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The SoundQ Garage
Tech talk for the DIY car audio enthusiast that cares about sound quality
The SoundQ Garage
Inside The Data-Driven Subwoofer Revolution With Nick Apicella of ResoNix
Imagine opening a spec sheet and realizing half the numbers don’t survive a real test. That’s the energy today as we sit down with ResoNix founder Nick Apicella to unpack why he spent over $20,000 on independent Klippel testing for nearly forty subwoofers—and what the results say about truth, hype, and how great bass is actually built.
We start with the problem most enthusiasts face: space is tight, power is cheap, yet small sealed performance still lags because many drivers compress, distort, or were never designed to stay linear at real excursion. Nick explains why Xmax claims often fail, how BL, suspension, and inductance symmetry drive audible clarity, and why linearity is the single most important metric for deep extension that still feels present. The data is blunt: a few subs shine, many miss their own marks, and published marketing specs rarely predict how they behave in your car.
Then we reframe one of car audio’s most entrenched debates—sealed versus infinite baffle. The surprising answer: IB isn’t magic. What you’re hearing is excellent drivers doing linear work in an alignment that fits them. Match system Qtc, apply adequate power, and a small sealed design with a truly linear motor can deliver the same pressurized low end people rave about. That thinking fuels the ResoNix Gus line: shallow, compact, high-excursion subs built for tiny enclosures and verified by full third-party measurements. Nick shares prototype results, revision tweaks, and a release window, plus why ResoNix will publish raw Klippel LSI and TRF data, graphs and all.
If you care about sound quality, this is your roadmap to choosing subs by merit, not marketing. Learn how to read the curves, what distortion looks like at meaningful stroke, and which tradeoffs matter for real-world installs. When the data hub goes live on the ResoNix site, dive in, compare your favorites, and decide with confidence.
Enjoyed this deep dive? Follow, share with a friend who loves car audio, and drop a review with the one claim you most want to see tested next. Your questions shape future episodes.
Link to the Independent Subwoofer Testing Data https://tinyurl.com/3fzr7fr9
Welcome back everybody to the SoundQ Garage Podcast. This is officially season 2, episode 1, and we are kicking it off today. The show where the only thing deeper than the bass is the rabbit hole we fall into. I'm your host today, Eddie. Buckle up because we are talking Subwoofer's data and Subwoofer obsession at a level only true audio nerds could love. Today's guest has become one of the most disruptive voices in car audio. He's the guy who spent more on clipple testing than most people spend on their cars and then published all the data, even when it hurts some feelings and some sales. Founder of Resinex, Nick Apicella.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, how are you doing, Ed?
SPEAKER_01:What's up, Nick? I hope I pronounced your name right, buddy.
SPEAKER_03:Is it Apicella? Technically, technically correct. Um, but we kind of butchered it in the U.S. after we moved, our family moved from Italy, and we now say Apicella, but technically it is Apicella.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. See, so I was like, is this Nick Alpaca? Apicella, Apicella. You know, with the double L, you know, because I come from a Latin background, I was like, that's gotta be Apicella. What's what's what's new background? Is that Italian or Italian, yeah. Okay, all right, cool, cool, cool. So before we get into the new subwoofer, Nick, uh, which we're really gonna get into. So calm down, guys. I want to paint a picture for the listeners. Nick is the guy who personally spent, is it true? You spent 20 grand? Let me repeat that. 20 grand on independent clippal testing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, between the well, between the testing itself and the shipping of everything, yes, it's over 20 grand at this point. Uh, my UPS bill is an absolute disaster.
SPEAKER_01:So you're on a first name basis with the UPS guy?
SPEAKER_03:Uh yeah, our UPS guy hates us. Well, that's also because our warehouse is uh it's all we're all shipping heavy products. So yeah, our UPS guy hates us. But uh he's probably got back problems.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, that's uh, you know, it is what it is. You know, we got to get stuff out to our customers.
SPEAKER_01:So, Nick, before we jump into the sub, uh give people a backstory. What made you decide the industry needed another subwoofer with with all the subwoofers that are out there? What what made you decide that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, there's so many subwoofers out there, and it's such a simple product, you would think that there are so many options, and there kind of are on paper until you start doing a deep dive into like into higher end stuff, you know, genuine quality products and you know, very niche products, like, you know, all the guys that are going to be listening to this are not just your average basic like car audio enthusiasts. Like, you know, we're we're all we're all pretty deep in this, relatively speaking. So anyone in that demographic, and then some, like if you start to look for high performance subwoofers and you start looking beyond like the basic marketing specs, and you also look at specific applications, such as, you know, for the case of the the Resinix Gus subwoofer line, uh super small sealed enclosures, you will realize there, yeah, there are options for them, but none of them are really that good, frankly. Um, you know, I'm pretty fortunate to I've had my hands on pretty much every subwoofer that you can think of. Um, you know, tuned them, installed them, listened to them, you name it. I I've probably used it. And, you know, after, you know, I was using Illusion Audio for a while, and then they like closed, like Orca closed uh the Illusion Audio side of things. Orca's the owner of Illusion Audio uh because they were having manufacturer problems with the factory in India. Um they are eventually, I I don't know if they're gonna do anything with that, but yeah, illusion audio stopped producing subwoofers, and I was like, okay, like crap. Like those were kind of my favorite line of subs between the C12, the shallow one, and the C12 XL, which was their standard one. And then I remembered from like back in the day, I was using audio mobile a lot, and um, you know, very high performance subwoofers on paper. They do exactly what I need, like what I typically like, um, out of installs, you know, small sealed enclosure capability with low extension and you know, low ex uh low distortion. And um, and then they have been having massive supply issues, and there's a lot of um, I'm not uh it's not my place to really say, but there's just stuff going on in the background where you know, go go try to find an audio mobile subwoofer for sale right now. You know, you can't.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's next to impossible, pretty much.
SPEAKER_03:And uh, you know, frankly, I was actually Yeah, uh, you know what, I'll just say it. I was I was offered to purchase the company at one point. And I actually got excited about it. I was like, oh shit, like that could be a really cool business opportunity for me. And as time went on, it it was pretty obvious that like, oh, that's that is not a real thing. Like, there's so many problems on the back end over there that like I don't even want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. And I was like, wait a second. I was like, every time I have needed something, like a certain product that isn't offered on the market anymore or at all, I create it. Just like uh our Resinix was founded by the fact that Sound Editor Showdown closed. Them closing prompted me to have a need for higher quality sound editing materials because it was no longer available. You know, they closed. I tried all these different other sound editing companies, was not impressed with it, said, screw it, I'm gonna create my own stuff. That's where Resinix CLD came from. You know, that's where all of our, that's where this entire company was born from. And it's the same thing with this subwoofer where I'm looking around, I'm like, there's so many options for subwoofers, but none of them are genuinely good. You know? Um, I I know that's a really long answer, but it I don't know. I'm just providing as much background as I can. So I said, screw it. Uh, I'm just gonna do what I always do, and I'm gonna I'm gonna make my own.
unknown:That's it.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, that's a good answer because um it's basically business 101, see a need, fill a need. So I know, you know, what what is what do they say? Hoffman's law is like Hoffman's Iron Law. Hoffman's iron law, isn't it like um I don't know it off the top of my head, but it's uh three things.
