Inside The Data-Driven Subwoofer Revolution With Nick Apicella of ResoNix

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Imagine opening a spec sheet and realizing half the numbers don’t survive a real test. That’s the energy today as we sit down with ResoNix founder Nick Apicella to unpack why he spent over $20,000 on independent Klippel testing for nearly forty subwoofers—and what the results say about truth, hype, and how great bass is actually built.

We start with the problem most enthusiasts face: space is tight, power is cheap, yet small sealed performance still lags because many drivers compress, distort, or were never designed to stay linear at real excursion. Nick explains why Xmax claims often fail, how BL, suspension, and inductance symmetry drive audible clarity, and why linearity is the single most important metric for deep extension that still feels present. The data is blunt: a few subs shine, many miss their own marks, and published marketing specs rarely predict how they behave in your car.

Then we reframe one of car audio’s most entrenched debates—sealed versus infinite baffle. The surprising answer: IB isn’t magic. What you’re hearing is excellent drivers doing linear work in an alignment that fits them. Match system Qtc, apply adequate power, and a small sealed design with a truly linear motor can deliver the same pressurized low end people rave about. That thinking fuels the ResoNix Gus line: shallow, compact, high-excursion subs built for tiny enclosures and verified by full third-party measurements. Nick shares prototype results, revision tweaks, and a release window, plus why ResoNix will publish raw Klippel LSI and TRF data, graphs and all.

If you care about sound quality, this is your roadmap to choosing subs by merit, not marketing. Learn how to read the curves, what distortion looks like at meaningful stroke, and which tradeoffs matter for real-world installs. When the data hub goes live on the ResoNix site, dive in, compare your favorites, and decide with confidence.

Enjoyed this deep dive? Follow, share with a friend who loves car audio, and drop a review with the one claim you most want to see tested next. Your questions shape future episodes.

Link to the Independent Subwoofer Testing Data https://tinyurl.com/3fzr7fr9

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Welcome back everybody to the SoundQ Garage
Podcast.
This is officially season 2,episode 1, and we are kicking it
off today.
The show where the only thingdeeper than the bass is the
rabbit hole we fall into.
I'm your host today, Eddie.
Buckle up because we are talkingSubwoofer's data and Subwoofer

(00:32):
obsession at a level only trueaudio nerds could love.
Today's guest has become one ofthe most disruptive voices in
car audio.
He's the guy who spent more onclipple testing than most people
spend on their cars and thenpublished all the data, even
when it hurts some feelings andsome sales.
Founder of Resinex, NickApicella.

SPEAKER_03 (00:54):
Hey, how are you doing, Ed?

SPEAKER_01 (00:58):
What's up, Nick?
I hope I pronounced your nameright, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01):
Is it Apicella?
Technically, technicallycorrect.
Um, but we kind of butchered itin the U.S.
after we moved, our family movedfrom Italy, and we now say
Apicella, but technically it isApicella.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12):
Oh, okay.
See, so I was like, is this NickAlpaca?
Apicella, Apicella.
You know, with the double L, youknow, because I come from a
Latin background, I was like,that's gotta be Apicella.
What's what's what's newbackground?
Is that Italian or Italian,yeah.
Okay, all right, cool, cool,cool.
So before we get into the newsubwoofer, Nick, uh, which we're

(01:36):
really gonna get into.
So calm down, guys.
I want to paint a picture forthe listeners.
Nick is the guy who personallyspent, is it true?
You spent 20 grand?
Let me repeat that.
20 grand on independent clippaltesting.

SPEAKER_03 (01:48):
Yeah.
I mean, between the well,between the testing itself and
the shipping of everything, yes,it's over 20 grand at this
point.
Uh, my UPS bill is an absolutedisaster.

SPEAKER_01 (01:59):
So you're on a first name basis with the UPS guy?

SPEAKER_03 (02:02):
Uh yeah, our UPS guy hates us.
Well, that's also because ourwarehouse is uh it's all we're
all shipping heavy products.
So yeah, our UPS guy hates us.
But uh he's probably got backproblems.

SPEAKER_02 (02:14):
Yeah, well, that's uh, you know, it is what it is.
You know, we got to get stuffout to our customers.

SPEAKER_01 (02:20):
So, Nick, before we jump into the sub, uh give
people a backstory.
What made you decide theindustry needed another
subwoofer with with all thesubwoofers that are out there?
What what made you decide that?

SPEAKER_03 (02:31):
Yeah, there's so many subwoofers out there, and
it's such a simple product, youwould think that there are so
many options, and there kind ofare on paper until you start
doing a deep dive into like intohigher end stuff, you know,
genuine quality products and youknow, very niche products, like,
you know, all the guys that aregoing to be listening to this

(02:52):
are not just your average basiclike car audio enthusiasts.
Like, you know, we're we're allwe're all pretty deep in this,
relatively speaking.
So anyone in that demographic,and then some, like if you start
to look for high performancesubwoofers and you start looking
beyond like the basic marketingspecs, and you also look at

(03:12):
specific applications, such as,you know, for the case of the
the Resinix Gus subwoofer line,uh super small sealed
enclosures, you will realizethere, yeah, there are options
for them, but none of them arereally that good, frankly.
Um, you know, I'm prettyfortunate to I've had my hands

(03:34):
on pretty much every subwooferthat you can think of.
Um, you know, tuned them,installed them, listened to
them, you name it.
I I've probably used it.
And, you know, after, you know,I was using Illusion Audio for a
while, and then they likeclosed, like Orca closed uh the

(03:55):
Illusion Audio side of things.
Orca's the owner of IllusionAudio uh because they were
having manufacturer problemswith the factory in India.
Um they are eventually, I Idon't know if they're gonna do
anything with that, but yeah,illusion audio stopped producing
subwoofers, and I was like,okay, like crap.
Like those were kind of myfavorite line of subs between
the C12, the shallow one, andthe C12 XL, which was their

(04:17):
standard one.
And then I remembered from likeback in the day, I was using
audio mobile a lot, and um, youknow, very high performance
subwoofers on paper.
They do exactly what I need,like what I typically like, um,
out of installs, you know, smallsealed enclosure capability with
low extension and you know, lowex uh low distortion.

(04:38):
And um, and then they have beenhaving massive supply issues,
and there's a lot of um, I'm notuh it's not my place to really
say, but there's just stuffgoing on in the background where
you know, go go try to find anaudio mobile subwoofer for sale
right now.
You know, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 (04:55):
Yeah, it's next to impossible, pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 (04:58):
And uh, you know, frankly, I was actually Yeah,
uh, you know what, I'll just sayit.
I was I was offered to purchasethe company at one point.
And I actually got excited aboutit.
I was like, oh shit, like thatcould be a really cool business
opportunity for me.
And as time went on, it it waspretty obvious that like, oh,

(05:18):
that's that is not a real thing.
Like, there's so many problemson the back end over there that
like I don't even want to touchthat with a 10-foot pole.
And I was like, wait a second.
I was like, every time I haveneeded something, like a certain
product that isn't offered onthe market anymore or at all, I
create it.
Just like uh our Resinix wasfounded by the fact that Sound

(05:40):
Editor Showdown closed.
Them closing prompted me to havea need for higher quality sound
editing materials because it wasno longer available.
You know, they closed.
I tried all these differentother sound editing companies,
was not impressed with it, said,screw it, I'm gonna create my
own stuff.
That's where Resinix CLD camefrom.
You know, that's where all ofour, that's where this entire
company was born from.

(06:02):
And it's the same thing withthis subwoofer where I'm looking
around, I'm like, there's somany options for subwoofers, but
none of them are genuinely good.
You know?
Um, I I know that's a reallylong answer, but it I don't
know.
I'm just providing as muchbackground as I can.
So I said, screw it.
Uh, I'm just gonna do what Ialways do, and I'm gonna I'm

(06:25):
gonna make my own.

unknown (06:26):
That's it.

SPEAKER_01 (06:26):
No, no, that's a good answer because um it's
basically business 101, see aneed, fill a need.
So I know, you know, what whatis what do they say?
Hoffman's law is like Hoffman'sIron Law.
Hoffman's iron law, isn't itlike um I don't know it off the
top of my head, but it's uhthree things.

SPEAKER_03 (06:45):
It is uh it's low extension, yeah, small
enclosure, high sensitivity,pick two.
Pick two.
Uh but thankfully, in today'sworld, power is cheap.
You know, sensitivity is notnearly as much of a concern.
And from what I learned throughthis entire process, sensitivity
of a subwoofer is not, itdoesn't behave the same as you

(07:07):
you would think it would.
Um like sensitivity is obviouslystill a spec based on you know
calculation of kill smallparameters, but there's more to
it than just a simplesensitivity spec.
Um, but yeah, I mean, in in2025, going on 2026, we have so
many amplifiers that are thesize of your palm that put out

(07:28):
you know a thousand watts.
You know, you have so manyamplifiers that are yo,$400
amplifier that puts out 2,000watt power is not a problem
these days.
So I'm like, yeah, you know,let's go with small enclosure
and low frequency extensionbecause those are important to
most people, you know.

