The Mad Hammer gets out pounded…

So in the last post I said something was missing… SUBS!

Today completes 99.9% of the audio setup for the room.  The .1% is me swapping out the cooling fan on the Behringer iNuke 1000DSP that’s driving the subs.  The amp is not marketed for home theater use so it has a surplus Lockheed wind tunnel fan in it that is ungodly loud.  A lower RPM fan with quieter bearings is on the way.  I will say though, for $200, this thing has balls.

I was originally going to build a Marty Cube with an 18″ sub, but was talked into leveraging a stockpile of ‘Polk’ 10’s a friend has.  They are some how ‘out of spec’ surplus type stock, but I ain’t complaining!  Once I got both enclosures built (minus a LOL inducing wiring error pictured) I plugged in the laptop and fired up the DSP software and started playing with crossover and parametric EQ settings.  Currently the subs are crossed over at the 60-80hz range with the bookshelves playing above that.  I settled in with some heavyish boost in the 20-40hz range for extra rumble and was pleased with the sound when listening to music, wife wasn’t texting me from upstairs telling me to knock it off or anything and I had it moderately loud…

… then it happened. 🙂

I fired up youtube and played a couple of THX trailers.  Cussing after remembering Bluetooth doesn’t do 5.1 *smirk* and picking videos with lackluster sound levels, I found a ‘THX Subwoofer Test’ video.  As soon as I hit play and looked up and saw the 10″ beasts traveling what had to be about 2 feet at full excursion at 1hz I said “this is going to be bad…”  I think by about 40hz the neighbors were running for cover.  I hit pause on the phone just in time to realize the insanely loud fan on the iNuke is variable speed and was even louder trying to dissipate the burst of heat.  I was also receiving a very irked facetime from the wife and kids upstairs saying to knock it off because EVERYTHING was moving… upstairs… at the other end of a 2500 square foot house.

Win. 🙂

Off to throw the doorway curtains at the room and figure out what flick I’m going to use to dial things in with while the hunt for seats continues.

Pics of our new Pissed Off Doughnut Overlords!!!