It’s Just Cool: Dodecasub
By J.R. Bluett
Drool…. What else can you say about something that contains ten 10″, 600W, subwoofer speakers and could quite possibly cause the DIYer in all of us to choke on the geometry? For more info on the remarkable properties of the Dodecasub speaker cabinet, check out this video.
Buying the Dodecasub will set you back $2,500, and building it could fry your nerves — but the fact that it’ll let you crank the bass in your shop, without your neighbors calling the cops, might be worth it.
Dodecasub [Elemental Designs]
March 27th, 2008 at 11:48 am
This is similar:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-cost-Spherical-Speaker-Array/
and this
http://www.electrotap.com/hemisphere/history.shtml
March 27th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
That looks awesome. I wonder how it sounds.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
$2,500? Probably an ok deal, but I’d bet it could be built for much less with a few sheets of MDF and 10 subs. Would suck for space, though. I’d rather just have a 12″ in each corner of the room, or even a well-placed pair.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:55 am
[...] This Dodecasub makes a great DIY project for a Toolmonger, but cutting the angles can be a problem. After reading this post on the All-In-One Clamp, and this post on the MilesCraft Saw Guide, I still had no solution for how to cut long, straight lines that’re at odd angles to the edge of a board. A table saw with the guide set at an angle will do the trick, but here’s a way to manage it if your shop hasn’t grown that big yet. [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 10:52 am
The Electrotap hemisphere is a full (actually midbass and above) range device using two way car speakers. This is a subwoofer. The Instructables project is an interesting starting point for the same. The D1 weighs about 80lb without drivers, and the drivers are Elemental Designs 11kv2. A fully loaded cabinet is well over 200lbs.
Yes, materials cost is much less. However, after you build the first three or four cabinets and figure out how to make the cabinets well the cost does go up. We call that “value added”.
We hit 119dB at 21Hz, 138dB at 53Hz, 148dB at 76Hz and the limit was the 2500W amp shutting down. More power would get a +3dB bump but more than that and you’d have to run PA amps off dedicated 240V circuits. In my experience almost no one has actually experienced 110dB at 20Hz in a room. In a car, not really too much of a problem.
At lower SPL the sound is definitely different from a single-driver sub. Each driver stays pretty much at the neutral position, which means very low distortion.