(07:48):
How many people can fit a oneand a half to two cubic foot
sealed enclosure for a single12-inch?
And uh, you know, no one canreally do that these days.
These cars are tiny, they don'tgive us much to work with.

SPEAKER_01 (08:02):
Yeah, true.
A lot of people want to keeptheir, I mean, you know, not
everybody, but a lot of peoplewant to keep their their trunk
space too.

SPEAKER_03 (08:08):
So uh I mean not everybody needs to keep their
trunk space, but I think itwould be safe to say most people
would like to if it's an option.

SPEAKER_01 (08:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not everybody's willing to giveup that trunk space.
I mean, you know, a lot of usare some of us are hardcore
enthusiasts, but then you havethe other people, you know.

SPEAKER_03 (08:26):
So uh well now those people that you know are okay
with taking up their trunkspace, well now they can have
their cake and eat it too.
Nice, nice.
You know?
So you can have that same lowfrequency extension while, you
know, having your trunk back andbeing a normal person.

SPEAKER_01 (08:42):
So speaking of specs, like we were talking
about a minute ago, uh, a lot ofthe stuff that's published
online, a lot of thesemanufacturers, they you know,
they tell a lot of tall tales,they they they fib on the specs.
Why do you think that is?
Because how is a consumersupposed to make an informed
decision if they're looking atspecs, they're looking at you

(09:04):
know frequency response charts,and a lot of people obsess over
that.
And then when they get that, youknow, those components in their
hands, they get that subwooferin their car, and it doesn't
perform to what the companyclaimed.
Like what what you know whatwhat is up with companies doing
that?
Like, you know, now that you'rein in the thick of it, so to
speak, like what what uh I knowit's a lot of you know

(09:26):
marketing.

SPEAKER_03 (09:27):
Yeah, I mean it's the what's up with it, the
simple answer is because theycan get away with it.
You know?
Who who's actually gonna buy oneof those subwoofers, send it off
for clipple testing, and youknow, call them out at such a
high level until I came along.
Um, you know, there's justthere's a lot of things I

(09:52):
learned from this large-scalebatch of clipple testing that
we're doing.
And the one big thing I learnedis that almost every single one
of these companies is full ofshit, frankly.
Like, you know, open honesty,like not trying to sugarcoat
things, not trying to make iteven more extreme than it is,

(10:14):
but they these companies mostlyare full of shit.
Um and it's one of the perfectexamples of this that you can
see and and how easy it is forthem to get away with is there's
one, there's one specificsubwoofer.
Uh, I'm not gonna name it yetuntil the results are out.
Um, but someone pointed it tome, uh pointed me to a

(10:35):
discussion on the DIY mobileaudio forums.
And, you know, they'rediscussing, oh, like, should I
go with this subwoofer or shouldI go with this subwoofer?
Turns out those two subwoofersare designed, apparently, you
know, knowing this on the backend, are apparently designed by
the same person.
They're similar in depth.
They have very, very similarspecifications.

(10:56):
They're just from two differentcompanies.
And I tested one of them.
The other one I'm trying to getmy hands on uh without paying
full retail.
Um, and I want to test it justto see how similar they really
are.
But the one of them that wastested did about one-third of
the manufacturer stated X Max.

unknown (11:17):
Wow.

SPEAKER_03 (11:18):
Absolutely insane.
Yeah, so you have all of thesepeople in this discussion.
Oh my God, like the thissubwoofer is crazy.
Look how shallow it is, and itdoes this much excursion.
It's like, yeah, just because ithas the mechanical throw to do
it doesn't mean it's not doingit without a boatload of
distortion.
Yeah, yeah, you know?

(11:38):
So they I mean, the short answeragain, it's just they do it
because they can get away withit.
You know, 99.9% of theircustomers don't care.
The other 0.1% of the customersthat do care aren't even gonna
be able to call it out becausethey have no way of actually
figuring this out.
Um, you know, and other somecompanies might state X max

(12:00):
based off of, you know, a 70%BL, um, 70% BL clipple
measurement.
Some of them might base it on,you know, the formula that takes
the voice coil height andmagnetic gap uh into account
without doing any measurements.
I don't know where thesecompanies are really coming up
with these specs, uhspecifically X Max.

(12:23):
But I can tell you this, out ofall the subwoofers that we
tested, which is about 40, onlya few of them actually met the
manufacturer-stated claims.

SPEAKER_01 (12:35):
Wow, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 (12:36):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's crazy.
It's very crazy.
Um I I don't even I don't evenknow what else to say about it.
Like, I really did think that alot of these drivers would do
much better.
And like a lot of some of them,I was like, okay, like so I went
into this designing of thissubwoofer.

(12:57):
Um, you know, and I'm workingwith a friend in the company
that he works for on this, and Iapproached them.
You know, we were gonna dosomething a couple of years ago,
nothing really came out of it,life got busy for me.
Uh, and then I reapproached itand I said, look, I want to do a
subwoofer, you know, again,small sealed, uh, high
excursion, low distortion, blah,blah, blah.

(13:18):
I need it to be the highestperforming sub on the market for
this specific application.
No questions about it.
That's I will only release ituntil we can prove it's the
best.
And they said, okay.
I'm like, I'm gonna send in, youknow, a few of my favorite subs.
We're gonna test them, we'regonna see what the references
are, we're gonna see like what'sout there.
And like, you know, I'm gonnaessentially prove to myself,

(13:39):
like, yeah, ours, ours are thebest.
And I went into this kind ofnervous about a few subwoofers
that I'm like, it's gonna bepretty hard to do better than
this subwoofer or thatsubwoofer, you know.
Like I was speaking aboutillusion audio before.
Uh, those are the subwoofersthat I have in my car right now,
besides our new prototype, like,you know, that I just unplugged

(14:02):
the illusions, but they're stillin my car and they've been in my
car for years, and I've usedthem a lot, and they've been my
favorite for a long time.
I just got the clipple resultsback in the C12 XL yesterday.
And at best, I'm okay withsaying this because of the
discontinued sub.
At best, it is a mediocresubwoofer.

SPEAKER_02 (14:21):
Wow.

SPEAKER_03 (14:21):
Some of my other previous favorite car audio
subwoofers, cardio-specificsubwoofers, are bad.
They're just bad.
Um, this industry is full ofshit.
And they make design choices forthe sake of either, you know,
saving money or profit or looksor marketing, or, you know,

(14:42):
maybe even for like theprotection of the subwoofer from
like a warranty standpoint, butthat degrades performance.
I I can't speak to the exactreasons why these companies are
making these decisions, but Ican only make assumptions.
Um, but it's it's genuinelymind-blowing how how bad a lot
of these subwoofers are.
Uh, some of them are very good.

(15:03):
Uh, some of them I was surprisedby.
You know, again, I was gonnasend in you know, maybe five of
them at first, and then it kindof snowballed into a whole big
thing where next thing you know,I'm borrowing subs and buying
subs from all over the place.
And next thing you know, we haveI think 39 subwoofers tested
right now.

SPEAKER_01 (15:22):
Oh wow.
That's a lot of testing.
So who's doing the clippletesting?
Are you sending it out to uhyes?

SPEAKER_03 (15:28):
It is not me doing the testing, it is a third-party
independent engineering, uh,engineering consultant type
acoustics company.
Uh, they do not want to benamed.
Uh at first, you know, I did nottell them I was doing this
publicly because I knew theyprobably wouldn't like it.

(15:50):
And uh I might have, you know,been like, hey, you know, I just
want to test these.
And then I told them later on,like, hey, yeah, you know, I
want all of the test dataformatted a certain way so I can
easily like parse the data andlike present it online to
everyone.
They're like, oh, whoa, uh, wegot to talk about that.
If you're gonna do that, we wantnothing to do with this.

(16:12):
We don't want, because theyknow, like they're they're, you
know, everyone in this industryon the back end is fully aware,
unless they're ignorant, butlike anyone who knows anything
on the back end of these thingsis fully aware of how full of
shit this industry is.
And they were like, yeah, theythey don't typically work in the
car audio industry, they're morea commercial audio and ultra

(16:33):
high-end home audio and liketheater audio.
Um, that's the type of companythat's doing the the testing.
Um and but they're familiarenough with the car industry to
know how it gets.
And they're like, yeah, we wantnone of the backlash that's
gonna come from this.
So don't name us, please.