SPEAKER_03:It is uh it's low extension, yeah, small enclosure, high sensitivity, pick two. Pick two. Uh but thankfully, in today's world, power is cheap. You know, sensitivity is not nearly as much of a concern. And from what I learned through this entire process, sensitivity of a subwoofer is not, it doesn't behave the same as you you would think it would. Um like sensitivity is obviously still a spec based on you know calculation of kill small parameters, but there's more to it than just a simple sensitivity spec. Um, but yeah, I mean, in in 2025, going on 2026, we have so many amplifiers that are the size of your palm that put out you know a thousand watts. You know, you have so many amplifiers that are yo,$400 amplifier that puts out 2,000 watt power is not a problem these days. So I'm like, yeah, you know, let's go with small enclosure and low frequency extension because those are important to most people, you know. How many people can fit a one and a half to two cubic foot sealed enclosure for a single 12-inch? And uh, you know, no one can really do that these days. These cars are tiny, they don't give us much to work with.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, true. A lot of people want to keep their, I mean, you know, not everybody, but a lot of people want to keep their their trunk space too.
SPEAKER_03:So uh I mean not everybody needs to keep their trunk space, but I think it would be safe to say most people would like to if it's an option.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not everybody's willing to give up that trunk space. I mean, you know, a lot of us are some of us are hardcore enthusiasts, but then you have the other people, you know.
SPEAKER_03:So uh well now those people that you know are okay with taking up their trunk space, well now they can have their cake and eat it too. Nice, nice. You know? So you can have that same low frequency extension while, you know, having your trunk back and being a normal person.
SPEAKER_01:So speaking of specs, like we were talking about a minute ago, uh, a lot of the stuff that's published online, a lot of these manufacturers, they you know, they tell a lot of tall tales, they they they fib on the specs. Why do you think that is? Because how is a consumer supposed to make an informed decision if they're looking at specs, they're looking at you know frequency response charts, and a lot of people obsess over that. And then when they get that, you know, those components in their hands, they get that subwoofer in their car, and it doesn't perform to what the company claimed. Like what what you know what what is up with companies doing that? Like, you know, now that you're in in the thick of it, so to speak, like what what uh I know it's a lot of you know marketing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean it's the what's up with it, the simple answer is because they can get away with it. You know? Who who's actually gonna buy one of those subwoofers, send it off for clipple testing, and you know, call them out at such a high level until I came along. Um, you know, there's just there's a lot of things I learned from this large-scale batch of clipple testing that we're doing. And the one big thing I learned is that almost every single one of these companies is full of shit, frankly. Like, you know, open honesty, like not trying to sugarcoat things, not trying to make it even more extreme than it is, but they these companies mostly are full of shit. Um and it's one of the perfect examples of this that you can see and and how easy it is for them to get away with is there's one, there's one specific subwoofer. Uh, I'm not gonna name it yet until the results are out. Um, but someone pointed it to me, uh pointed me to a discussion on the DIY mobile audio forums. And, you know, they're discussing, oh, like, should I go with this subwoofer or should I go with this subwoofer? Turns out those two subwoofers are designed, apparently, you know, knowing this on the back end, are apparently designed by the same person. They're similar in depth. They have very, very similar specifications. They're just from two different companies. And I tested one of them. The other one I'm trying to get my hands on uh without paying full retail. Um, and I want to test it just to see how similar they really are. But the one of them that was tested did about one-third of the manufacturer stated X Max.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely insane. Yeah, so you have all of these people in this discussion. Oh my God, like the this subwoofer is crazy. Look how shallow it is, and it does this much excursion. It's like, yeah, just because it has the mechanical throw to do it doesn't mean it's not doing it without a boatload of distortion. Yeah, yeah, you know? So they I mean, the short answer again, it's just they do it because they can get away with it. You know, 99.9% of their customers don't care. The other 0.1% of the customers that do care aren't even gonna be able to call it out because they have no way of actually figuring this out. Um, you know, and other some companies might state X max based off of, you know, a 70% BL, um, 70% BL clipple measurement. Some of them might base it on, you know, the formula that takes the voice coil height and magnetic gap uh into account without doing any measurements. I don't know where these companies are really coming up with these specs, uh specifically X Max. But I can tell you this, out of all the subwoofers that we tested, which is about 40, only a few of them actually met the manufacturer-stated claims.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's incredible.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. It's very crazy. Um I I don't even I don't even know what else to say about it. Like, I really did think that a lot of these drivers would do much better. And like a lot of some of them, I was like, okay, like so I went into this designing of this subwoofer. Um, you know, and I'm working with a friend in the company that he works for on this, and I approached them. You know, we were gonna do something a couple of years ago, nothing really came out of it, life got busy for me. Uh, and then I reapproached it and I said, look, I want to do a subwoofer, you know, again, small sealed, uh, high excursion, low distortion, blah, blah, blah. I need it to be the highest performing sub on the market for this specific application. No questions about it. That's I will only release it until we can prove it's the best. And they said, okay. I'm like, I'm gonna send in, you know, a few of my favorite subs. We're gonna test them, we're gonna see what the references are, we're gonna see like what's out there. And like, you know, I'm gonna essentially prove to myself, like, yeah, ours, ours are the best. And I went into this kind of nervous about a few subwoofers that I'm like, it's gonna be pretty hard to do better than this subwoofer or that subwoofer, you know. Like I was speaking about illusion audio before. Uh, those are the subwoofers that I have in my car right now, besides our new prototype, like, you know, that I just unplugged the illusions, but they're still in my car and they've been in my car for years, and I've used them a lot, and they've been my favorite for a long time. I just got the clipple results back in the C12 XL yesterday. And at best, I'm okay with saying this because of the discontinued sub. At best, it is a mediocre subwoofer.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Some of my other previous favorite car audio subwoofers, cardio-specific subwoofers, are bad. They're just bad. Um, this industry is full of shit. And they make design choices for the sake of either, you know, saving money or profit or looks or marketing, or, you know, maybe even for like the protection of the subwoofer from like a warranty standpoint, but that degrades performance. I I can't speak to the exact reasons why these companies are making these decisions, but I can only make assumptions. Um, but it's it's genuinely mind-blowing how how bad a lot of these subwoofers are. Uh, some of them are very good. Uh, some of them I was surprised by. You know, again, I was gonna send in you know, maybe five of them at first, and then it kind of snowballed into a whole big thing where next thing you know, I'm borrowing subs and buying subs from all over the place. And next thing you know, we have I think 39 subwoofers tested right now.
SPEAKER_01:Oh wow. That's a lot of testing. So who's doing the clipple testing? Are you sending it out to uh yes?
SPEAKER_03:It is not me doing the testing, it is a third-party independent engineering, uh, engineering consultant type acoustics company. Uh, they do not want to be named. Uh at first, you know, I did not tell them I was doing this publicly because I knew they probably wouldn't like it. And uh I might have, you know, been like, hey, you know, I just want to test these. And then I told them later on, like, hey, yeah, you know, I want all of the test data formatted a certain way so I can easily like parse the data and like present it online to everyone. They're like, oh, whoa, uh, we got to talk about that. If you're gonna do that, we want nothing to do with this. We don't want, because they know, like they're they're, you know, everyone in this industry on the back end is fully aware, unless they're ignorant, but like anyone who knows anything on the back end of these things is fully aware of how full of shit this industry is. And they were like, yeah, they they don't typically work in the car audio industry, they're more a commercial audio and ultra high-end home audio and like theater audio. Um, that's the type of company that's doing the the testing. Um and but they're familiar enough with the car industry to know how it gets. And they're like, yeah, we want none of the backlash that's gonna come from this. So don't name us, please. And thank you.
