Uprating the Harman Kardon subwoofer speakers?

[doopydug]

I would like to try these speakers too - where did you order them from and how much were they, if you don't mind me asking?

[Canonite]

Excellent work. I did try some low cost drivers but they were pretty poor.
So how much were these Rainbows?

[Rick-sta]

I've just ordered the last set from Amazon today.

They are still available on ebay however http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RAINBOW-EL...torefresh=true

[awvc1]

as Rick has said, he ordered the last set from the vendor I used on amazon, but his ebay link isn't bad.

I paid 41.49, and there was no postage as I used amazon. Off ebay, the prices are similar but you may have to factor in another tenner or so for delivery.

Glad you liked it by the way Rick, thanks!

[Rick-sta]

The speakers arrived last week now to be wrapped up and tucked under the exams tree for my dad until xmas morning then i'll be fitting them

[rbm]

just ordered RAINBOW EL-W5, 13cm Woofer/Mid-range, 4 Ohm from amazon two sets left

[Avulon]

Originally Posted by awvc1

Thanks Rick. I think, if people feel the HK sub is a charity case, and not worth the money spent on it, then fine, they can do things another way.

Myself I'm curious, and want to see what happens. I know it can produce a reasonable amount of bass when driven correctly, so armed with the knowledge of what the rainbow front component drivers did for my overall sound, I am hopeful there will be some noticeable improvement.

I know it might go south, and sound worse, or at best sound better than it did, but not sound as good as it should, but none of us will actually know until I try it and see is how i see it.

If anyone else has any other ideas about improvements let me know - my ideas were as follows:

• Wadding inside the HK enclosure to 'trick' it to make it think it is bigger - is that appropriate with a ported bass reflex enclosure or does that just work on sealed subs?
• 2 small mdf rings inserted before the speaker screws into the plastic sub enclosure to decouple the speaker from it
• Sound deadening materials applied

if you have any other ideas of what might be good, please chip in - but also please remember this is just a 'for fun' project, so raining on my chips and saying 'just buy a good 12" sub' is both known and not required please!

Hi, I know awvc1 has got a good sound from what was posted on the other thread. No dis-respect to anyone here. Just thought that I'd point out that the HK 'sub' box is not an enclosure for the sub drivers. The boot space itself is the enclosure and when empty will be sufficiently large to be completely detuned. The HK 'sub' box is a port in front of the speaker, It's volume, shape and the distance from the cone faces to the grille in the parcel shelf tune the bass response (intentionally carefully designed or not). I'd kept looking at photo's of them (HK 'subs') and kept thinking something was wrong with the picture until I realised this myself.

[Jakg]

Originally Posted by Avulon

Hi, I know awvc1 has got a good sound from what was posted on the other thread. No dis-respect to anyone here. Just thought that I'd point out that the HK 'sub' box is not an enclosure for the sub drivers. The boot space itself is the enclosure and when empty will be sufficiently large to be completely detuned. The HK 'sub' box is a port in front of the speaker, It's volume, shape and the distance from the cone faces to the grille in the parcel shelf tune the bass response (intentionally carefully designed or not). I'd kept looking at photo's of them (HK 'subs') and kept thinking something was wrong with the picture until I realised this myself.

Are you sure about this? I dont have mine anymore, but I thought it was sealed except for a single port in the middle, with the drivers mounted externally?

[Duotone]

HK sub.





Dave T

[Avulon]

Originally Posted by Jakg

Are you sure about this? I dont have mine anymore, but I thought it was sealed except for a single port in the middle, with the drivers mounted externally?

Yep, as illustrated by duotone's photo, the rear of the cones is open to the boot space, making the boot space the enclosure and the inside of the 'sub' the front of the speaker baffle - the path to the central hole to the car cabin is a port - where the length and cross section determine tuning - see here - http://www.colomar.com/Shavano/subs.html

Which shows the arrangement is very similar to a bandpass enclosure. as illustrated below. The HK sub is the bit in front of the driver - the box behind is provided by the car's boot space (not sealed - but that's probably not important given it's size when empty). This will be why you can get decent bass out of such a small cone.