(16:54):
And thank you.

SPEAKER_01 (16:55):
They wanna they want to remain uh remain anonymous,
right?

SPEAKER_03 (16:59):
Yeah, and which you know what, it's fine.
At the end of the day, you know,again, I'll be the first, I'm
not doing this clippabletesting.
I can't, I can't just go out andbuy a clipple machine.
They are so much goddamn money,it's not even funny.
Um, so you know, I'm sendingthem off.
We're doing these tests.
And, you know, the other thingtoo, like I want to point it out

(17:19):
right now, you know, some peopleare going to scream, oh, the
test is biased.
You know, you're just trying touh make your product look good
and blah, blah, blah.
At the end of the day, it's veryimportant to understand what
you're actually talking about.
And what most people don'trealize is that a clipple
measurement is pretty much 100%automated.

(17:40):
There is nothing that theoperator can do to fudge the
results.
Nothing.
The only thing you can do tofudge the results is change
protection limits, which doesnot actually change the results.
Uh, you input, you know, the thesize of the driver, which again
wouldn't really change theresults.

(18:01):
Um, or you can test one driverbut slap the name of another
driver on it.
Like that's the only real wayyou could fudge results.
Other than that, the wholeprocess is fully automated.
So, you know, again, here I am.
I'm sending them in, you know,test them, send the data back,
here we go.
All I'm doing is hosting it andproviding people uh a breakdown

(18:25):
of what the data is in mysubjective opinion, knowing what
the data, you know, shows.
That's it.

SPEAKER_01 (18:34):
So you're one of the only companies willing to
publish the full raw data.
When when is that going to bedropping?

SPEAKER_03 (18:39):
I know that you uh so my data is actually live as
of this morning.
Um if you go to the Resinixwebsite, you'll see a little tab
at the top menu that sayssubwoofer testing with a little
new icon next to it.
You can click on that.
That whole page will be like thehome page for the testing.
On there, it has all theinformation about what the test

(19:00):
is, how to interpret it, blah,blah, blah.
But also at the top, there willbe a link to the landing page
for our Gus series subwooffers,which has the whole description.
It has, you know, all of theupdates for it, all like it
pretty much is just like a blogof the subwoofer series.

(19:22):
Uh, all of the data that I havefor it is hosted on it.
Um, the only data I'm missingright now is the distortion for
the 12-inch because I'm gettingthe revision two of the 12-inch
any day now.
So I was like, you know what?
I'm not even gonna botherwriting about revision one
because I'll have I'm gonna haveto redo the data anyway.
So I'm just waiting for that.

(19:43):
But yeah, all of our Clippel LSIdata is up there.
All of our Clippel TRF uhdistortion data is up there.
Uh, all of the mechanical specsare up there, you know, and all
the information about it, youknow.
Name any other car audio uh oreven home audio uh driver that
lists all of that.

(20:03):
You you kind of can't.
It doesn't really exist.

SPEAKER_01 (20:06):
And I'm just gonna put it up there.

SPEAKER_03 (20:08):
The cojones to do it.
I mean, it's all that's alwaysbeen my thing since day one, you
know.
It's I I have nothing to hidefrom people.
Nothing.

SPEAKER_00 (20:18):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (20:19):
And you know, and I understand why companies don't
do it is because their stuffdoesn't it doesn't have the
performance to to look good on ayou know, on these graphs.
And number two, you know, whichsome people will argue doesn't
matter, but those people aregonna be fucking ignored,
whatever.

(20:40):
Um, but number two, the onlything that can really happen for
the most part is for people tomisinterpret your data and
misunderstand it.
Um, so I am, I do realize I'mopening a can of worms in a
negative way.
Like me posting my data can onlyfe give people fuel to ask

(21:01):
questions or make assumptions ina negative manner for the most
part.
There's some people that wouldbe like, oh, like that's good,
but the the vocal minority, youknow, are gonna be, it's all
gonna be, oh, like look at thatlittle thing, which they don't
even understand in the firstplace, and they're gonna use it
to, you know, try to tarnish it.
Meanwhile, their favoritesubwoofer performs like absolute

(21:24):
dog shit, and they wouldn't haveeven known because they don't
even publish it until we camealong.
So yeah.
Um, one of the purchases rightbefore we hopped into this phone
call, I think I mentioned toyou, one of the employees, one
of the well-known employees of avery big and popular car audio
company just made a post aboutme and my testing complaining
about it.

(21:45):
And uh I commented on it, I waslike, you know, if you have
complaints, bring your own data,you know, stop talking shit, you
know, nut up and provide providesome real, real content, real
data for us to actually workwith here.
Stop fucking crying about it.

SPEAKER_01 (22:02):
Yeah, sadly, that's one of the things about the
internet is everybody haseverybody has a voice.
They could sit behind a uh amonitor, they could sit behind a
screen and talk smack.

SPEAKER_03 (22:13):
You know, which is great.
Like everyone having a voice isis awesome, you know.
But at the same time, it giveseveryone an equal voice, which
I'm not saying is a bad thing,but it is kind of a bad thing
when someone who has no ideawhat they're talking about can
be equally as, you know, like Idon't even know how to describe

(22:35):
it, but I think you know whatI'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 (22:37):
I I would say almost like influential.
A lot of people not so muchinfluential, but a lot of people
regurgitate misinformation or orthey got things that are still
stuck in the head, like they'rerecommending stiffening
capacitors because they weretheir big thing back in the 90s,
and it's like the a lot ofpeople are still regurgitating
that same stuff, or some peoplelike, oh, focal focal tweeters

(23:00):
are harsh, they'reregurgitating.
Have you ever heard of focaltweeter?
They haven't even touched it.

SPEAKER_03 (23:05):
And maybe one of their entry-level ones on an
untuned system.

SPEAKER_01 (23:08):
Yeah, and it's like any tweeter could be harsh if
you tune it wrong.
And I I I I tell anybody, youwant to hear my system?
I I have everything in my car isfocal.
You're not gonna hear a harshtweeter.

SPEAKER_03 (23:20):
No, and I I actually loved your car when I heard it.
Um yeah, I mean, like a perfectexample of this is from last
night.
You know, there was a discussiongoing on on uh on Reddit, and
you know, I someone was talkingabout like sound quality
subwoofers that can also getloud.
And I said, hey, you know,people were talking about, I'm
not gonna name it, you know,because you guys will see the
data.

(23:41):
Um, you know, if you want to goand find this discussion on
Reddit, uh there will be alittle spoiler there if you want
to dig it, dig it up.
But you know, they'rediscussing, oh, there's certain
subwoofer as, you know, this isthe one, this is the one.
And, you know, I have the dataon it.
It ain't the one.
It is not the one.
And I said, hey, just a headsup, I just tested that
subwoofer.
It's not very good.

(24:01):
Uh, there's plenty of otherbetter subwoofers out there,
especially for the money.
This one was ultra expensive andperformed horrifically.
Um, does have plenty of output,but from a sound quality
perspective, it is anabomination.
Um, and these two guys just wentape shit.
And they start pile.
Oh, this is how I know you're anidiot or you're biased or you're

(24:24):
this or you're that.
I'm like, really?
Here's the data.
Here's the distortion graph ofthat subwoofer, and here's the
distortion graph of two othersubwoofers that could compete
against this.
Which one are you going with?
Neither of them had you know,both of them were very chatty up
until that point, but none ofthem responded after that.

SPEAKER_01 (24:47):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (24:47):
You brought response figure, you know?
Um it's just crazy.
There's so many people that areso overly confident in what they
think they know, myselfincluded, everyone included, you
know, everyone is overlyconfident in what they think
they know, and nobody sitsaround and like asks questions

(25:10):
anymore.
And I think that's the biggestproblem with with the internet
is everyone makes assumptions,no one asks questions.

SPEAKER_01 (25:17):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I I stopped giving advicebecause uh um, like I said,
there's a lot of people on therethat will get on there and start
arguing with you and they don'teven know what they're talking
about.
And you're I'm like, you knowwhat, I just give up.

SPEAKER_00 (25:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (25:31):
Yeah, it's funny.
It's really funny to uh, youknow, I I get I use a lot of
different marketing uh softwaresfor Resinix.
And you know, one of thesoftwares gives me alerts
whenever like keywords that Itag get mentioned.
So I'll like I'll tag like mybrand name or like my subwoofer
names or you know, like certainsound deadening keywords, and

(25:52):
like it'll it'll at the end ofthe day or like every so often,
it'll give me a list of links,like hey, these keywords were
mentioned in these certainareas.
Obviously, I DIY mobile audio ison there all the time, so I'll
click the links it gives me andI'll see some of the most
nonsense information ever.
And it's like, and I'm justsitting there, I'm like, oh my

(26:14):
god, you people are soconfident, but you are so
incorrect.

