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Passive Radiator Subwoofer thoughts...

TheThreat

New Member
Lately I have been toying with the idea of building a small-medium subwoofer and I came across Jeff Bagby's Baby Boomer. It's a ~1cf 10" sub and interestingly it's available either ported or with a pair of Passive Radiators. So obviously I fell down a rabbit hole of reading opinions on PRs, how they compare to ported and sealed, etc. I've owned a couple different PR speakers including Kef C55s and currently my B&W DM3000.

The more I've read the more I think these might be a good solution for me. I'm looking for something 1-1.5 cf, and can play to 35-ish. Use is 100% music. I've been playing with WinISD and in order to get something like that with a sealed I would need a boatload of boost. With ported my port length is getting long, expanding the size of my box and introducing port noise. With PRs I'm able to hit 33-34 hz in <=1.5cf and without port noise, without any wild EQ. But what other tradeoffs am I in store for?

I've been playing with WinISD and tracking it with a Google Sheet different combinations of DCS255-4, DCS305-4, DS215-PR, DS270-PR, and DS305-PR just to see what I can do. One question I keep coming back to is how much added mass is too much? 50g? 100g? 500g? It doesn't seem like its a spec published, but there's obviously a practical limit. It doesn't seem practical to add a pound of weight to each PR, but maybe half that?

Now I've come this far and finding it difficult to narrow it down much further but I'm gravitating towards :

  1. DCS305-4 with 2xDS270-PR in a 1.5 cf box
  2. DCS255-4 with 2xDS315-PR in a 1.25cf box
They both seem to have really similar results, but I'm getting awfully close to the excursion limits at maximum power.

Has anyone had luck building something similar? I'd love to see your projects.
 
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Parts Express sells a flat pack cabinet for a sub and two passive radiators. If you dont mind assembling the cabinet. Not much to it really, some glue and clamps.
 
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