SPEAKER_01:They wanna they want to remain uh remain anonymous, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and which you know what, it's fine. At the end of the day, you know, again, I'll be the first, I'm not doing this clippable testing. I can't, I can't just go out and buy a clipple machine. They are so much goddamn money, it's not even funny. Um, so you know, I'm sending them off. We're doing these tests. And, you know, the other thing too, like I want to point it out right now, you know, some people are going to scream, oh, the test is biased. You know, you're just trying to uh make your product look good and blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, it's very important to understand what you're actually talking about. And what most people don't realize is that a clipple measurement is pretty much 100% automated. There is nothing that the operator can do to fudge the results. Nothing. The only thing you can do to fudge the results is change protection limits, which does not actually change the results. Uh, you input, you know, the the size of the driver, which again wouldn't really change the results. Um, or you can test one driver but slap the name of another driver on it. Like that's the only real way you could fudge results. Other than that, the whole process is fully automated. So, you know, again, here I am. I'm sending them in, you know, test them, send the data back, here we go. All I'm doing is hosting it and providing people uh a breakdown of what the data is in my subjective opinion, knowing what the data, you know, shows. That's it.
SPEAKER_01:So you're one of the only companies willing to publish the full raw data. When when is that going to be dropping?
SPEAKER_03:I know that you uh so my data is actually live as of this morning. Um if you go to the Resinix website, you'll see a little tab at the top menu that says subwoofer testing with a little new icon next to it. You can click on that. That whole page will be like the home page for the testing. On there, it has all the information about what the test is, how to interpret it, blah, blah, blah. But also at the top, there will be a link to the landing page for our Gus series subwooffers, which has the whole description. It has, you know, all of the updates for it, all like it pretty much is just like a blog of the subwoofer series. Uh, all of the data that I have for it is hosted on it. Um, the only data I'm missing right now is the distortion for the 12-inch because I'm getting the revision two of the 12-inch any day now. So I was like, you know what? I'm not even gonna bother writing about revision one because I'll have I'm gonna have to redo the data anyway. So I'm just waiting for that. But yeah, all of our Clippel LSI data is up there. All of our Clippel TRF uh distortion data is up there. Uh, all of the mechanical specs are up there, you know, and all the information about it, you know. Name any other car audio uh or even home audio uh driver that lists all of that. You you kind of can't. It doesn't really exist.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm just gonna put it up there.
SPEAKER_03:The cojones to do it. I mean, it's all that's always been my thing since day one, you know. It's I I have nothing to hide from people. Nothing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And you know, and I understand why companies don't do it is because their stuff doesn't it doesn't have the performance to to look good on a you know, on these graphs. And number two, you know, which some people will argue doesn't matter, but those people are gonna be fucking ignored, whatever. Um, but number two, the only thing that can really happen for the most part is for people to misinterpret your data and misunderstand it. Um, so I am, I do realize I'm opening a can of worms in a negative way. Like me posting my data can only fe give people fuel to ask questions or make assumptions in a negative manner for the most part. There's some people that would be like, oh, like that's good, but the the vocal minority, you know, are gonna be, it's all gonna be, oh, like look at that little thing, which they don't even understand in the first place, and they're gonna use it to, you know, try to tarnish it. Meanwhile, their favorite subwoofer performs like absolute dog shit, and they wouldn't have even known because they don't even publish it until we came along. So yeah. Um, one of the purchases right before we hopped into this phone call, I think I mentioned to you, one of the employees, one of the well-known employees of a very big and popular car audio company just made a post about me and my testing complaining about it. And uh I commented on it, I was like, you know, if you have complaints, bring your own data, you know, stop talking shit, you know, nut up and provide provide some real, real content, real data for us to actually work with here. Stop fucking crying about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sadly, that's one of the things about the internet is everybody has everybody has a voice. They could sit behind a uh a monitor, they could sit behind a screen and talk smack.
SPEAKER_03:You know, which is great. Like everyone having a voice is is awesome, you know. But at the same time, it gives everyone an equal voice, which I'm not saying is a bad thing, but it is kind of a bad thing when someone who has no idea what they're talking about can be equally as, you know, like I don't even know how to describe it, but I think you know what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01:I I would say almost like influential. A lot of people not so much influential, but a lot of people regurgitate misinformation or or they got things that are still stuck in the head, like they're recommending stiffening capacitors because they were their big thing back in the 90s, and it's like the a lot of people are still regurgitating that same stuff, or some people like, oh, focal focal tweeters are harsh, they're regurgitating. Have you ever heard of focal tweeter? They haven't even touched it.
SPEAKER_03:And maybe one of their entry-level ones on an untuned system.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's like any tweeter could be harsh if you tune it wrong. And I I I I tell anybody, you want to hear my system? I I have everything in my car is focal. You're not gonna hear a harsh tweeter.