SPEAKER_01 (26:18):
Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_03 (26:20):
You are so incorrect.

SPEAKER_01 (26:22):
Yeah, I see it all the time, and I just I take it
with a grain of salt, but I'vebeen around the block.
But the the the sad truth aboutthat is that the newbies or the
people that aren't tech savvyare gonna take that as gospel.

SPEAKER_03 (26:35):
Exactly.
They're not able the the unf sothis is why I'm very um
outgoing, I guess we could say,with my advice and like very
outgoing with like combatingpoor information, is because
when I was new to this hobby, Ifell trapped to all of that
stuff on the DIY mobile audioforums.

(26:55):
I eventually started working atmy first like high-end shop, and
I very quickly realized, oh myGod, everything I thought I knew
is wrong.
And I I like kind of like gotpissed about it at first.
I was like, what the fuck?
Like, what the fuck?
Like, I thought all these peoplewere supposed to be really
smart.
They speak, they they use suchbig words and they speak so

(27:17):
technically.
How how can this all be wrong?
It it doesn't make any sense.
And like my whole worldview onlike car audio and everything,
like it kind of exploded.
And I had to, I like picked upthe pieces and had to put
everything back together andlearn myself, like hands-on and
you know, from other sources.
So I know firsthand when peopleare giving bad advice, they're

(27:39):
not hurting anybody thatactually has a clue what's going
on because those people read itand say, that's ridiculous, and
move on with their life.
It's the you know, like instrictly sound quality, the
group that I help uh moderate,there's 15 or 16,000 people in
there.
I do it for the 15 or 16,000people that don't really know

(28:00):
and might pick up badinformation because someone
speaks with conviction, but it'snot true.
You know, they speak falseinformation with conviction, and
anything spoken with convictionsounds true.
You know?

SPEAKER_01 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I we've all fallenvictim to it.
So uh that's why uh you see someof the hardcore, you know, like
it's funny because um, you know,getting the wrong data, getting
the wrong specs, and whatnot.
Now I s now I realize why a lotof us, myself included, we're
constantly changing componentslike socks because we're reading

(28:36):
this stuff, we're getting thisthis information, we're getting
opinions, and people sayingthis, and people saying that.
And and let's be honest, peopleprobably even straight up lying
about the quality of something,just so that there is a lot of
that too.

SPEAKER_02 (28:51):
It's there is a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 (28:53):
Yeah, marketing hype.
And you buy this stuff, and thenyou're like, shit, I'm gonna
change these tweeters out.
I'm gonna change and you knowwhat?
It's it's man, it's a lot offreaking experimenting, and
that's why you kind of see, youknow, a lot of the people, the
people that know, uh you you'llsee them all kind of using the

(29:13):
same stuff.
Yeah, you know.
Oh, yeah, no, of course.
You'll see people using the samesubs, same tweeters, same, you
know, m more or less, but youknow, and you know, some people
want to call that forum boners.

SPEAKER_03 (29:24):
And you know what?
I actually have a differentviewpoint on that.
At the end of the day, if thereis a known good product and it
becomes like the quote unquoteforum boner, even though it
might not be the best, or evenif it's like not great, even if
it's like average, it's stilllike a known thing between like
a larger uh group, but at theend of the day, like you know,
it it should still it shouldstill be put through the ringer.

(29:47):
There's a lot of people thatthat follow stuff though.
I'm kind of like beinghypocritical from what I said
literally two seconds ago.
So like I I'm saying Iunderstand the whole foreign
boner thing, and I don'tdisagree with like the idea.
Of like known good products andlike kind of sticking to a small
circle because, you know, it'snot unknown territory, but at
the same time, you know, thereis a lot of bullshit.

(30:11):
And again, I I monitor everywebsite because again, these
marketing softwares give me alot of data and a lot of
information to work with and andstuff to read and stuff to like
tap into.
And I I see this stuff from a10,000-foot view.
And I, you know, me again, beingon the inside, like having the
connections that I do, havingthe experience that I now do,

(30:32):
like there's there's so muchbullshit.
It's it's so bad.
And I I try my I try my best notto do it myself.
You know, I'm I'm definitely notinnocent of it because everyone
does it, you know.
Yeah, I'll be I'll be the firstperson to say, like, I'm only
human, um, and everyone does it,but it's it's just so rampant

(30:53):
these days.
And something I've done, like,some people have like started to
like again, like, not evenstarted to, people have always
said, Nick, that's all you do.
And I I do have a counterargument for that.
You know, I had someone theother day say, you know,
anything that's not Helix, youknow, Nick says is is bad.
And I I kind of laughed at it.

(31:13):
I was like, that's not true atall.
As a matter of fact, if you wantto talk about the Helix brand as
a whole, most of it is not thatgood.
It's only their DSPs and theirprocessors, or sorry, processors
are DSP.
It's only their DSPs and theiramplifiers that are good.
There's a reason why I do notsell their speakers.

(31:34):
There's a reason why I do notsell their subwoofers.
Same thing with, you know, BLAN.
There's a reason I only selltheir mid-base drivers.
The same thing with Steg.
There's a reason I only sellcertain products from it.
Same thing with um, you know,with all of the products that I
carry.

(31:54):
I don't just load my website upwith a bunch of products.
I only pick and choose the onesthat are, you know, okay.
Like these are good.
I know these are good and theyhave very good, you know, use
cases to them.
Outside of that, I'm like, yeah,you know what?
I don't, I don't care about it.
You know, but a lot of thesepeople will dive into certain
products and brands and likeit's very obvious when they're

(32:16):
doing it.
It's like you're almost likeyou're trying to build up this
brand because you're like eitherfriends with the distributor or
you are the distributor.

SPEAKER_01 (32:25):
Yeah, yeah.
There's I mean, there's nothingwrong with being brand loyal,
but yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 (32:30):
There's there's um just when a product has like,
you know, a 50% failure rate outof the box and you see half the
forum talking about how greatthey are, it's like, yeah.
Is it is it really?
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (32:42):
Yeah, yeah.
I think things, they always uhthe chips always fall where they
fall because um I know there wasa lot of forum boners, you know,
there's always been forum bonersin the past, and and uh you'll
see some speakers that are like,you know, the forum boner, and
um um, I won't name any brands,but I've seen it where they, you
know, this is the the thefreaking uh the the flavor of

(33:04):
the week, flavor of the month,flavor of the year, and then
people start having problemswith them, and uh they you know
they you'll you'll see it kindof go by the wayside and it's
not as popular anymore.
And um that stuff kind thatstuff kind of uh um what do they
say, the the the the cream ofthe crop, the the best float to
the top or whatever?

(33:24):
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, who knows?

SPEAKER_03 (33:27):
I mean, maybe, maybe now that there's actually a lot
of testing, at least forsubwoofers, once I release all
this data.
But before, you know, some ofthe worst performers are some of
the highest suggested products.

SPEAKER_01 (33:39):
Yeah, that's crazy.
So speak getting back to your toyour subwoofers now.
So what are you doing?
You got you got an eight, ten,twelve, fifteen.
What's what's the lineup like?

SPEAKER_03 (33:48):
So for the Gus line of subwoofers, which is the
shallow, small sealed, um, it isa 10, 12, and 15.
We're gonna offer them in dualfour ohm and possibly dual two
ohm.
And yeah.
And then we're gonna do afterthat's released, we're going to
do uh the heater line, which isnamed after my other cat.

(34:11):
Um, the PTR line of subwoofers,which will be an ultra shallow
uh subwoofer, which will besimilar to you know, like the
old illusion audio uh shallowsubs with the magnet on the
front.
Uh we're gonna do something likethat.
And then we're also going to doa relatively shallow infinite
baffle model, which will be thenext question, yeah.

(34:33):
Yeah, that's gonna be the Odinline of subwoofers, okay.
Uh which is named after my uhgood friend and warehouse
manager's cat who unfortunatelyrecently passed away in a house
fire.
Oh, uh yeah, we named it afterafter Odin, his cat.

SPEAKER_01 (34:50):
Oh, poor thing.
So so what size is that onegonna be?
Did you mention it?

