Audiobahn AWT34 34" subwoofer

Audiobahn manufactures the largest production subwoofer in the world - a 34" subwoofer.
It actually measures 36", including the chrome basket's mounting flange.
Take a minute to picture how large that is - three full feet across.

We all know that getting loud in a sealed enclosure is all about how much air the sub can displace... essentially cone area (Sd) times excursion (Xmax, for lack of a better spec).
Obviously, this sub has a large cone - and looking at the pretty generous size of the spider and accordion surround, its 30mm Xmax seems more than feasible.

I did the math on this one - and regardless of whether you believe Audiobahn's ratings are 'optimistic' or not, it seems logical that Audiobahn would at least measure and rate their own subs the same way - certainly, at least, for subs in the same product line or series.
It works out that a single AWT34 can out displace forty nine AWT10 10" subwoofers.

I'm fortunate that a local shop that I've been working on marketing strategies with is one of the few in the world that have one of these subs in their inventory...
And even more fortunate to help them commission an enclosure to be built for this subwoofer, to put this sub on working display.

To showcase the sub properly, we had a plastics specialist fabricate an enclosure out of 1" thick plexiglass, and had them install a mirrored bottom. Plexiglass is more rigid than MDF to begin with, and in 1" thick size, it's incredibly stiff. I'd wager that it is at least as rigid as the similarly sized SPL enclosure that I had built (that won two iDBL competitions), that used 1.5" thick MDF walls.
The enclosure is sealed, as this is not a sub that you'd want to port.
The enclosure is about 21 cu.ft. altogether... which really isn't that large, when you consider it is equivalent to 49 ten inch subwoofers. It measures 4 feet wide, by 3 feet tall, by 2 feet deep.

I must say, my expectations weren't high, other than being jaw dropping visually. After all, this is treading well outside of standard engineering "norms", and well outside the range of standard parts availability.
Remarkably, the sound quality of this sub is actually not bad at all!
It certainly beats the sound quality of many subs on the market, and beats the sound quality of most installs out there.
That's not to say it's a sound-quality competition winner - but it isn't clarity or overhang that penalize it, as I would have expected - its actually that the thing has such a low resonant frequency... Usable output is tremendous - as long as you are operating below 50hz. Above that, it seems to lose steam.
But, that's easy to overlook, watching something so impressively massive, something that invokes such disbelief from literally everyone that looks at it - easy to begin wanting just one of your own, regardless of (or maybe because of) how impractical it is!

	Here's a shot of the sub, mounted up in the enclosure. It took three people to lift the sub into the enclosure, and some creative work with epoxy and huge hurricane nuts, to which the bolts would drive into.
Here's a view of the front of the sub, mounted in the enclosure. Since we're talking about how massive this is - consider that the 1" thick plexiglass enclosure alone weighs around 300 pounds, and the subwoofer weighs around 200-250 pounds itself, despite being constructed nearly 100% from Aluminum.
	The AWT34 in action. My camera isn't the best at capturing excursion shots - but if you look close, you can see that the frame is clearly in focus - and the blurring of the Audiobahn logo shows movement. The sub actually is capable of reaching more excursion than is shown in the picture (more a limitation of my camera, than anything). It may deceptively not look like not that much... but again, remind yourself that this is a 34" subwoofer you are looking at, not a 12"!
	Again, my camera isn't the best - but it can take short video clips, so I thought, "what the heck, let's try to get an excursion video!" There is no sound to this video clip, so you'll have to imagine a 20 second sine-wave drop, starting up high, and dropping down to about 20hz. In the video clip, you can see this does reach a good amount of excursion - but again you have to not only consider that this is a 34" subwoofer, but also that my camera, or the AVI format is not the greatest - it seems to be a bit jumpy or skippy in frames, not smoothly capturing the excursion - but it's all I've got. Maybe someone else can drop by and take a better excursion video for me to put up - believe me when I say this thing does move pretty darn impressively.

One more thing that is impressive, to consider:

Most people's skepticism over this subwoofer includes picturing needing thousands of watts to get this thing moving even a little bit.
This really isn't true, for this sub, however!

Bear in mind that at the time these pictures were taken, it was simply hooked up to the display board pictured to the right of the sub.
And the amp that the sub was hooked up to (an 1100w RMS model) had no chance in being able to reach it's full power output, given the limits of the small AC/DC power inverter that supplies the display board. Turn it up - it would shut down on us.
So how much power are we feeding it? Not much, really.

We do have an Audiobahn A5000SPL amp - a gigantic 5000 RMS model, that Audiobahn recommends as a good match for the 5000 RMS AWT34 subwoofer.
We have a huge power supply (although maybe still not quite huge enough for that amp) on order.
That should be fun.

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