SPEAKER_03:No, and I I actually loved your car when I heard it. Um yeah, I mean, like a perfect example of this is from last night. You know, there was a discussion going on on uh on Reddit, and you know, I someone was talking about like sound quality subwoofers that can also get loud. And I said, hey, you know, people were talking about, I'm not gonna name it, you know, because you guys will see the data. Um, you know, if you want to go and find this discussion on Reddit, uh there will be a little spoiler there if you want to dig it, dig it up. But you know, they're discussing, oh, there's certain subwoofer as, you know, this is the one, this is the one. And, you know, I have the data on it. It ain't the one. It is not the one. And I said, hey, just a heads up, I just tested that subwoofer. It's not very good. Uh, there's plenty of other better subwoofers out there, especially for the money. This one was ultra expensive and performed horrifically. Um, does have plenty of output, but from a sound quality perspective, it is an abomination. Um, and these two guys just went ape shit. And they start pile. Oh, this is how I know you're an idiot or you're biased or you're this or you're that. I'm like, really? Here's the data. Here's the distortion graph of that subwoofer, and here's the distortion graph of two other subwoofers that could compete against this. Which one are you going with? Neither of them had you know, both of them were very chatty up until that point, but none of them responded after that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You brought response figure, you know? Um it's just crazy. There's so many people that are so overly confident in what they think they know, myself included, everyone included, you know, everyone is overly confident in what they think they know, and nobody sits around and like asks questions anymore. And I think that's the biggest problem with with the internet is everyone makes assumptions, no one asks questions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I stopped giving advice because uh um, like I said, there's a lot of people on there that will get on there and start arguing with you and they don't even know what they're talking about. And you're I'm like, you know what, I just give up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's funny. It's really funny to uh, you know, I I get I use a lot of different marketing uh softwares for Resinix. And you know, one of the softwares gives me alerts whenever like keywords that I tag get mentioned. So I'll like I'll tag like my brand name or like my subwoofer names or you know, like certain sound deadening keywords, and like it'll it'll at the end of the day or like every so often, it'll give me a list of links, like hey, these keywords were mentioned in these certain areas. Obviously, I DIY mobile audio is on there all the time, so I'll click the links it gives me and I'll see some of the most nonsense information ever. And it's like, and I'm just sitting there, I'm like, oh my god, you people are so confident, but you are so incorrect.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_03:You are so incorrect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I see it all the time, and I just I take it with a grain of salt, but I've been around the block. But the the the sad truth about that is that the newbies or the people that aren't tech savvy are gonna take that as gospel.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. They're not able the the unf so this is why I'm very um outgoing, I guess we could say, with my advice and like very outgoing with like combating poor information, is because when I was new to this hobby, I fell trapped to all of that stuff on the DIY mobile audio forums. I eventually started working at my first like high-end shop, and I very quickly realized, oh my God, everything I thought I knew is wrong. And I I like kind of like got pissed about it at first. I was like, what the fuck? Like, what the fuck? Like, I thought all these people were supposed to be really smart. They speak, they they use such big words and they speak so technically. How how can this all be wrong? It it doesn't make any sense. And like my whole worldview on like car audio and everything, like it kind of exploded. And I had to, I like picked up the pieces and had to put everything back together and learn myself, like hands-on and you know, from other sources. So I know firsthand when people are giving bad advice, they're not hurting anybody that actually has a clue what's going on because those people read it and say, that's ridiculous, and move on with their life. It's the you know, like in strictly sound quality, the group that I help uh moderate, there's 15 or 16,000 people in there. I do it for the 15 or 16,000 people that don't really know and might pick up bad information because someone speaks with conviction, but it's not true. You know, they speak false information with conviction, and anything spoken with conviction sounds true. You know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I we've all fallen victim to it. So uh that's why uh you see some of the hardcore, you know, like it's funny because um, you know, getting the wrong data, getting the wrong specs, and whatnot. Now I s now I realize why a lot of us, myself included, we're constantly changing components like socks because we're reading this stuff, we're getting this this information, we're getting opinions, and people saying this, and people saying that. And and let's be honest, people probably even straight up lying about the quality of something, just so that there is a lot of that too.
SPEAKER_02:It's there is a lot of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, marketing hype. And you buy this stuff, and then you're like, shit, I'm gonna change these tweeters out. I'm gonna change and you know what? It's it's man, it's a lot of freaking experimenting, and that's why you kind of see, you know, a lot of the people, the people that know, uh you you'll see them all kind of using the same stuff. Yeah, you know. Oh, yeah, no, of course. You'll see people using the same subs, same tweeters, same, you know, m more or less, but you know, and you know, some people want to call that forum boners.
SPEAKER_03:And you know what? I actually have a different viewpoint on that. At the end of the day, if there is a known good product and it becomes like the quote unquote forum boner, even though it might not be the best, or even if it's like not great, even if it's like average, it's still like a known thing between like a larger uh group, but at the end of the day, like you know, it it should still it should still be put through the ringer. There's a lot of people that that follow stuff though. I'm kind of like being hypocritical from what I said literally two seconds ago. So like I I'm saying I understand the whole foreign boner thing, and I don't disagree with like the idea. Of like known good products and like kind of sticking to a small circle because, you know, it's not unknown territory, but at the same time, you know, there is a lot of bullshit. And again, I I monitor every website because again, these marketing softwares give me a lot of data and a lot of information to work with and and stuff to read and stuff to like tap into. And I I see this stuff from a 10,000-foot view. And I, you know, me again, being on the inside, like having the connections that I do, having the experience that I now do, like there's there's so much bullshit. It's it's so bad. And I I try my I try my best not to do it myself. You know, I'm I'm definitely not innocent of it because everyone does it, you know. Yeah, I'll be I'll be the first person to say, like, I'm only human, um, and everyone does it, but it's it's just so rampant these days. And something I've done, like, some people have like started to like again, like, not even started to, people have always said, Nick, that's all you do. And I I do have a counter argument for that. You know, I had someone the other day say, you know, anything that's not Helix, you know, Nick says is is bad. And I I kind of laughed at it. I was like, that's not true at all. As a matter of fact, if you want to talk about the Helix brand as a whole, most of it is not that good. It's only their DSPs and their processors, or sorry, processors are DSP. It's only their DSPs and their amplifiers that are good. There's a reason why I do not sell their speakers. There's a reason why I do not sell their subwoofers. Same thing with, you know, BLAN. There's a reason I only sell their mid-base drivers. The same thing with Steg. There's a reason I only sell certain products from it. Same thing with um, you know, with all of the products that I carry. I don't just load my website up with a bunch of products. I only pick and choose the ones that are, you know, okay. Like these are good. I know these are good and they have very good, you know, use cases to them. Outside of that, I'm like, yeah, you know what? I don't, I don't care about it. You know, but a lot of these people will dive into certain products and brands and like it's very obvious when they're doing it. It's like you're almost like you're trying to build up this brand because you're like either friends with the distributor or you are the distributor.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. There's I mean, there's nothing wrong with being brand loyal, but yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_03:There's there's um just when a product has like, you know, a 50% failure rate out of the box and you see half the forum talking about how great they are, it's like, yeah. Is it is it really? Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I think things, they always uh the chips always fall where they fall because um I know there was a lot of forum boners, you know, there's always been forum boners in the past, and and uh you'll see some speakers that are like, you know, the forum boner, and um um, I won't name any brands, but I've seen it where they, you know, this is the the the freaking uh the the flavor of the week, flavor of the month, flavor of the year, and then people start having problems with them, and uh they you know they you'll you'll see it kind of go by the wayside and it's not as popular anymore. And um that stuff kind that stuff kind of uh um what do they say, the the the the cream of the crop, the the best float to the top or whatever? Yeah, maybe. I mean, who knows?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, maybe, maybe now that there's actually a lot of testing, at least for subwoofers, once I release all this data. But before, you know, some of the worst performers are some of the highest suggested products.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's crazy. So speak getting back to your to your subwoofers now. So what are you doing? You got you got an eight, ten, twelve, fifteen. What's what's the lineup like?
SPEAKER_03:So for the Gus line of subwoofers, which is the shallow, small sealed, um, it is a 10, 12, and 15. We're gonna offer them in dual four ohm and possibly dual two ohm. And yeah. And then we're gonna do after that's released, we're going to do uh the heater line, which is named after my other cat. Um, the PTR line of subwoofers, which will be an ultra shallow uh subwoofer, which will be similar to you know, like the old illusion audio uh shallow subs with the magnet on the front. Uh we're gonna do something like that. And then we're also going to do a relatively shallow infinite baffle model, which will be the next question, yeah. Yeah, that's gonna be the Odin line of subwoofers, okay. Uh which is named after my uh good friend and warehouse manager's cat who unfortunately recently passed away in a house fire. Oh, uh yeah, we named it after after Odin, his cat.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, poor thing. So so what size is that one gonna be? Did you mention it?