SPEAKER_03 (34:55):
Uh we're doing a 15.
So the the Peter is gonna be a10 and a 12.
Um, I thought about doing a 15,but that might just be too much.
Um, and then the Odin will be a15 and an 18 and possibly a 12.
Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_01 (35:12):
Yeah, because uh yeah, I was gonna ask about
infinite baffle becauseeverybody um in the sound
quality realm, that's a bigthing now.
So what what what um what makesa good subwoofer a good
subwoofer?
Like people I uh I'm sure peopleout there are curious as to what
to look for and you know, notjust upselling yours, but at the

(35:34):
same time upselling yours.
What what makes a good subwooferfor a car subwoofer a good
subwoofer?
Like what would all this fake umyou know, smoke and mirrors that
manufacturers put out and thespecs, they're fibbing on the
specs.
What what how are people how dowe even have a uh you know a
freaking fighting chance to tofigure out what's good?

SPEAKER_03 (35:57):
Yeah, so the short answer is you don't have a
fighting chance unless theypublish all of the data like we
are.
Um the thing that I learnedgoing into, you know, I I had
some pretty good knowledge goinginto it, but frankly, over the
years, my knowledge on likespeaker design has sort of like
not speaker design, because I'venever designed a speaker, but

(36:17):
like the idea behind what makesa speaker good has sort of faded
because obviously sounddeadening has taken up my brain
like the past two or threeyears.
Um, but going back into this, Idusted off some cobwebs and I
also learned a lot more tosummarize it.
If I had to provide a reallyquick answer, what makes a good

(36:38):
subwoofer a good subwoofer islinearity.
Linearity on motor force, uh,linearity on suspension,
linearity on inductance,linearity on QTS.
Um, you know, if you have Ed,have you ever seen a clipple uh
set of clipple measurements?

SPEAKER_01 (36:56):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (36:57):
So you know how it has like, you know, there's like
a center point, and then there'susually like a line that swings
from like a it's like anupside-down U-shape, yeah,
essentially.

SPEAKER_00 (37:06):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (37:06):
So the more this is very vaguely summarizing here.
So please, people listening,don't pick this apart.
I'm just trying to make thisquick and easy.
Um, you know, symmetrical, flat,wide, linear is important.
BL, uh, which is motor forceacross stroke, is by far the
most important.

(37:27):
Uh, that's why mostmanufacturers are referring to
70% BL is like the industrystandard for deriving uh usable
X max.
Um and then suspension andinductance are next, uh, both of
which are also highly important.
And what we, what I realizedfirsthand, like this is what

(37:48):
they were telling me, like theengineers that I'm working with,
like this is what they weretelling me going into it.
Like, no, like linearity is likesuper important.
Like for us to, you know, allthese discussions we had, I'm
like, okay, like cool.
Like, I guess, you know, Ididn't really, I've never really
had a subwoofer that was likethis, and then a similar
subwoofer that just didn't haveas good of linearity across

(38:11):
those uh different parameters.
And I got to experience itfirsthand, um, you know, with a
few different subwoofers againthat I have firsthand experience
with.
You know, I'll talk about theseones since, you know, again,
they're discontinued, theIllusion Audio C12 XL, which was
it's which is one of my favoritesubwoofers to date.

(38:32):
And then yesterday I got thedata back on it, and it's not
that good.
Um, it's not linear, it is notsymmetrical.
Um, and one of the things, youknow, I still have the 212s in
the rear of my car, playing from40 hertz and down.
And one of the weird things thatI always experienced with those
is like, yeah, they will playlow.
Um, like my microphone picks upthat they're playing down to,

(38:55):
you know, 11 hertz, 10 hertz,something like that, uh, you
know, flat.
And uh, but the thing was, like,you hear these people talking
about, oh, like, yeah, you don'tfeel it though.
And it's like, yeah, but it'sthere, like, uh, it's like a
it's like a tricky thing oflike, are you feeling it because
you have too much of it?

(39:15):
And I learned firsthand, it'sno, it's because they are
nonlinear and they arecompressing at eye excursion.
And yeah, they are creating thesound, but once they start, you
know, really getting some longthrow under them, uh, they are
not traveling in a linearfashion, which is really

(39:38):
impacting what you actuallyexperience.
And uh yeah, I don't know ifthat answered that question.

SPEAKER_01 (39:44):
No, no, no, that was perfect.
That was a good answer.

SPEAKER_03 (39:46):
Yeah, and those those large signal parameters uh
also impact distortion.
You know, asymmetry andnonlinearity on all of these has
different effects on harmonicdistortion, intermodulated
distortion, things like that.
And, you know, our write-up onthe subwoofer testing homepage

(40:07):
has all of that information.
Uh, there's also a cheat sheetthat Clipple has that tells you
what all of these nonlinearitiesand asymmetries cause as far as
distortion goes.

SPEAKER_01 (40:18):
So, what do you think of um, you know, infinite
baffle versus sealed in a car?
What do you uh what's your takeon that?

SPEAKER_03 (40:27):
Like, so it's really funny you ask that.
I had my I had my own opinion onthis, uh, which was it doesn't
matter as long as the QTC of thesystem is the same, you know,
because it's kind of at the endof the day, uh infinite baffle
is behaving as a sealedenclosure, right?

(40:47):
It's just an infinite sizesealed enclosure.
Um and what's really happeningis the the engineer that's
working on my subs is probablygonna listen to this and he's
gonna be like, Nick, you'rebutchering this.
What are you doing?
Um, you should have him on here.
That would be exciting.
That'd be fun.
Um and I'm sure he'd be willingto.
And I'm sure most people wouldactually be familiar with him.

(41:08):
But, anyways, um the the thewhole thing is at the end of the
day, when you're just whenyou're designing a driver, you
have, you know, you have yourmotor force, you have your you
know, equivalent air suspension,you have all these different
parameters.
And at the end of the day, theQTC of the final system, the
driver plus the enclosure, iswhat you're gonna hear.

(41:30):
That's it.
So at the end of the day, itreally just comes down to what
the driver is doing in thatspecific enclosure.
So if if we're able to achievethe same thing in a different
enclosure, it it's relativelyyou know the same.
That was my opinion before goinginto this.
After I got this, you know,coming out of it and asking

(41:53):
these guys these questions tosummarize it, I am still under
the same impression.
This whole idea that infinitebaffle is this quote unquote
special thing is I'mgeneralizing here, but trying to
keep it short.
It's bullshit.

(42:13):
It really is.
Um, what really makes infinitebaffle special is the fact that
there are good subwoofersdesigned for infinite baffle.
That's it.
Nothing more.
I realized that the second I wastesting uh audio mobile
subwoofers and our prototype.

(42:33):
And I was like, oh, this thislike you know, this low end that
you like feel like itpressurizes your cabin, as
people say.
It's not coming from infinitebaffle specifically.
It's not coming from more conearea, does it?
But like the cone area itself isjust creating more output, but
like it's not coming from that.

(42:54):
It's coming from linearity.
You know, these infinite bafflesubwoofers that are very, very
popular with Infinite Bafflethat we tested are amazing
subwoofers.
They're incredible, they haveamazing linearity.
I just sent the clipper reportfor one of them to Aaron
Hardison uh last night.
We were talking on the phone forlike an hour and a half about
this testing that we did.

(43:15):
And um, you know, we were justcatching up, we're old friends,
and you know, we got into thetest and you know, we started
nerding out on stuff.
I started sending him some ofthe PDFs that I had.
And he, you know, I sent him oneof the uh acoustic elegance subs
and he looked at it and he went,holy shit, that's a good
subwoofer.
And I was like, Yeah, you know,so it's like go figure, you

(43:37):
know, no wonder that that itsounds like that.
It's not Infinite Baffle doingit.
It is a really good driver inits appropriate application
doing it.
If you do, you know, a reallywell-designed subwoofer that's
designed for small sealed, youwill experience the exact same
thing.
The thing is, there are nosubwoofers that are designed for

(43:58):
small sealed that do the exactsame thing.
The only ones that were doing itwere the audio mobile encores,
and they're no longer made.
I don't think they will be madeever again.
I'm assuming.
I I don't know if that's true ornot.
Uh and now our subwoofers do thesame thing.
We have excellent linearityacross, you know, across stroke.
And I have that you you heard mycar at the get together

(44:20):
recently, right?

SPEAKER_01 (44:21):
Actually, I didn't.
I was uh I was giving demos ofmy car, and I was like Oh my
god, I wish you did.
I know, I wish I did too.
I wanted to hop in, but I thinkyou had to go to a wedding or
something like that.
Yeah, I did.
I did.

SPEAKER_03 (44:34):
I went to two weddings that weekend.
It was crazy.
Um yeah, and I was only therefor like three hours.
I was ended, I ended up beinglike a little late.
My girlfriend was pissed at me.

SPEAKER_01 (44:44):
Yeah, yeah.
I did hear good stuff.
I uh Mike was uh raving aboutit, and everybody that heard it
said really good stuff about it.

