He says it handles that (~40kw) amount of power "without breaking a sweat/no compression". Your skepticism is appreciated. I don't know how to post without to "parrot". I'm just seeking an opinion for a product that matches some of my requirements(powerful shallow subwoofer). To me it is a unique product that's worth discussing.
Fun fact: I just noticed that now googling this product yields this ASR post in the first search result so I think this discussion may provide value to a lot of people.
@MAB provided the most complete feedback I was looking for.
What kind of measurements would be needed to figure out if this is a distortion box/gimmick or world class product? They provide CEA2010B for most of their products and I actually thought Ascendo was one of the few that provided meaningful specs/measurements. (i.e. the 18"
https://www.aia-cinema.com/products...ASSIVE__SEALED_SHALLOW_Measurement_Report.pdf ).
I didn't see this, and sorry for missing, clearly published at the bottom of each page. My bad.
Yes, very helpful, and gives some confidence and provides a decent reference for performance. Looking at the CEA-2010 data, looks like the various Ascendo subs are comparable to top-shelf sealed units from various manufacturers. For instance, the
18" sealed subwoofer looks like a great sub, and comparable to other sealed 18" subs from great manufacturers in the same box. The
dual 18" sealed subwoofer looks like the single 18" sub with twice the output (+6dB), which is exactly expected. The
24" sub has measurements very much inline with a sealed sub with a cone that is 78% larger than their 18" cone. And also comparable to the Stereo Integrity 24" sub in a sealed box that I mentioned earlier. And the
32" sub measurements are also as expected, since it has twice the cone area as the 24".
I might take small issue with their CEA "MAX Passed", but I shouldn't nitpick. Each of the published CEA2010 data from their subs scale +6dB for each doubling of driver area. Depending on the size of your room, your target SPL, and how many subs you are going to use, additional EQ to manage room and preference and application, these subs will work very well by the manufacturer's published results. And appear to be very comparable to some of the raw drivers I mentioned earlier.
As far as the pro audio drivers are concerned the main issue is that my wood skills are very poor so I can only buy what's available as a product or at most I can buy flatpacks and handle them to someone to assemble them.
This is tricky. All of these subs need to be in a cabinet, if the wall is the cabinet, it will have to have similar structural integrity as a well-built subwoofer. While building a subwoofer isn't complicated, it does require some thought and skill and these subs operate in a power regime similar to a small internal combustion engine (40kW is 53 Horsepower, not that HP is a particularly intuitive unit of measure...
) If you have ever seen videos of auto-sound subs with tens of kW, it can blow out the windows:
The options you are considering operate in this regime. I would recommend a cabinet maker. For example, a co-member at the local woodworker club I belong to has built several sub and speaker cabinets for clients.
Can any of the drivers you mentioned(i.e Stereo Integrity 24"), placed in a shallow box (i.e 35 cm deep, 700mm x 1000mm), reach 10hz to 120hz at reference levels with minimal distortion and linear(no compression) ?
Yes. Assuming the Ascendo data is comparable to the Stereo Integrity 24" data, it looks like both will perform very similar in same sealed box.
These are Ascendo's CEA2010, with some independent Stereo Integrity 24" and JTR Captivator measurements. While I can't guarantee that Ascendo's measurements are apples to apples with the other data, the two 24" sealed are comparable. And I hope you can see why the JTR are also awesome, and the 4000 is simply ~6dB louder than the smaller 2400 so two 2400 are equivalent to one 4000. I hope you appreciate, all of this scales with the area of the drivers. The 32" sealed is the same as three sealed 18" for raw SPL and extension.
The JTR captivators take 18" woofers and use cabinet to extend the response. Sealed can be EQ'ed to similar EQ, or whatever your room and preference desire at the expense of peak SLP. My goal here is to show you can use multiple smaller subs to achieve the same SPL and extension. Using the same reasoning, Ascendo's 32" is likely equivalent to their 28" square in terms of raw output. It's likely the 28" square has a few compromises compared to the 32" cone, but this is speculation. For instance, I have a hunch the 28" square driver compromised on sensitivity compared to the cone driver.
The only other shallow commercial subwoofers that I'm aware of are:
RTJ 18Sub (JTR's custom install company) measured by audioholics (
https://www.audioholics.com/subwoofer-reviews/rtj-18sub )
And the 18" from Ascendo (which provides some measurements as well
https://www.aia-cinema.com/products/subwoofers/the18-sub-prp-p-s-sh.html)
However RTJ 18Sub is a bit deeper and I have to import it from the US so extra taxes will be paid.
Ascendo 18 is shallower than what I need.
None of them seem to do infrasonics at reference levels. Both of them seem to distort quite a bit on the low end(not saying that's audible)
For each three Ascendo 18, you get approximately the SPL vs. extension of one 32". I personally like multiple distributed subs. I also like subs that are able to be moved. This is because the room dictates the bass response way more than I can comment on here. And Ascendo makes single and dual versions of the 18". Can you do three of those? Or even multiple dual 18? If needed they can be built into soffit cutouts. The small form factor would allow many configurations. The more you add, the more headroom to flatten the response below 20Hz further.