SPEAKER_03:Uh we're doing a 15. So the the Peter is gonna be a 10 and a 12. Um, I thought about doing a 15, but that might just be too much. Um, and then the Odin will be a 15 and an 18 and possibly a 12. Nice, nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because uh yeah, I was gonna ask about infinite baffle because everybody um in the sound quality realm, that's a big thing now. So what what what um what makes a good subwoofer a good subwoofer? Like people I uh I'm sure people out there are curious as to what to look for and you know, not just upselling yours, but at the same time upselling yours. What what makes a good subwoofer for a car subwoofer a good subwoofer? Like what would all this fake um you know, smoke and mirrors that manufacturers put out and the specs, they're fibbing on the specs. What what how are people how do we even have a uh you know a freaking fighting chance to to figure out what's good?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so the short answer is you don't have a fighting chance unless they publish all of the data like we are. Um the thing that I learned going into, you know, I I had some pretty good knowledge going into it, but frankly, over the years, my knowledge on like speaker design has sort of like not speaker design, because I've never designed a speaker, but like the idea behind what makes a speaker good has sort of faded because obviously sound deadening has taken up my brain like the past two or three years. Um, but going back into this, I dusted off some cobwebs and I also learned a lot more to summarize it. If I had to provide a really quick answer, what makes a good subwoofer a good subwoofer is linearity. Linearity on motor force, uh, linearity on suspension, linearity on inductance, linearity on QTS. Um, you know, if you have Ed, have you ever seen a clipple uh set of clipple measurements?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So you know how it has like, you know, there's like a center point, and then there's usually like a line that swings from like a it's like an upside-down U-shape, yeah, essentially.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So the more this is very vaguely summarizing here. So please, people listening, don't pick this apart. I'm just trying to make this quick and easy. Um, you know, symmetrical, flat, wide, linear is important. BL, uh, which is motor force across stroke, is by far the most important. Uh, that's why most manufacturers are referring to 70% BL is like the industry standard for deriving uh usable X max. Um and then suspension and inductance are next, uh, both of which are also highly important. And what we, what I realized firsthand, like this is what they were telling me, like the engineers that I'm working with, like this is what they were telling me going into it. Like, no, like linearity is like super important. Like for us to, you know, all these discussions we had, I'm like, okay, like cool. Like, I guess, you know, I didn't really, I've never really had a subwoofer that was like this, and then a similar subwoofer that just didn't have as good of linearity across those uh different parameters. And I got to experience it firsthand, um, you know, with a few different subwoofers again that I have firsthand experience with. You know, I'll talk about these ones since, you know, again, they're discontinued, the Illusion Audio C12 XL, which was it's which is one of my favorite subwoofers to date. And then yesterday I got the data back on it, and it's not that good. Um, it's not linear, it is not symmetrical. Um, and one of the things, you know, I still have the 212s in the rear of my car, playing from 40 hertz and down. And one of the weird things that I always experienced with those is like, yeah, they will play low. Um, like my microphone picks up that they're playing down to, you know, 11 hertz, 10 hertz, something like that, uh, you know, flat. And uh, but the thing was, like, you hear these people talking about, oh, like, yeah, you don't feel it though. And it's like, yeah, but it's there, like, uh, it's like a it's like a tricky thing of like, are you feeling it because you have too much of it? And I learned firsthand, it's no, it's because they are nonlinear and they are compressing at eye excursion. And yeah, they are creating the sound, but once they start, you know, really getting some long throw under them, uh, they are not traveling in a linear fashion, which is really impacting what you actually experience. And uh yeah, I don't know if that answered that question.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no, that was perfect. That was a good answer.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and those those large signal parameters uh also impact distortion. You know, asymmetry and nonlinearity on all of these has different effects on harmonic distortion, intermodulated distortion, things like that. And, you know, our write-up on the subwoofer testing homepage has all of that information. Uh, there's also a cheat sheet that Clipple has that tells you what all of these nonlinearities and asymmetries cause as far as distortion goes.
SPEAKER_01:So, what do you think of um, you know, infinite baffle versus sealed in a car? What do you uh what's your take on that?
SPEAKER_03:Like, so it's really funny you ask that. I had my I had my own opinion on this, uh, which was it doesn't matter as long as the QTC of the system is the same, you know, because it's kind of at the end of the day, uh infinite baffle is behaving as a sealed enclosure, right? It's just an infinite size sealed enclosure. Um and what's really happening is the the engineer that's working on my subs is probably gonna listen to this and he's gonna be like, Nick, you're butchering this. What are you doing? Um, you should have him on here. That would be exciting. That'd be fun. Um and I'm sure he'd be willing to. And I'm sure most people would actually be familiar with him. But, anyways, um the the the whole thing is at the end of the day, when you're just when you're designing a driver, you have, you know, you have your motor force, you have your you know, equivalent air suspension, you have all these different parameters. And at the end of the day, the QTC of the final system, the driver plus the enclosure, is what you're gonna hear. That's it. So at the end of the day, it really just comes down to what the driver is doing in that specific enclosure. So if if we're able to achieve the same thing in a different enclosure, it it's relatively you know the same. That was my opinion before going into this. After I got this, you know, coming out of it and asking these guys these questions to summarize it, I am still under the same impression. This whole idea that infinite baffle is this quote unquote special thing is I'm generalizing here, but trying to keep it short. It's bullshit. It really is. Um, what really makes infinite baffle special is the fact that there are good subwoofers designed for infinite baffle. That's it. Nothing more. I realized that the second I was testing uh audio mobile subwoofers and our prototype. And I was like, oh, this this like you know, this low end that you like feel like it pressurizes your cabin, as people say. It's not coming from infinite baffle specifically. It's not coming from more cone area, does it? But like the cone area itself is just creating more output, but like it's not coming from that. It's coming from linearity. You know, these infinite baffle subwoofers that are very, very popular with Infinite Baffle that we tested are amazing subwoofers. They're incredible, they have amazing linearity. I just sent the clipper report for one of them to Aaron Hardison uh last night. We were talking on the phone for like an hour and a half about this testing that we did. And um, you know, we were just catching up, we're old friends, and you know, we got into the test and you know, we started nerding out on stuff. I started sending him some of the PDFs that I had. And he, you know, I sent him one of the uh acoustic elegance subs and he looked at it and he went, holy shit, that's a good subwoofer. And I was like, Yeah, you know, so it's like go figure, you know, no wonder that that it sounds like that. It's not Infinite Baffle doing it. It is a really good driver in its appropriate application doing it. If you do, you know, a really well-designed subwoofer that's designed for small sealed, you will experience the exact same thing. The thing is, there are no subwoofers that are designed for small sealed that do the exact same thing. The only ones that were doing it were the audio mobile encores, and they're no longer made. I don't think they will be made ever again. I'm assuming. I I don't know if that's true or not. Uh and now our subwoofers do the same thing. We have excellent linearity across, you know, across stroke. And I have that you you heard my car at the get together recently, right?
SPEAKER_01:Actually, I didn't. I was uh I was giving demos of my car, and I was like Oh my god, I wish you did. I know, I wish I did too. I wanted to hop in, but I think you had to go to a wedding or something like that. Yeah, I did. I did.