SPEAKER_03 (44:52):
I mean, you can ask Ryan about it, you can ask uh
Chris Pierce about it, you canask, you know, uh Braden, you
know, has a really long andin-depth review about it uh on
the on the forums.
Um, all of them said the samething.
Are you sure you don't have yourrear subs hooked up right now?
And the thing was, like that 112was doing better low-end
extension than my two C12 XLs inthe rear were doing.

(45:15):
Now, sure, there's a little bitmore cabin gain in like the
front passenger footwell thanthere is from the trunk, but my
car and my trunk are very smalland the distances are very
similar, so it's really not thatmuch of a difference.
Like both of these, all thesepeople get in, they're like,
there's no, there's no fuckingway.
It's just that single 12.
I even had to show somebody thatuh that my 12s in the rear were

(45:38):
unplugged, they weren't evenplugged in.
Uh that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 (45:41):
Well, what were you getting?
How many watts?

SPEAKER_03 (45:44):
Uh 600.
600?

SPEAKER_01 (45:46):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (45:46):
Yeah.
About that.
Um, and I I did it with uh halfof a cubic foot enclosure.

SPEAKER_01 (45:53):
Yeah, I saw the box.
It was wicked small.
So is this is this uh I knowyou're in prototype phase, but
is that one that you brought tothe event?
Is that gonna be the finaliteration?

SPEAKER_03 (46:05):
Or are you still that was that was revision one.
Um we have a few things to fixon it.
So the way the way like propersubwoofer design goes is you you
do like engineering drawings,like you simulate it.
Like there's different softwareswhere you can simulate uh you
know different motor topologiesand like motor designs and like
suspensions and things likethat, and you can simulate how

(46:28):
the motor is going to behave,how the suspension is gonna
behave, and you can kind ofpiece that all together in these
various softwares.
So you simulate it and then youbuild your prototype.
Most of the time, or sometimes,um, you know, I can't speak for
most of the time.
I I've never designed more orhelped with designing more than
one subwoofer before.
Uh, but like apparently, most ofthe time, the simulations are

(46:52):
very close to the real world uhthat you that you build of it.
Um, but it's usually not ahundred percent spot on.
So you you simulate it, youbuild a prototype, you see the
little differences that are kindof that need to be fixed, and
then you do a revision and youjust keep going from there.
Um, so we're doing revision tworight now, and there will be

(47:14):
slight improvements.
Um notably, we had to we had aslight asymmetry with, I think
it was the suspension um endwith the BL.
I'm talking like very slight,but again, if it's like if it's
as simple as just shifting theyou know moving assembly by two
millimeters, then okay, do it.

(47:35):
Great.
You get more X max, you getbetter, better linearity and you
get better uh symmetry.
Great.
You know, we just reduceddistortion a little bit further.
Um, and all it takes is justslight changes.
Um, so to see to like do thatand see how easy it was for us
to do that, again, seeing theresults on all these different
subwoofers and being like, howthe hell do you guys have you

(47:58):
know asymmetries of up to 10millimeters and you know
nonlinearities that make theseBL curves look like you know
mountains?
It it just doesn't, it doesn'tmake any sense.
It doesn't compute to me.
Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (48:12):
But yeah, that's because a lot of a lot of
companies are you know, they'llmake a they'll make a speaker
and then they'll use the samemotor on different size
speakers, which is a common I Idon't know.

SPEAKER_03 (48:22):
I don't know if people will do that.
I I really can't speak to that.
Um I I you know I obviously Idon't know what's going on
internally with most of thesesubs.
We're not disassembling them, uhwe're just measuring them and
that's it, you know.
Um, but yeah, it's uh it's avery sad state out there in the
car audio industry right now, asfar as you know, performance

(48:45):
goes and what is actually beingshown.
But yeah, I mean, you know, wehad the one prototype in in the
front passenger footwell, half acubic foot, and it it did
amazing.
And it blew my mind at firstwhen I started listening to the
to our prototype.
I was like, uh, do I like this?
I was like, something isdifferent about this.
I don't, I don't know if I likethis.

(49:08):
And I was like, all right, letme let me like put it through
its paces really quick.
And I realized after a fewminutes, I was like, oh, there's
just a lot more content.
I'm like, it's weird.
It's measuring the same, butthere is a lot more content.
And that is where I proved tomyself that I was wrong about
something previously.
I used to argue, I was like, eh,it's measuring down there, like

(49:30):
it must be playing it again.
Yeah, sure, it kind of is, butit's not doing it in a linear
fashion, which will again reduceperformance in a myriad of ways.
Um, you know, it can adddistortion, it can cause
compression, it can, you know,you'll get those frequencies
kind of, but like not actuallyfully produced.

(49:50):
But the microphone will pick itup as pressure down there, but
you won't actually get thatpressure.
So, you know, again, to go back,I know we I just rambled for a
while and completely went on atangent and changed subjects,
but to go back to your topic oflike, you know, is infinite
baffle different than smallseal?
Yeah, the enclosure isdifferent.

(50:11):
But as long as all other thingsare equal, which isn't really
possible, but let's just assumethey are, um, then yeah, they
they could sound and performexactly the same.
You know, the only thing that'sdifferent about infinite baffle
is you will have a much uhhigher uh or much higher like
efficiency as far as power goes.

(50:33):
For the small seals, you'll needmuch more power to get the same
output with the same low-end uhextension in that small
enclosure.
That's it.
If you can apply all that power,it there's no difference.

SPEAKER_01 (50:46):
Yeah, I've heard I've heard good infinite baffle
and I've heard good good sealedsubwoofers.
So um, you know, it's pick yourpoison, right?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (50:56):
I mean, and again, it just to again to summarize it
really quick.
Um, it's just as simple as goodsubwoofer versus bad subwoofer.
This whole obsession of infinitebaffle, it it's really just
coming down to, you know, Ed, dome a favor, name three
subwoofers for me that arecommon to use in Infinite

(51:16):
Baffle.

SPEAKER_01 (51:17):
Uh, let's see, Acoustic Elegance.
Uh really can't think of anyothers.
Okay, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (51:26):
Guess what?
Acoustic elegant subs arefucking amazing.
Yep, yep.
That's that's the answer, youknow.
That that really, reallygenuinely is the answer.
You know, I'm trying to think oflike and they have a wait list
to boot.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, you know, they it they'rethey're very good.
They're very, very goodsubwoofers, and that's what

(51:47):
people are hearing.
Again, if we had an equalsubwoofer but designed for small
sealed, you would hear the samething.
You know, that's it.
It's really what it comes downto.

SPEAKER_01 (52:00):
So when can people get their hands on the on the
gus?
What is it?
The gus, the Peter, and yeah,yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (52:06):
The Gus is the first one that we're doing.
I'm not gonna release all ofthem at the same time.
Uh, I realize that would beabsolutely insane because it
would be the most ridiculousfinancial burden I could
possibly imagine for myself.
Um but we're we're doing the gusfirst because that is the most
important one, I think.
Um, you know, small sealed,shallow, like duh, high

(52:26):
excursion, low distortion.
Everyone's gonna love that.
That could be used in so manyapplications.
So that one, we are, if all goeswell, we should have them
available, ready to ship tocustomers by late April or early
May.
But again, that's if everythinggoes well.

(52:47):
Who knows?
Something might happen where,you know, in production we find
something that needs to befixed, or I'm not happy with a
finish on the cone, or, youknow, we're not happy with um
who knows?
There's there's or a supplierfor like, you know, the the the
rubber ring, that rubber trimring didn't come through and was

(53:10):
late on delivering, you know,those.
Like, who the hell knows?
There's a million things thatcould go wrong.
Maybe the the boat that'sbringing it over from overseas
got, you know, got nuked.
Who the hell knows?
There's a million things thatcould uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (53:23):
If you're getting it from Venezuela or something and
you get uh um accused of uhimporting drugs or something, oh
there goes a pallet, there goesa pallet of the gus.
What is it that what's what'sthe full name of this of the
first one?
It's the gus.
Gus.
Oh, it's just gus.

SPEAKER_03 (53:38):
Oh, which is it is named after my cat, uh first and
foremost, but I do have anappropriate like other name for
it.
It stands for geometricallyuncompromised subwoofer.
And the reason for that isgeometrically, meaning it's
small, it's shallow, but at thesame time, the geometric, like

(53:58):
the design of the motor, thesuspension, like everything
about this subwoofer isuncompromised.
You know, we are doing somethingthat is shallow, but at the same
time, we're not compromising themotor geometry, the suspension,
the inductance, the QTS, all ofit is is industry leading, you
know?

(54:19):
Um, so yeah, that's whatprompted the name for the Gus
besides my cat.

SPEAKER_01 (54:27):
That's awesome, man.
So let everybody know where theycan find you.
Uh drop some websites, drop someuh, I'll post some links up once
we finish with this, but if youcan let the audience know where
they can find you.

