Wolf Wave Audio

This was an adventure. Semi-8th (will explain) order bandpass enclosure for a blow-through setup using a single 12" SSA XCON sub.

This enclosure starts with a traditional 6th order parallel bandpass, then combines both ports into a tuned third port. If this were a true 8th order bandpass, these two ports would feed into a third chamber before porting out to cabin. Originally the design was going towards a full 8th order, but unfortunately there was not quite enough space to fully implement it.

This project was completed almost two months ago. Sitting behind the rear seats of a 2004 Nissan Xterra it features a 12" Insignia NS-P2000 powered off of a 1000 W 2 channel Rockford Fosgate amp. To keep the box as compact as possible the port was wrapped around the rear bevel which proved a pain to construct. Box was left unfinished. I have uploaded a cliché bass video in which it is both difficult to see things vibrating and impossible to actually hear any bass due to using my phone's camera and mic. Rest assured that the performance is quite adequate considering the driver runs a whole $40....Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3GzVm1RzPI

2004 Dodge Quad Cab install featuring a Wolf Wave Audio custom sub enclosure. Here space was at a premium so a super compact sealed box was selected. To make the most of the small volume the cabinet is filled with loose packed polyfill which trades a small amount of dampening for an effectively larger volume (as seen by the woofer). Inside this little guy we have a first gen Alpine Type R which does have superior sealed characteristics compared to its newer brothers. Also installed up front was a pair of JL 6.5" components, with the woofers replacing the factory drivers and custom mounted tweets near the A-pillar. Everything is powered off of a 4 channel Phoenix Gold amp. Overall a great improvement compared with the factory system.

So I've been told that build pictures are nice so here we are. Two center console boxes ready for some final paint.

On the right we have a box which goes between the two front seats of my roommate's 93 Astro Van. It features two 6" JL 6W0s which have shown to be great little subs. Anyone who has heard this box can attest to it's surprising amount of grunt. If your wondering why it's three different colours, well... Originally we were going to paint the box a bright neon orange (cause why not), but the only such paint we could find didn't really work. Somehow it had a very bad reaction to either primer or the thickness we were trying to apply and it instantly cracked an caused quite the mess on the top. So now the box will be purple (cause again why not) as you can see from the test patch on the side.

On the left we have a small box which is going in the middle foot well of a 2004 Dakota Quad cab. It will be running a first gen (classic) 10" Alpine Type R. Having only worked with the second and third generation of this driver, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the original has superior TS characteristics to it's older brothers. Since space was an issue here, a small sealed design was drawn up. To help compensate for the small airspace, then enclosure is getting packed with poly-fill which gives effectively 20% more internal volume from the driver's perspective. The trade of being a small increase in dampening which will slightly lower overall output, but will produce a more consistent range.

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This was a bit of a beast. I call this monstrosity an asymmetric series tuned dual reflex bandpass enclosure. This one is designed to work with two MTX TN12-02 12" subs.

These drivers put up a really good fight. They did not perform well in sealed, ported, or 4th and 6th order bandpasses. The solution found here was to produce an asymmetric layout. This provided the much needed gain mid range (~50Hz) which all the other setups were seriously lacking. Cheaper drivers sometimes need a bit of extra coaxing.

So what do can you do if your driver just does not want to perform well in a sealed or bass-reflex (ported) enclosure? One option is the wonderful world of bandpass enclosures. Here is a 6th order cabinet designed for a 3rd generation (the current one) 12" Alpine Type R.

Simple bandpass enclosures feature either a sealed or bass reflex cabinet on one side of the driver (I will call the rear of the driver), and a ported cabinet on the other (front). Since the output from each port individually acts as a relatively narrow bandwidth bandpass filter, it is possible to tune each such that they superimpose to create a more desirable wide bandwidth filter. The major downsides to this however is the increase in cabinet size, and perhaps a prematurely low cutoff frequency at the upper end. The system here for example will require additional midbass response from the mids/woofers to compensate. In a house system this is not an issue, as towers and even most bookshelves have decent response down to the 60-80Hz range, and the sub is just there for the low grunt, however in a car system this can leave holes in the sound which may be far more noticeable than a +- 6dB wave in response amplitude from a standard ported box.

Two fresh center console designs. The first (lighter coloured one) is for the rear bench of a 4-door GMC Canyon. It utilizes a 10" Kicker CompRT driver which was selected due to it's relatively small compliance volume, and lower driver depth. The other enclosure is for 6 six in JL 6W0-4 going between the front seats of a 95 Astro van. These are great little drivers that do not require much space. Unfortunately JL charges quite a bit for their newer 6" drivers which replaced this model.

So in the interest of building some sort of cabinet to showcase what WWA is all about, I'm going to start a budget bookshelf build. The goal is to see if a set of HiFi quality bookshelves can be built for under $100. After scouring the internet looking for the perfect drivers for this project, a set of Goldwood GW-S650/4 6-1/2" woofers and a set of Dayton Audio DC28F-8 1-1/8" Silk Dome Tweeters seem to fit the requirements.

The rather large cabinet (9.5" x 14.25" x 22.25") was necessary to flatten the mids out (this was the largest issue with the budget drivers). The -3 dB drop from 30 Hz - 40 Hz it still quite reasonable for such small cabinets and woofers. The selected tweeters should come in near 1400 Hz which bypasses the need for a dedicated mid-range driver.

Crossover design will wait for physical measurements to maximize end quality of the cabinets.

These are all from around 2010 and 2011. Mind the poor camera, these were taken with an old flip phone. Will be uploading new work as it comes.

Hello, this is Kevan Bell, founder of WWA. Some of you may know that I've been building speaker cabinets for some time now (on and off for roughly 8 years now). Over the years I have accrued a great wealth of knowledge on the topic, but continue to learn as much as I can. I have started this page to help organize my projects, as well as to drum up new customers. If you or someone you know are looking to build a speaker cabinet, such as a sub, a set of bookshelfs, or some towers, let me know, and we can discuss your design. If you are in the area (Edmonton, Alberta) we could also discuss the possibility of building the cabinet.