SPEAKER_03:I went to two weddings that weekend. It was crazy. Um yeah, and I was only there for like three hours. I was ended, I ended up being like a little late. My girlfriend was pissed at me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I did hear good stuff. I uh Mike was uh raving about it, and everybody that heard it said really good stuff about it.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, you can ask Ryan about it, you can ask uh Chris Pierce about it, you can ask, you know, uh Braden, you know, has a really long and in-depth review about it uh on the on the forums. Um, all of them said the same thing. Are you sure you don't have your rear subs hooked up right now? And the thing was, like that 112 was doing better low-end extension than my two C12 XLs in the rear were doing. Now, sure, there's a little bit more cabin gain in like the front passenger footwell than there is from the trunk, but my car and my trunk are very small and the distances are very similar, so it's really not that much of a difference. Like both of these, all these people get in, they're like, there's no, there's no fucking way. It's just that single 12. I even had to show somebody that uh that my 12s in the rear were unplugged, they weren't even plugged in. Uh that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what were you getting? How many watts?
SPEAKER_03:Uh 600. 600?
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. About that. Um, and I I did it with uh half of a cubic foot enclosure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I saw the box. It was wicked small. So is this is this uh I know you're in prototype phase, but is that one that you brought to the event? Is that gonna be the final iteration?
SPEAKER_03:Or are you still that was that was revision one. Um we have a few things to fix on it. So the way the way like proper subwoofer design goes is you you do like engineering drawings, like you simulate it. Like there's different softwares where you can simulate uh you know different motor topologies and like motor designs and like suspensions and things like that, and you can simulate how the motor is going to behave, how the suspension is gonna behave, and you can kind of piece that all together in these various softwares. So you simulate it and then you build your prototype. Most of the time, or sometimes, um, you know, I can't speak for most of the time. I I've never designed more or helped with designing more than one subwoofer before. Uh, but like apparently, most of the time, the simulations are very close to the real world uh that you that you build of it. Um, but it's usually not a hundred percent spot on. So you you simulate it, you build a prototype, you see the little differences that are kind of that need to be fixed, and then you do a revision and you just keep going from there. Um, so we're doing revision two right now, and there will be slight improvements. Um notably, we had to we had a slight asymmetry with, I think it was the suspension um end with the BL. I'm talking like very slight, but again, if it's like if it's as simple as just shifting the you know moving assembly by two millimeters, then okay, do it. Great. You get more X max, you get better, better linearity and you get better uh symmetry. Great. You know, we just reduced distortion a little bit further. Um, and all it takes is just slight changes. Um, so to see to like do that and see how easy it was for us to do that, again, seeing the results on all these different subwoofers and being like, how the hell do you guys have you know asymmetries of up to 10 millimeters and you know nonlinearities that make these BL curves look like you know mountains? It it just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't compute to me. Um I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, that's because a lot of a lot of companies are you know, they'll make a they'll make a speaker and then they'll use the same motor on different size speakers, which is a common I I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know if people will do that. I I really can't speak to that. Um I I you know I obviously I don't know what's going on internally with most of these subs. We're not disassembling them, uh we're just measuring them and that's it, you know. Um, but yeah, it's uh it's a very sad state out there in the car audio industry right now, as far as you know, performance goes and what is actually being shown. But yeah, I mean, you know, we had the one prototype in in the front passenger footwell, half a cubic foot, and it it did amazing. And it blew my mind at first when I started listening to the to our prototype. I was like, uh, do I like this? I was like, something is different about this. I don't, I don't know if I like this. And I was like, all right, let me let me like put it through its paces really quick. And I realized after a few minutes, I was like, oh, there's just a lot more content. I'm like, it's weird. It's measuring the same, but there is a lot more content. And that is where I proved to myself that I was wrong about something previously. I used to argue, I was like, eh, it's measuring down there, like it must be playing it again. Yeah, sure, it kind of is, but it's not doing it in a linear fashion, which will again reduce performance in a myriad of ways. Um, you know, it can add distortion, it can cause compression, it can, you know, you'll get those frequencies kind of, but like not actually fully produced. But the microphone will pick it up as pressure down there, but you won't actually get that pressure. So, you know, again, to go back, I know we I just rambled for a while and completely went on a tangent and changed subjects, but to go back to your topic of like, you know, is infinite baffle different than small seal? Yeah, the enclosure is different. But as long as all other things are equal, which isn't really possible, but let's just assume they are, um, then yeah, they they could sound and perform exactly the same. You know, the only thing that's different about infinite baffle is you will have a much uh higher uh or much higher like efficiency as far as power goes. For the small seals, you'll need much more power to get the same output with the same low-end uh extension in that small enclosure. That's it. If you can apply all that power, it there's no difference.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've heard I've heard good infinite baffle and I've heard good good sealed subwoofers. So um, you know, it's pick your poison, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, and again, it just to again to summarize it really quick. Um, it's just as simple as good subwoofer versus bad subwoofer. This whole obsession of infinite baffle, it it's really just coming down to, you know, Ed, do me a favor, name three subwoofers for me that are common to use in Infinite Baffle.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, let's see, Acoustic Elegance. Uh really can't think of any others. Okay, exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Guess what? Acoustic elegant subs are fucking amazing. Yep, yep. That's that's the answer, you know. That that really, really genuinely is the answer. You know, I'm trying to think of like and they have a wait list to boot. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, they it they're they're very good. They're very, very good subwoofers, and that's what people are hearing. Again, if we had an equal subwoofer but designed for small sealed, you would hear the same thing. You know, that's it. It's really what it comes down to.
SPEAKER_01:So when can people get their hands on the on the gus? What is it? The gus, the Peter, and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The Gus is the first one that we're doing. I'm not gonna release all of them at the same time. Uh, I realize that would be absolutely insane because it would be the most ridiculous financial burden I could possibly imagine for myself. Um but we're we're doing the gus first because that is the most important one, I think. Um, you know, small sealed, shallow, like duh, high excursion, low distortion. Everyone's gonna love that. That could be used in so many applications. So that one, we are, if all goes well, we should have them available, ready to ship to customers by late April or early May. But again, that's if everything goes well. Who knows? Something might happen where, you know, in production we find something that needs to be fixed, or I'm not happy with a finish on the cone, or, you know, we're not happy with um who knows? There's there's or a supplier for like, you know, the the the rubber ring, that rubber trim ring didn't come through and was late on delivering, you know, those. Like, who the hell knows? There's a million things that could go wrong. Maybe the the boat that's bringing it over from overseas got, you know, got nuked. Who the hell knows? There's a million things that could uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:If you're getting it from Venezuela or something and you get uh um accused of uh importing drugs or something, oh there goes a pallet, there goes a pallet of the gus. What is it that what's what's the full name of this of the first one? It's the gus. Gus. Oh, it's just gus.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, which is it is named after my cat, uh first and foremost, but I do have an appropriate like other name for it. It stands for geometrically uncompromised subwoofer. And the reason for that is geometrically, meaning it's small, it's shallow, but at the same time, the geometric, like the design of the motor, the suspension, like everything about this subwoofer is uncompromised. You know, we are doing something that is shallow, but at the same time, we're not compromising the motor geometry, the suspension, the inductance, the QTS, all of it is is industry leading, you know? Um, so yeah, that's what prompted the name for the Gus besides my cat.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome, man. So let everybody know where they can find you. Uh drop some websites, drop some uh, I'll post some links up once we finish with this, but if you can let the audience know where they can find you.
