Has the AR 12" woofer met its match?

[soundminded]

Well it's taken over 50 years if it's happened at all but I think many who visit this board would be inclined to agree that the AR 12" woofer has been a kind of reference standard for far longer than its inventor could have possibly imagined. While there may be others out there which can equal or beat it, when size and cost are taken into consideration, there's been nothing like it, at least that I'm aware of and it still blows most of its competition away. But Parts Express/Dayton are now offering their 12" acoustic suspension reference subwoofer at a price and in a package form so attractive it's hard not to consider taking a look at it. The woofer itself is down to $109, the 2 cubic foot enclosure is also $109 and you can get a 546 watt (at 4 ohm) class AB amplifier for it for only $240. It comes with a parametric equalizer and special notch filter which extends its F3 down to 25 hz and the graph looks very flat and linear, really excellent. Rounding out the packaged kit is a cast frame speaker mounting kit, spiked feet, and 3 packs of acoustic foam. Its one drawback is that it is strictly a subwoofer and could not be used for a DYI project for an AR3/3A/LST knockoff but it would be useful in an AR9 like configuration where its crossover frequency of 200 hz is well within the 300 to 400 hz usable upper limit for this unit. Any opinions or anyone with experience with this driver or setup? The kit is now designated as RS1200. It's so new that it doesn't appear to even have a package price yet.

http://www.partsexpress.com/projectshowcase/rs1200/index.cfm

[dynaco_dan]

Hi there;

I believe that the NHT 1209 12" woofer was more of a contender, in the correct enclosure.

Certainly proved itself in the NHT speaker.

I do not know if it's still available or not.

[Carlspeak]

I have no comment this sub's performance compared to the 3a woofer.

But, could you tell us once again why this one is better than the other hundred or so powered subs available today? - particularly since you apparently haven't even heard it or compared it to vintage AR woofers. They all look good on paper; but how do they sound?

I have a quasi-home built sub made from parts from a Polk powered sub. It has a 10" PP woofer and 100W power amp and does a nice job of filling in most of the bottom frequencies. But that's all it does and needs to do. The other 99% of the audio spectrum is handled quite nicely by my KEF's.

I think if you made your post on AK, you'd get a 100 or so differing opinions on the subject.

It's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

[soundminded]

The advantage of this woofer over the competition IMO is the combination of low Fs with low Vas and low Qms. The limitation of the NHT 1259 is it's high Vas, about twice that of this driver and the AR 12" driver. This requires a significantly larger enclosure although it appears to be an excellent performer if cabinet size is not an objection. Many other seemingly excellent drivers just have the wrong combination resulting in one compromise or another, usually several at once. IMO, ported designs have inherent disadvantages, they are usually high Q resonant systems by their very nature. They are lucky to have a really usable range of much over an octave although they can be tuned to very low Fs in managably sized enclosures. I'm surprised designers haven't ovecome this by using them in multiples in the same speaker system staggering their Fs to compliment each other. This driver strikes me as giving a designer a fighting chance to build a modern equivalent of an AR9 or a Duntech Crown Sovereign. It also looks like an excellent value. The driver itself is now considerably cheaper than the 1259. So far Parts Express has not put a package price on the system kit.

[dynaco_dan]

>Hi there;

>

>I believe that the NHT 1209 12" woofer was more of a

>contender, in the correct enclosure.

>

>Certainly proved itself in the NHT speaker.

>

>I do not know if it's still available or not.

Thank you, Soundminded, for correcting the model number.

It is the model 1259.

I believe it was the NHT 3.3 speaker system that used it.

A well reviewed speaker, if my memory serves me right.

The cabinet size, as has been written here previously in another topic, requires a much larger enclosure.

I believe that in the, Audio Amatuer Magazine, years ago, there was an offer of $149.00 each from somewhere in the USA, per woofer.

Now if it is still available at that price, then there should be an evaluation between this woofer and the currently new AR 12".

The 1259 still cannot be used in an AR enclosure but the results might be interesting for the experimenter.

[soundminded]

Madisound still sells the Tonegen NHT 1259 speaker under its own brand

http://www.madisound.com/nht1259.html

I didn't mean to imply that it is anything less than an outstanding woofer, possibly among the very best available. I think Ken Kantor had a hand in designing it and was responsible for the highly acclaimed NHT 3.3 speaker as well. Tonegen I think was manufacturing AR replacement woofers. We've discussed this before and I think it was Tom who suggested that its polypropylene cone made it more suitable as a subwoofer crossed over at around 200 hz as in AR9 than as a woofer comparable to AR 12" 3 way systems such as AR3a where the crossover point was substantially higher. As I said, its chief drawback for some would be the requirement for an enclosure about double the size of that for the AR or Dayton driver. Their performance within the low frequency range of up to around 200 hz all seem comparable. One advantage of the Tonegen model is that it is available as an 8 ohm driver making it easier to wire two in parallel and still have an acceptable electrical load for most high quality not HT) receivers and amplifiers to contend with. AR had to take special measures to achieve this with their 4 ohm woofer. There is a very marginal penalty to be paid for the 8 ohm version in terms of Fs for the Tonegen speaker but I don't think that is significant. I think trying to make a direct comparison would probably not be necessary to demonstrate that any of them are outstanding performers. By today's standards all of these speakers are relatively cheap compared to high performance factory built units and if one is insufficient to satisfy an installation requirement, two or more are entirely feasible for the modern DIY builder. It would be very surprising if any of them very performed differently than their specifications and FR curves suggest. Despite the disagreement of some, IMO Newton's second law of motion (upon which the Theil Small paramaters are ultimately based) are very good predictors and correlate strongly to performance of all actual woofer designs. Given the low price and ease of construction, the Dayton kit seems like it should be a winner even among demanding audiophiles...if their screwdriver turning muscles haven't atrophied too badly from having remote control buttons to push instead of knobs to turn. Of course there's always the screwdriver bit in a hand drill :-)