Ok... after three years of plans to produce a subwoofer line things are finally falling into place. Nobody cannot say I'm not persistent.
The product concept was simple. Dan Wiggins & David Hyre revolutionized the subwoofer market years ago with the Shiva 12" driver & followed up with the 15" Tempest. This was back in the day when 12mm of x-max in a subwoofer was considered massive. The parameters of the Shiva & Tempest made them very useful drivers in a wide range of applications. The build quality was good, but nothing silly was done to raise the price. The concept was that performance and value was the only thing that mattered.
The Shiva & Tempest had the longest run (they are still being sold by Kyle @ Acoustic Visions) of any subwoofer driver I've seen. People bought them, OEMs bought them and competitors copied them. Dan & Dave morphed into Adire Audio and developed many transducers for the audio industry. They revolutionized transducer design with innovations like XBL^2 motor technology which allowed for lower distortion transducers with very high output capability. They designed transducer suspension systems, and created their own software tools for modeling transducer behavior. Overall.... they brought a tremendous amount of engineering innovation to the market to a technology that was already mature.
The Shiva-X & Tempest-X are the next generation Shiva & Tempest drivers. They have big shoes to fill. The T/S parameters are pretty much a copy of the original design goals. The differences are that now the Shiva & Tempest have been updated with a world-class motor system and much improved suspension capability. Starting with a 2.5" voice-coil we designed the motor with the XBL^2 motor technology to support a full 27mm of x-max.
Some people may ask... why not more? The answer is pretty simple. The Shiva & Tempest where value drivers. Once you start getting past 25-27mm of x-max the suspension systems of current transducers become very non-linear. The solutions for designing more output start to become very expensive. You just about double the cost of the driver to pick up another 3-4 mm of excursion and we didn't feel that this made good sense when you can buy a second driver and add 27mm.
The Shiva-X & Tempest-X share the same motor. They offer:
* Highly optimized XBL^2 motor with flat BL curve & very low inductance. Both properties give the Shiva-X & Tempest-X extremely low distortion compared to the competition a the same x-max.
* Highly optimized suspension system. No dual spiders or other goofy tricks. Just a well designed Nomax progressive spider with a healthy rubber surround that supports the massive throw. Why not two spiders like some of the competition uses? The reason for two spiders is to control rocking. Its a design problem and the second spider is a band -aid. We simply don't need it because XBL^2 doesn't require the monster VC (with high inductance & moving mass) of other motor designs and we don't have a massive lateral force generated by the mass of a voicecoil on the end of a lever that creates rocking in the gap.
* Cone designed to limit high frequency break-up issues. We didn't stick a large plastic piece with our logo on the front. We didn't use aluminum cones... we didn't use stuff that didn't have a direct correlation with performance. Marketing tricks where not the goal.... just good engineering.
* T/S parameters to match the Shiva & Tempest:
Param Shiva-X Tempest-X
-------- ------- ---------
Fs 19.1 17.2 Hz
Qms 5.6 6.2
Qes 0.41 0.45
Qts 0.38 0.42
Vas 147.3 402.1 Liters
Sd 470.0 800.0 cm^2
Re 12.6 12.6 Ohms VC in series (3.15 in parallel)
Le 3.6 3.6 mH VC in series (1.1mH in parallel)
Mms 140.7 170.7 grams
Cms 0.5 0.5 mm/N
Xmax 26.5 26.5 mm one way linear
Xsus 39.5 39.5 mm, will be basket limited
BL 21.9 21.9 N/A (11 VC in parallel)
SPL 85.7 88.4 dB @ 1W, 1m
Sens 88.8 91.5 dB @ 2.83Vrms, 1W, 4 Ohm load
Pmax 600 600 Watts
* Pricing that makes them the best value on the market. Projected pricing $155 & $175 respectively.
When are they going to be available? Soon... production has started and inventory should be ready to ship in 6-7 weeks. I'll release production parameters (measured from a sample of the production run) when they land. We should have in place all the documentation and design guides by that point. These will work in all the designs that Dan had already done over the years for the Shiva & Tempest with only minor changes (we may need to update some of the port sizes).
Keep an eye on the site for more details.