SPEAKER_03:You know, resonxoundsolutions.com. Um, you know, you can go on the website, you can see all of the information on there. Like I said, if you go to the website, you'll see the subwoofer testing in the main menu. If you go there, you will see a link towards the top of the home article for that testing that will bring you to the Gus series landing page. And that landing page has all of the info, everything from all of the descriptions, the expected pricing, um, the TS parameters, the distortion graphs, the LSI graphs, the mechanical drawings and specs, um, you know, the renderings, you know, some photos uh of like the prototypes, you know, all sorts of stuff we have. Uh, you can also see us on Facebook, which is where we post a lot of updates, you know, Instagram too. Um, you know, we're we're all over the place.
SPEAKER_01:Good stuff, good stuff, man. So yeah, we got a lot of content, Nick. I think we're gonna wrap it up unless you got any. Man, I thought we were just starting. Yeah, we got almost an hour and a half of uh some good info here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Wow, it's been an hour and a half already.
SPEAKER_01:Uh oh, an hour, yeah, yeah. Well, I got an hour and twenty of content, and uh then we had to set this thing up, this whole this whole baby up with uh Zoom and Google and yeah, whatever else. We were trying to get a clear signal.
SPEAKER_03:But uh as as I tell everyone, I'm always okay with going on if you want more. Uh or we can wrap it up if you want. Um I'm open to either.
SPEAKER_01:No, if you if you got anything else to add, I I don't even know. Uh it's it's not me. It's not my podcast. It's uh it's you. Yeah, I mean, anything you wanna anything you want to bring up, anything you got left or anything you think you missed.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, yeah let's go back to some of the testing. Um you know, I I do want to put this out there before it's actually released. Um, yeah, the homepage for the testing is released, but none of the data is released yet. The reason why I wanted to do that is purely so people can start reading about what the test is, why it was done, how it was done, what the data is, how to interpret the data. All of this context is extremely, extremely important. The last thing I want is for people, is for like all this data to just be dropped and people to like, oh yeah, all right, cool. And they don't even understand it anyway. Like, let's be real. How many people know how to understand a full suite of clipple measurements? They don't. Like 99% of people, even the extreme hobbyists, don't. This article explains all of that info. So even if you don't want to read all this, you just want to see the results. I promise you, if you read this article, um, you know, that homepage, you are going to learn a lot of information about how speakers work and how all these super advanced, you know, high-level uh measurement systems are working and how they're measuring these different parameters. Um and at the same time, I also want to get out there, please, please, please, when these results drop, again, it's only relative to the context of this test. Um, it's not the end all be all. We, you know, we did our best with what we had. You you you know, listeners might hear this and then see our testing and be like, oh, but they didn't do this, or they, you know, that's not what I would have done. Great.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Unfortunately, that for you that comes with the territory. You didn't pay for this test. There's there's labor costs that are associated with this test. And I had we had to make a judgment call of like what we did and like what was being paid for. And then not only that, not just like the labor costs for the test, but also how much data I personally would have to parse through and then write about. Ed, I have over 50,000 words being written for these articles combined. Wow.
SPEAKER_01:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03:It is it is insane. It is the largest undertaking of content creation that I have ever, ever, ever done by far. It's been so stressful. Um, it's mentally taken me to like high highs and low lows. It's been a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01:Um no pun intended.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. And and I'll even explain like what I'm anticipating. One of the one of the judgment calls that we made for this test was, you know, we did two levels of distortion measurements. You know, most people will see a distortion measurement, and it's usually at 2.83 volts at one watt, one meter, or like one watt, one meter, or two point eight three volts at one meter, right? That's like the industry standard. Um, or you know, with subwoofers, you don't do one meter, you do it near field because room modes. But anyways, what we did was we did two measurements. One was at one volt near field, and another one was at just at or just below, uh, I think it was just below. Uh yeah, just below the 70% B, the measured 70% BL X max limit that we found on that sample. So we applied enough voltage to get this thing. Going just to where its 70% BL was being approached. And we did a distortion measurement at that level. And here's the thing. Obviously, we have, you know, let's say 40 different subwoofers. These subwoofers range from super low power handling with super low excursion all the way up to super high power hand power handling with, you know, gobs of excursion, right? And I already see it where people are going to be like, yeah, you tested this subwoofer with 40 volts and you tested this one with 10. Like, how is that comparable? The thing is, I did want to do four levels of voltage testing. I wanted to do one volt. I wanted to do eight volt. I wanted to do just below uh 70% excursion, and I wanted to do a voltage level that would bring it to manufacture-stated X max. We started looking at the labor, we started looking at what I was going to do for the write-ups, and it was going to make my life a living hell and make things extremely expensive. It already was extremely expensive, but I'm talking way more expensive. So what they proposed, what the engineers proposed, was like, look, let's just do this. Let's measure it at one volt. And let's also measure it at, you know, just at its 70% BL excursion. And from there, you know, at the end of the day, people are not going to take a super, people are not going to pick a super high excursion, super high power handling uh subwoofer if they don't need much output. And they, they, and I was like, yeah, like, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like, you know, who's going to go for, you know, like a JL Audio W7 if they only need 110 dB of output? Like, you know, at the low end. That's like not going to happen. So it's like, oh yeah. So it's like more like, okay, we have low-level baseline and then use case distortion. Um, and then from there, we are able to not perfectly, but at least closely extrapolate, you know, how much uh how well, you know, these different drivers are weighted from, you know, the amount of distortion they have relative to the amount of excursion they have. Um, and again, the the article that I have currently up explains all of this. We do have a like performance score sheet that we will be doing for every subwoofer. This performance score sheet is not end-all be all. It is my subjective interpretation of the objective data. And that like weighted distortion to X max is part of it uh to give the subwoofers that have more excursion uh higher reward and the drivers that have super low excursion, you know, a little bit of a penalty. Um but, anyways, you know, just look at this as data. It is your responsibility to interpret that data in a way that is um, you know, usable, in a way that is fair. I do my best at explaining things, but at the end of the day, again, I did my best to be neutral about everything. But, you know, some people are gonna have different opinions. Other manufacturers whose products are included in this are definitely gonna have certain opinions about this. They're just not gonna be happy because their products didn't do well. Like I said, I already had an employee, a tech support employee of one company, you know, 15 minutes before we started this podcast, make a Facebook status about, you know, oh, like let me, you know what? I'm just gonna read it right now. I don't care.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's gonna be just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg, once you, once all this data gets out there.
SPEAKER_03:He said, ah, these new car audio kids that bash all their customers, fellow installers and manufacturers, because they're so smart and ask us to respect their data and upcoming products, so we'll buy them. Bless your chart hilved, ha ha. And then uh apparently he made an edit here because this wasn't added before. Golden rule, respect your audience and they will respect you, degrade your audience, and even if you're right, they'll denounce you. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not denouncing any audience here. I'm just, you know, putting up uh putting up data of products.
SPEAKER_01:And that's it. Yeah, so you're gonna fluff some feathers and disappoint some people because they're gonna, you know, they're they're they're loyal and they think they're, you know, some people don't know what they don't know, so they're gonna think that, hey, my subwoofer sounds good to my ears, but on paper it's not showing, you know what I mean? But yeah, and I actually, you know what?
