come on baby and rescue me ... - The Supremes

Caliber 4 rockets, red flares and orange smoke. And a “rescue me”.

It feels awkward to spend more than 500€ on stuff you’ll probably (and hopefully) never use. After some thinking I did bite the bullet. The old flares and rockets were more than ten years past their due date. Since I (officially) have no radio and electrickery likes to fail just when you need it most, some pyrotechniques might come in handy.

The little yellow/grey fellow is a fine example of modern electronics. Mostly sailing alone, going overboard is considered a death sentence. Your boat probably is on auto pilot and will go on until the battery is dead, the wind changes significantly or it hits something. So there you are, alone in the ocean. Many single-handers used to not wear life vests so it would be over fast if they go overboard. But nowadays you just call a cab. The little fella has batteries which last until 2025, a gps receiver to calculate your position and a satphone (or modem) to text your position to a maritime rescue coordination centre (MRCC). Since registration in germany is kind of complicated and the device must be bound to a ship (even though it’s a personal locator beacon (PLB)) I registered it in the UK. So in case I go overboard in germany, I press a button, the little thingy texts my position to falmouth, cornwall mrcc and then somebody rings up the folks at bremen mrcc who then ring up the nearest SAR unit and/or coordinates the search with other vessels in the area. Amazing!

Tied to the innards of my life vest/floatation device

… and its gone 🙂

Friends pointed out to me that they don’t understand my writings about building/optimizing speakers and don’t even know what to google for. Sorry, guys, I was just writing down what I was doing and not thinking about that.

The Variables (Fs, fb, ….) are so called Thiele-Small Parameters, named after two aussie guys doing research on the matter. Wikipedia provides links to sites explaining the stuff in both german and english.

Don’t let the math scare you away, you don’t need it. To build a woofer you just have to look up these values and put them in some online calculator which is spewing out build dimensions. Just make sure to get a second opinion on the results, be it through research, online forums or just asking folks…

“Yeah Science, Bitch”  -- Jesse Pinkman

I did some research. The concept of tuning a vented box very low is called EBS (Extended Bass Shelf). This site explains it pretty good, the basic idea is getting more bass on low frequencies. You basically take an enclosure 160-180% the size of a “maximum flat” setup and then tune it close to Fs (Free Air Resonance of the speaker). As I already found out the previous owner did tune the enclosure to about that frequency. But how about enclosure size? The manual suggests “maximum flat” enclosures from 64 to 92 litres, suggesting an EBS setup between 102 and 165 litres. The enclosure has around 80 litres not accounting for the speaker and the vents. Well, I guess I found a problem here.

I tried some more online calculators and plenty of them tune close to Fs without even mentioning it. So it’s more than understandable to end up with this setup. But as always, you gotta trust your senses: If it sounds shitty there has to be a reason… Ah, and trust the engineers. If you deviate far from their suggested path you better know what you are doing…

So to wrap this up and continue other important work I’ll go the humble approach. I’ll measure the actual resonance frequency of the enclosure and tune it to something between 36-39Hz for the suggested “maximum flat” response.

Measuring shouldn’t be to difficult, the impedance of the speaker drops at the resonance frequency, so the current spikes ( I = U/R ). So just rig an ampere meter to the speaker, a frequency generator to the amplifier and play with the frequency knob until you reach maximum current. Well, my ampere meter doesn’t like low frequencies at all making it impossible to get a reading. Using a shunt (resistor in series) and measuring voltage I pinpointed the resonance frequency at 35,7Hz. That’s way lower than the expected 43Hz. Good news: That’s the lower end of my target frequency. Bad news: I’ve got to redo the math…

Some site suggests if the distance of the ports to any wall is less than their diameter the tuning gets lower. That’s definitely the case here…  The increase of Volume by damping depends strongly on the material, ranging from 0-20%. If I run the numbers with an estimated volume of 115 litres everything checks out and the estimated resonance frequency with the long vents would be around 24Hz. I guess I have to measure that as well 🙁 Hmmm, 27Hz, not too bad for an estimate…

Hmm, maybe I should give the 31Hz a shot. 18,5 cm for the vents… Let’s say 20 for good measure… After some try and error 21cm turn out to lead to 30.something Hz. Good enough. Yeah, there is more ooompfff on low frequencies, you don’t hear some but feel it in your guts. I had to adjust the woofer level back to +6db on the amp. But it seems to be a trade-off with quality. Most of the time there’s not enough bass and then suddenly it’s killing you when the frequency drops low enough. For example with “Clint Eastwood / Gorilaz”, some low rumbling for the whole song and then the break with a couple of low beats is just plain awful. Somebody suggested that EBS setups often have cancellation issues on the two octaves above the resonance frequency (so 30-120Hz). Yeah, that might be the issue here.

To cut a long story short: EBS doesn’t work out with this enclosure, even if you do it right. I guess that’s 2:0 for the engineers… Disclaimer: I’m working low volume settings (neighbours…) and the placement of the sub is bad. Maybe it’s getting better with optimal placement and if you crank up the amplifier. Maybe not. At least now the sound setup at my desk is ok. Time to actually do some work…

The new subwoofer has bass, I’ll give it that. But sounds like a trumpeting elephant somehow. Well, it’s probably not the speaker itself. The broken crossover / connection panel is already removed. Hmm, let’s have a look at the mods of the previous owner.

He reduced the volume by adding an enclosure for the connection panel, added some foam isolation and adjusted the length of the vents. Alright, the enclosure lowers the volume (obviously), the insulation increases the (virtual) volume of the enclosure (not so obvious). Measuring inside the box is difficult, I’d estimate the volume about 70 litres so with the insulation it’s probably somewhere between 70 and 80 litres. The original vents have 75mm diameter and are 120mm long. The previous owner extended them to 350mm / 360mm using pipes from the hardware store and claims to have calculated everything with some software.

The vents should be the same length. They are extremely close to the rear wall of the box but I couldn’t find proof that this is an issue. Let’s start with the obvious: Some designer made this enclosure and even if it’s a cheapo they probably put some thought in it. The vents adjust the resonance frequency of the box. Changing them by a factor of three means either the engineer who build it was way off or the one doing the modification. I used an online calculator to run the numbers. With the extensions the resonance frequency (fb) of the enclosure is around 29Hz, without approx. 43Hz. The manual of the speaker comes with 12 suggested enclosure dimensions ranging from 36 to 50Hz fb. The interwebs suggest it makes some sense to go for a “bass shelf” by tuning fb to Fs (30,83Hz) or even lower. One formula I found suggests 31Hz being ideal for this setup.

The manufacturer of the speaker and the manufacturer of the enclosure obviously don’t think so. I removed the extensions and the setup is quite close to the “Standard Tight Bass” box design of the speaker manufacturer. Afterwards I had to reduce the amp setting from +7 to +3 (probably db) and it sounds pretty tight.

I guess I’ll rig up a setup to actually measure the resonance frequency to check my estimates and tune the box to “optimal sound quality / flat response”.