Whether you want it clean and defined or long and boomy, Hollywood Digital has the ticket with its Excursion series.
The first subwoofer candidate to explore Auto Sound & Security's large-trunked Taurus is one that doesn't need much enclosure space, Hollywood Digital's 12-in. X2-1280D, from its Excursion series.
Based on a black painted, punched steel frame, the sub features an 80-oz stack of magnets, 5.2 in. in diameter. Cooling is aided by a 0.7-in. diameter vent in the pole. The cone is a hard-pressed, flat-profile affair with added Kevlar, and a glossy PVA coating keeps moving mass to a modest 210 grams. The 5.3-in. dustcap adds some stiffness. Inside the 1280D is a 2-in. voice coil with dual 4-ohm windings, while the 6.25-in. spider offers potential for excellent cone motion. Good grade tinsel leads and two pairs of binding-post terminals complete the presentation of this functional driver.
After measuring the characteristics of the driver and predicting its performance in a few different enclosures, we rigged up our reference enclosures, sandbagged them to get appropriate airspace and took them for a spin. With an EBP (energy bandwidth product) of about 75, the Excursion 12 works in either ported or sealed enclosures. We tried it in both types.
Computer modeling suggested that the ideal enclosure was vented, with 1.1 cu ft of airspace and a 4-in. diameter port tube, 18-in. long, which we put together using standard PVC drain pipe and elbows. Since this port tube is rather long, it must be bent to fit into the enclosure, which is quite easy to do using standard PVC drain pipe and elbows. After adding 0.15 cu ft for driver displacement, and the same again for the port, the actual enclosed volume became a very manageable 1.4 cu ft.
For fans of sealed enclosures, we also ran the 1280D in a 0.9-cu-ft sealed system, which was the best compromise between extended low-frequency output and mid-bass level. On the bench, the sealed system showed the classic soft curve profile. Once in the car, it was very solid, with more deep bass than the response curves had suggested.
Comparing the SQ of each system, the sealed configuration definitely played smoother, with excellent definition. The ported system, on the other hand, carried a fatter, larger-than-life beat on our test tracks. Moby was magic, Oakenfold perfect. Ported gave us the fat bottom-end that makes dance tracks move, without needing any additional bass boost. And although the ported system looked better on paper, we liked it for everything except spoken word and orchestral music. The smaller, sealed system was definitely flatter and more accurate in this area, although not as exciting.
We ran our tests with a Genesis Dual Mono power amp driving one voice coil per channel and our crossover set at 80Hz. Since harmonic distortion was fairly low, higher crossover frequencies were possible and we had excellent results with the Excursion crossed over as high as 120Hz. Sensitivity was better than average at almost 90dB for 1 watt. Distortion remained low at normal listening levels, and reached our six-percent limit at 216 watts RMS, a respectable result. With more power, output continued to increase and we managed to extract 127dB in the test car with 588 watts applied before power compression made further power increases irrelevant.
Overall, the 1280D proved itself a versatile sub, with plenty of clean output, solid low bass, and two distinct sonic signatures, depending on the route you want to go, sealed or vented.
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