SPEAKER_03:That's actually great that you bring that up, and I'm sorry to cut you off.
SPEAKER_01:No, not at all, man.
SPEAKER_03:Because I really wanted to bring that up and I totally forgot. There is a section of this article that discusses exactly that. I already know I'm gonna have a ton of people whose favorite subwoofer gets absolutely annihilated in this, you know. Because you know, because again, I'm familiar with who is recommending what and how passionate they are and you know how these subwoofers performed, they're gonna be pretty, they're gonna say they're gonna come out and say, uh, you know, I don't care what the data says, I use my ears. Well, good luck with that. You know, good luck with that. If that's what you want to do, that's great. But at the end of the day, just because you have a preference towards high distortion nonlinear subwoofers doesn't make them accurate. It just makes it that you like it. Or are not even like it, used to it. Like I said before, when I first got my subwoofer, my prototype installed, I wasn't sure if I even liked it at first because I wasn't used to all of that extra linearity that was that wasn't there on the C12 XLs. The C12XLs had pretty bad asymmetry and pretty bad linearity. Um, and I wasn't used to this truly accurate uh end result. Yeah, they had low distortion and they sounded tight and they sounded clean, but they didn't have true linearity. And uh, and I, you know, if you presented this to me, oh yeah, that C12XL actually does really bad, I probably would have been like one of those people like, uh, I don't, I don't know, man. I really don't know. But I I'm experiencing it firsthand. I changed my own opinions on certain things throughout this entire test, and I discussed that as well in this article. Um, but yeah, there's gonna be plenty of people that denounce this testing, either because they're loyal to a brand, or they're an affiliate of the brand, or they're an employer of the brand, or they own the brand, or they're just a fucking idiot fanboy. You know, there's gonna be all sorts of people who denounce it for various reasons. At the end of the day, again, it's a third party that tested this stuff. The clipple machine, the hardware and the software is fully automated. There's nothing we can do to really fudge this. Um, and if you disagree, you know, go do your own testing or keep living in ignorance. I don't, I don't care. It doesn't change anything. Um, and one thing to also keep in mind, too, again, a lot of these brands are probably gonna try to denounce it. I can name two of them right now that I know for a fact are gonna go ape shit because their owners are very vocal people and they are not gonna like these results.
SPEAKER_01:Anyways, people already there it there's already uh a little bit of kerfuffle over on the forums, on the Dyma forum, and I started to read.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe I I don't know, but I already I know specifically two company owners are gonna go ape shit. Um, and I'll tell you after we get off the recording. I'll tell you exactly who they are, and you're gonna we're gonna we're gonna have a little inside joke later. Sure, sure. Anyways, um, at the end of the day, this is something to also keep in mind. You we talked about before a lot of these manufacturers don't release these specs. Here is the thing. I guarantee you any halfway respectable manufacturer has these specs for their subwoofers. They just do not make them public for one reason or the other. Reason number one is that the product is dog shit and they don't want to put that out there publicly, right? Reason number two is what I'm experiencing people misinterpreting data that they don't even understand in the first place and just running wild with it. And they say, oh, like, you know, your sub has, you know, 4% distortion with, you know, 26 volts applied to it. That's a lot. It's like, yeah, that's a lot. You should see these other subwoofers that have 25% distortion with 20 volts applied to them. So it's it's kind of, you know, they have nothing to compare to. You give them ammo, they only shoot at you, you know. But again, uh I'm rambling and I'm going all over the place. But again, most important thing to keep in mind here, all of these brands have this data. They are gonna come out and they are gonna try to defend things. Just ask them, okay, release your data. Provide me with something that shows that what I have here is not true. I guarantee you most of them will not. If not, all of them will not. And you know what? I'm also I have it on the page too. Like if there's any company owners that see this and like disagree with our testing, like they know for a fact something is up. Um, you know, maybe this very specific sample is like not measuring correctly. Maybe it's a bad sample, which I we highly doubt because that doesn't really happen. But you know what? You have some sort of disagreement with uh with the results, email me. I will purchase a brand new one, I will send it in again, and we'll test it again, and we will put the second test up.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I guarantee you people are gonna that that was one of the things that was on the back of my mind that people have been, they're gonna be like, oh, how many samples did you test of, you know, let's say um, I don't know, I'll pick a I'll pick a woofer, like you said, if they're not in business anymore, but uh audio mobile, uh Evo subwoofer, 10-inch, whatever, and they're gonna be like, oh, you you don't have enough samples. There's gonna be people ever, you know, everybody's gonna be uh in the grandstands with their own opinion, and they're gonna be like, look, this is the this is the subwoofer. You should be able to pick us uh any manufacture subwoofer out of that lineup if they have good quality control.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so actually that's a really good point. So here is something to keep in mind too. Subwoofers are the easiest design, uh, easiest driver to design and to manufacture. They are, with them being so large and then producing you know low frequencies that are not as sensitive to small manufacturing mistakes. It's very difficult to have a subwoofer like one sample that's going to measure totally different from another sample. The only way that happens is if you have garbage quality control. Garbage.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Like absolute dog shit manufacturing, dog shit quality control. Um, it it just does not happen. So if you see a manufacturer put that out there as an excuse, that is another red flag because it it's not how it works. It's not how it works. Um, you know, you could have convinced me that maybe before I went into this, but again, I I learned a lot going into this. I had so many questions. And these guys, again, like explain to me how all this works. And again, to summarize that part, like there are no real major tolerances from sample to sample. There'll be small ones, obviously, but like nothing crazy. And if there are red flag on its own, major red flag. Um, so I don't know, you know, and that's something maybe uh again, if if you know, we I do want to talk about and like announce and you know be proud of who I worked with on this subwoofer again because I I do want to give credit to my friend who did the design on it. I do want to give credit to these guys. I'm super proud that I'm working with them. It's not that I'm keeping it hidden. I'm keeping it hidden because they don't want to be involved in the drama of this. Not that they're tied to the the testing really, but they did do the designs of my subwoofer. Um and uh, you know, maybe if you get one of those guys on, you know, they can tell you firsthand about you know manufacturing tolerances and what you experience across clipple testing five different samples of the same model. It, you know, you can get it firsthand from someone like that. Uh, I'm sure they would love to talk about that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. See if we can get that person on. He could come on anonymous. I'll set him up.
SPEAKER_03:He would probably love to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that'd be great. Because I I I got a lot of questions. I'd love to know. I'm sure the audience out there would love to hear what they have to say too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Um, I'll ask them. I'll ask them if they want to. Uh, so yeah. Um, I don't know. I mean, again, there's there's so many, so many aspects to this whole thing. Again, the testing is the testing, the data is the data. It is the viewer's responsibility to educate themselves on it. I provide all the resources to do so. Um, you know, any company that wants to disagree with it, I invite you to present me something different and let's work together to come up with a solution to get proper data. Uh, if you think ours is improper on your product. And uh yeah, you know, good luck. See you in the battlefield.
SPEAKER_01:Good stuff, Nick. I think uh yeah, I think we should wrap it up and uh call it a day. Put a bow on this. So, Nick, thank you for coming on to everybody. Say thank you to Nick. Woo, thanks. Crowd's going crazy. All right, Nick, hang on. I'm gonna wrap this up. All right, hang on one second.