SPEAKER_03 (54:37):
You know, resonxoundsolutions.com.
Um, you know, you can go on thewebsite, you can see all of the
information on there.
Like I said, if you go to thewebsite, you'll see the
subwoofer testing in the mainmenu.
If you go there, you will see alink towards the top of the home
article for that testing thatwill bring you to the Gus series

(54:58):
landing page.
And that landing page has all ofthe info, everything from all of
the descriptions, the expectedpricing, um, the TS parameters,
the distortion graphs, the LSIgraphs, the mechanical drawings
and specs, um, you know, therenderings, you know, some
photos uh of like theprototypes, you know, all sorts

(55:18):
of stuff we have.
Uh, you can also see us onFacebook, which is where we post
a lot of updates, you know,Instagram too.
Um, you know, we're we're allover the place.

SPEAKER_01 (55:29):
Good stuff, good stuff, man.
So yeah, we got a lot ofcontent, Nick.
I think we're gonna wrap it upunless you got any.
Man, I thought we were juststarting.
Yeah, we got almost an hour anda half of uh some good info
here.

SPEAKER_03 (55:42):
Yeah.
Wow, it's been an hour and ahalf already.

SPEAKER_01 (55:44):
Uh oh, an hour, yeah, yeah.
Well, I got an hour and twentyof content, and uh then we had
to set this thing up, this wholethis whole baby up with uh Zoom
and Google and yeah, whateverelse.
We were trying to get a clearsignal.

SPEAKER_03 (55:59):
But uh as as I tell everyone, I'm always okay with
going on if you want more.
Uh or we can wrap it up if youwant.
Um I'm open to either.

SPEAKER_01 (56:08):
No, if you if you got anything else to add, I I
don't even know.
Uh it's it's not me.
It's not my podcast.
It's uh it's you.
Yeah, I mean, anything you wannaanything you want to bring up,
anything you got left oranything you think you missed.

SPEAKER_03 (56:21):
I mean, yeah let's go back to some of the testing.
Um you know, I I do want to putthis out there before it's
actually released.
Um, yeah, the homepage for thetesting is released, but none of
the data is released yet.
The reason why I wanted to dothat is purely so people can
start reading about what thetest is, why it was done, how it

(56:45):
was done, what the data is, howto interpret the data.
All of this context isextremely, extremely important.
The last thing I want is forpeople, is for like all this
data to just be dropped andpeople to like, oh yeah, all
right, cool.
And they don't even understandit anyway.
Like, let's be real.
How many people know how tounderstand a full suite of

(57:07):
clipple measurements?
They don't.
Like 99% of people, even theextreme hobbyists, don't.
This article explains all ofthat info.
So even if you don't want toread all this, you just want to
see the results.
I promise you, if you read thisarticle, um, you know, that
homepage, you are going to learna lot of information about how

(57:29):
speakers work and how all thesesuper advanced, you know,
high-level uh measurementsystems are working and how
they're measuring thesedifferent parameters.
Um and at the same time, I alsowant to get out there, please,
please, please, when theseresults drop, again, it's only

(57:50):
relative to the context of thistest.
Um, it's not the end all be all.
We, you know, we did our bestwith what we had.
You you you know, listenersmight hear this and then see our
testing and be like, oh, butthey didn't do this, or they,
you know, that's not what Iwould have done.
Great.

unknown (58:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (58:09):
Unfortunately, that for you that comes with the
territory.
You didn't pay for this test.
There's there's labor costs thatare associated with this test.
And I had we had to make ajudgment call of like what we
did and like what was being paidfor.
And then not only that, not justlike the labor costs for the
test, but also how much data Ipersonally would have to parse

(58:33):
through and then write about.
Ed, I have over 50,000 wordsbeing written for these articles
combined.
Wow.

SPEAKER_01 (58:43):
That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 (58:44):
It is it is insane.
It is the largest undertaking ofcontent creation that I have
ever, ever, ever done by far.
It's been so stressful.
Um, it's mentally taken me tolike high highs and low lows.
It's been a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 (59:02):
Um no pun intended.

SPEAKER_03 (59:04):
Yeah, yeah.
And and I'll even explain likewhat I'm anticipating.
One of the one of the judgmentcalls that we made for this test
was, you know, we did two levelsof distortion measurements.
You know, most people will see adistortion measurement, and it's
usually at 2.83 volts at onewatt, one meter, or like one
watt, one meter, or two pointeight three volts at one meter,

(59:26):
right?
That's like the industrystandard.
Um, or you know, withsubwoofers, you don't do one
meter, you do it near fieldbecause room modes.
But anyways, what we did was wedid two measurements.
One was at one volt near field,and another one was at just at
or just below, uh, I think itwas just below.

(59:47):
Uh yeah, just below the 70% B,the measured 70% BL X max limit
that we found on that sample.
So we applied enough voltage toget this thing.
Going just to where its 70% BLwas being approached.
And we did a distortionmeasurement at that level.

(01:00:09):
And here's the thing.
Obviously, we have, you know,let's say 40 different
subwoofers.
These subwoofers range fromsuper low power handling with
super low excursion all the wayup to super high power hand
power handling with, you know,gobs of excursion, right?
And I already see it wherepeople are going to be like,
yeah, you tested this subwooferwith 40 volts and you tested

(01:00:33):
this one with 10.
Like, how is that comparable?
The thing is, I did want to dofour levels of voltage testing.
I wanted to do one volt.
I wanted to do eight volt.
I wanted to do just below uh 70%excursion, and I wanted to do a
voltage level that would bringit to manufacture-stated X max.

(01:00:56):
We started looking at the labor,we started looking at what I was
going to do for the write-ups,and it was going to make my life
a living hell and make thingsextremely expensive.
It already was extremelyexpensive, but I'm talking way
more expensive.
So what they proposed, what theengineers proposed, was like,
look, let's just do this.
Let's measure it at one volt.

(01:01:18):
And let's also measure it at,you know, just at its 70% BL
excursion.
And from there, you know, at theend of the day, people are not
going to take a super, peopleare not going to pick a super
high excursion, super high powerhandling uh subwoofer if they
don't need much output.

(01:01:39):
And they, they, and I was like,yeah, like, yeah, that actually
makes a lot of sense.
Like, you know, who's going togo for, you know, like a JL
Audio W7 if they only need 110dB of output?
Like, you know, at the low end.
That's like not going to happen.
So it's like, oh yeah.
So it's like more like, okay, wehave low-level baseline and then

(01:01:59):
use case distortion.
Um, and then from there, we areable to not perfectly, but at
least closely extrapolate, youknow, how much uh how well, you
know, these different driversare weighted from, you know, the
amount of distortion they haverelative to the amount of
excursion they have.

(01:02:20):
Um, and again, the the articlethat I have currently up
explains all of this.
We do have a like performancescore sheet that we will be
doing for every subwoofer.
This performance score sheet isnot end-all be all.
It is my subjectiveinterpretation of the objective
data.

(01:02:40):
And that like weighteddistortion to X max is part of
it uh to give the subwoofersthat have more excursion uh
higher reward and the driversthat have super low excursion,
you know, a little bit of apenalty.
Um but, anyways, you know, justlook at this as data.
It is your responsibility tointerpret that data in a way

(01:03:04):
that is um, you know, usable, ina way that is fair.
I do my best at explainingthings, but at the end of the
day, again, I did my best to beneutral about everything.
But, you know, some people aregonna have different opinions.
Other manufacturers whoseproducts are included in this
are definitely gonna havecertain opinions about this.

(01:03:27):
They're just not gonna be happybecause their products didn't do
well.
Like I said, I already had anemployee, a tech support
employee of one company, youknow, 15 minutes before we
started this podcast, make aFacebook status about, you know,
oh, like let me, you know what?
I'm just gonna read it rightnow.
I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:45):
Yeah, I think that's gonna be just the beginning, the
tip of the iceberg, once you,once all this data gets out
there.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:51):
He said, ah, these new car audio kids that bash all
their customers, fellowinstallers and manufacturers,
because they're so smart and askus to respect their data and
upcoming products, so we'll buythem.
Bless your chart hilved, ha ha.
And then uh apparently he madean edit here because this wasn't
added before.
Golden rule, respect youraudience and they will respect

(01:04:12):
you, degrade your audience, andeven if you're right, they'll
denounce you.
Well, I mean, at the end of theday, I'm not denouncing any
audience here.
I'm just, you know, putting upuh putting up data of products.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:24):
And that's it.
Yeah, so you're gonna fluff somefeathers and disappoint some
people because they're gonna,you know, they're they're
they're loyal and they thinkthey're, you know, some people
don't know what they don't know,so they're gonna think that,
hey, my subwoofer sounds good tomy ears, but on paper it's not
showing, you know what I mean?
But yeah, and I actually, youknow what?

