or 1000-1200 dollars for the DC neo woofer. (and no, i don't work there any longer)

There's much more to it than that. First, cone area and Xmax are multiplied to arrive at a parameter known as Vd, or volume displacement. This is the amount of linear air displacement the driver is capable of achieving. The higher the Vd, the higher linear output capabilities the driver has as a larger Vd means the driver is capable of displacing more air. Second, don't confuse Xmax with excursion. They are different. Excursion is how far the cone is physically moving. Xmax is the maximum amount of linear excursion the driver is capable of achieving. Excursion is the amount of movement, Xmax is the limit of how much of that movement is "linear". Generally a driver operating at Xmax will have ~10% THD. This is typically the highest amount of acceptable performance. As you exceed Xmax it's generally considered that the distortion performance would be at an unacceptable level (among other things). In sealed enclosures, Vd is one of the important factors along with alignment and the driver's parameters in determining output capabilities. All things equal, the driver with the higher Vd will have higher output. In reality, things are never equal. So you have to look at the response of the driver in a given alignment along with your environment and available power. Having a higher Vd isn't any good if you don't have the requisite power to reach Xmax or if the driver is in an alignment that begins to roll off at a high frequency. Having a higher Vd is only a capability of higher output; whether or not you will be able to realize that higher output is dependent upon several other factors. In terms of low frequency performance, you're required to increase displacement by a factor of 4 in order to maintain a given SPL level one octave lower in frequency. This means that you need to displace 4x the air at 25hz as you do at 50hz to maintain the same SPL level at both frequencies. You can see how having a higher Xmax could be beneficial as displacement requirements increase substantially in lower frequencies. In the low frequencies Vd can be very important as it can very much limit how much linear output your system will be able to achieve. Luckily in car audio we have substantial cabin gain in the low frequencies as well, so we can maintain SPL levels at lower frequencies without having to quadruple our displacement. A 12db gain at 25hz compared to 50hz, for example, is equivalent to quadrupling your displacement. So if you have a 12db gain at 25hz compared to 50hz in your vehicle, you've already accomplished the feat. Generally you want the most cone area you can reasonably place within your space, environment and enclosure requirements. Why? A driver with a larger cone area will displace a greater amount of air for a given excursion level. This means that it takes less excursion to reach a given SPL level with more cone area. This, in turn, means that the driver(s) would ideally be operating further within it's linear range at that SPL level which, ideally, reduces distortion. This ofcourse assumes the drivers are of similar distortion performance as distortion performance will vary based on driver designs. For example, one driver may still have less distortion at 15mm than another more poorly designed driver (from a distortion perspective) driver operating at 10mm. The reason Xmax "doesn't matter" for SPL is because 1) the subwoofers are generally "burped" near tuning where excursion is minimized and 2) Xmax is a linear parameter....people competing in SPL don't really care about having higher distortion due to possibly exceeding Xmax. But that doesn't mean Xmax is not important in ported enclosures. Xmax is not a limitation on how far the driver can physically move , only on how much of that movement is linear. Also, going back to what we said about power and alignment; Xmax does not tell you how much excursion you will have in your alignment with your power. And that is what ultimately determines how much output you will have from the enclosure, any enclosure. Vd is still "important" in ported enclosure as it still helps determine which driver has the capability for higher linear output, but you have to look at your power and alignment to determine which will ultimately have higher excursion, and hence output, in use. In a ported enclosure generally enclosure size and tuning are going to have a significant impact on low frequency response and excursion with regards to frequency; but that doesn't make Xmax irrelevant for daily listening. About a half octave above tuning, the enclosure will behave similarly to a sealed enclosure meaning excursion will increase to a point that is similar to that of a sealed enclosure. Xmax may become important in this region where it's possible to reach or exceed the Xmax of the driver. That post feels like it was one giant ramble.....hopefully it makes sense.