As mentioned in the introduction designing and constructing a good subwoofer needs a little more effort than simple mounting a woofer in a wooden box. However, as we’ve shown, taking the time to look for a suitable woofer, and calculating the subwoofer’s behavior given various types of enclosures, resulted in a design which offers the best possible performance. Obviously you can build a better subwoofer if you have more budget, but there are only a handful of woofers that are truly capable of audiophile reproduction at high spl, and the Peerless XLS10 is one of them. You’ll see this woofer, and the larger XLS12, used in many (commercial) subwoofer designs offering top-of-the-line performance. If you want to compare this subwoofer to commercially available products you’ll quickly realize that it performs much better than subwoofers costing twice as much or more.
A look at the finished subwoofer without the grill mounted, painted in ral-9006 gloss finish.
The result of all of our efforts is a subwoofer than lacks the boomy bass offered by many commercial subwoofers, but instead offers high quality bass that extends down well below 20Hz. Whether you like to listen to rock music, jazz, hip-hop, classical music or plan to use it for your home theatre the subwoofer will offer you nothing but an accurate reproduction, with plenty of reserve and at high spl. Due to the fact that the subwoofer amplifiers we listed offer plenty of options to change level, cut off frequency, phase and bass boost it is an easy task to let the subwoofer blend in with your existing equipment. Overall we’re more than pleased with the result, the subwoofer delivers, and often exceeds, on all of our expectations and puts our previous subwoofer, a $1500 commercial product, to absolute shame. If you’re looking for a suitable do-it-yourself subwoofer project this is your ticket, we’re confident you won’t be disappointed.
Sander Sassen.
Note: This design is strictly for the do-it-yourself enthusiast and not to be used commercially without my explicit written permission.
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