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:42):
That's actually great that you bring that up,
and I'm sorry to cut you off.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:45):
No, not at all, man.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:46):
Because I really wanted to bring that up and I
totally forgot.
There is a section of thisarticle that discusses exactly
that.
I already know I'm gonna have aton of people whose favorite
subwoofer gets absolutelyannihilated in this, you know.
Because you know, because again,I'm familiar with who is

(01:05:07):
recommending what and howpassionate they are and you know
how these subwoofers performed,they're gonna be pretty, they're
gonna say they're gonna come outand say, uh, you know, I don't
care what the data says, I usemy ears.
Well, good luck with that.
You know, good luck with that.
If that's what you want to do,that's great.
But at the end of the day, justbecause you have a preference

(01:05:32):
towards high distortionnonlinear subwoofers doesn't
make them accurate.
It just makes it that you likeit.
Or are not even like it, used toit.
Like I said before, when I firstgot my subwoofer, my prototype
installed, I wasn't sure if Ieven liked it at first because I
wasn't used to all of that extralinearity that was that wasn't

(01:05:55):
there on the C12 XLs.
The C12XLs had pretty badasymmetry and pretty bad
linearity.
Um, and I wasn't used to thistruly accurate uh end result.
Yeah, they had low distortionand they sounded tight and they
sounded clean, but they didn'thave true linearity.
And uh, and I, you know, if youpresented this to me, oh yeah,

(01:06:18):
that C12XL actually does reallybad, I probably would have been
like one of those people like,uh, I don't, I don't know, man.
I really don't know.
But I I'm experiencing itfirsthand.
I changed my own opinions oncertain things throughout this
entire test, and I discussedthat as well in this article.
Um, but yeah, there's gonna beplenty of people that denounce

(01:06:38):
this testing, either becausethey're loyal to a brand, or
they're an affiliate of thebrand, or they're an employer of
the brand, or they own thebrand, or they're just a fucking
idiot fanboy.
You know, there's gonna be allsorts of people who denounce it
for various reasons.
At the end of the day, again,it's a third party that tested

(01:06:59):
this stuff.
The clipple machine, thehardware and the software is
fully automated.
There's nothing we can do toreally fudge this.
Um, and if you disagree, youknow, go do your own testing or
keep living in ignorance.
I don't, I don't care.
It doesn't change anything.
Um, and one thing to also keepin mind, too, again, a lot of
these brands are probably gonnatry to denounce it.

(01:07:20):
I can name two of them right nowthat I know for a fact are gonna
go ape shit because their ownersare very vocal people and they
are not gonna like theseresults.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:30):
Anyways, people already there it there's already
uh a little bit of kerfuffleover on the forums, on the Dyma
forum, and I started to read.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:41):
Maybe I I don't know, but I already I know
specifically two company ownersare gonna go ape shit.
Um, and I'll tell you after weget off the recording.
I'll tell you exactly who theyare, and you're gonna we're
gonna we're gonna have a littleinside joke later.
Sure, sure.
Anyways, um, at the end of theday, this is something to also
keep in mind.
You we talked about before a lotof these manufacturers don't

(01:08:02):
release these specs.
Here is the thing.
I guarantee you any halfwayrespectable manufacturer has
these specs for theirsubwoofers.
They just do not make thempublic for one reason or the
other.
Reason number one is that theproduct is dog shit and they

(01:08:22):
don't want to put that out therepublicly, right?
Reason number two is what I'mexperiencing people
misinterpreting data that theydon't even understand in the
first place and just runningwild with it.
And they say, oh, like, youknow, your sub has, you know, 4%
distortion with, you know, 26volts applied to it.
That's a lot.
It's like, yeah, that's a lot.

(01:08:42):
You should see these othersubwoofers that have 25%
distortion with 20 volts appliedto them.
So it's it's kind of, you know,they have nothing to compare to.
You give them ammo, they onlyshoot at you, you know.
But again, uh I'm rambling andI'm going all over the place.
But again, most important thingto keep in mind here, all of

(01:09:04):
these brands have this data.
They are gonna come out and theyare gonna try to defend things.
Just ask them, okay, releaseyour data.
Provide me with something thatshows that what I have here is
not true.
I guarantee you most of themwill not.

(01:09:27):
If not, all of them will not.
And you know what?
I'm also I have it on the pagetoo.
Like if there's any companyowners that see this and like
disagree with our testing, likethey know for a fact something
is up.
Um, you know, maybe this veryspecific sample is like not
measuring correctly.
Maybe it's a bad sample, which Iwe highly doubt because that
doesn't really happen.
But you know what?

(01:09:47):
You have some sort ofdisagreement with uh with the
results, email me.
I will purchase a brand new one,I will send it in again, and
we'll test it again, and we willput the second test up.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:59):
Oh, I guarantee you people are gonna that that was
one of the things that was onthe back of my mind that people
have been, they're gonna belike, oh, how many samples did
you test of, you know, let's sayum, I don't know, I'll pick a
I'll pick a woofer, like yousaid, if they're not in business
anymore, but uh audio mobile, uhEvo subwoofer, 10-inch,
whatever, and they're gonna belike, oh, you you don't have

(01:10:19):
enough samples.
There's gonna be people ever,you know, everybody's gonna be
uh in the grandstands with theirown opinion, and they're gonna
be like, look, this is the thisis the subwoofer.
You should be able to pick us uhany manufacture subwoofer out of
that lineup if they have goodquality control.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:36):
Yeah, so actually that's a really good point.
So here is something to keep inmind too.
Subwoofers are the easiestdesign, uh, easiest driver to
design and to manufacture.
They are, with them being solarge and then producing you
know low frequencies that arenot as sensitive to small
manufacturing mistakes.
It's very difficult to have asubwoofer like one sample that's

(01:11:00):
going to measure totallydifferent from another sample.
The only way that happens is ifyou have garbage quality
control.
Garbage.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:08):
Like absolute dog shit manufacturing, dog shit
quality control.
Um, it it just does not happen.
So if you see a manufacturer putthat out there as an excuse,
that is another red flag becauseit it's not how it works.
It's not how it works.
Um, you know, you could haveconvinced me that maybe before I

(01:11:29):
went into this, but again, I Ilearned a lot going into this.
I had so many questions.
And these guys, again, likeexplain to me how all this
works.
And again, to summarize thatpart, like there are no real
major tolerances from sample tosample.
There'll be small ones,obviously, but like nothing
crazy.
And if there are red flag on itsown, major red flag.

(01:11:54):
Um, so I don't know, you know,and that's something maybe uh
again, if if you know, we I dowant to talk about and like
announce and you know be proudof who I worked with on this
subwoofer again because I I dowant to give credit to my friend
who did the design on it.
I do want to give credit tothese guys.

(01:12:16):
I'm super proud that I'm workingwith them.
It's not that I'm keeping ithidden.
I'm keeping it hidden becausethey don't want to be involved
in the drama of this.
Not that they're tied to the thetesting really, but they did do
the designs of my subwoofer.
Um and uh, you know, maybe ifyou get one of those guys on,
you know, they can tell youfirsthand about you know

(01:12:38):
manufacturing tolerances andwhat you experience across
clipple testing five differentsamples of the same model.
It, you know, you can get itfirsthand from someone like
that.
Uh, I'm sure they would love totalk about that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:52):
Yeah.
See if we can get that personon.
He could come on anonymous.
I'll set him up.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:58):
He would probably love to.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:00):
Yeah, that'd be great.
Because I I I got a lot ofquestions.
I'd love to know.
I'm sure the audience out therewould love to hear what they
have to say too.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Um, I'll ask them.
I'll ask them if they want to.
Uh, so yeah.
Um, I don't know.
I mean, again, there's there'sso many, so many aspects to this
whole thing.
Again, the testing is thetesting, the data is the data.
It is the viewer'sresponsibility to educate
themselves on it.
I provide all the resources todo so.

(01:13:31):
Um, you know, any company thatwants to disagree with it, I
invite you to present mesomething different and let's
work together to come up with asolution to get proper data.
Uh, if you think ours isimproper on your product.
And uh yeah, you know, goodluck.
See you in the battlefield.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:51):
Good stuff, Nick.
I think uh yeah, I think weshould wrap it up and uh call it
a day.
Put a bow on this.
So, Nick, thank you for comingon to everybody.
Say thank you to Nick.
Woo, thanks.
Crowd's going crazy.
All right, Nick, hang on.
I'm gonna wrap this up.
All right, hang on one second.