These guys are the kings of junk rock. That's what I like to call it anyway. It's a compliment. I don't know what made me think of Ween now. Sometimes it's probably better not to think of Ween. But I did and I thought of this song. Actually I was thinking of another Ween song, their tribute to Prince—or maybe it's their parody of the royal one's music. If you want a real tribute song though, watch and listen to the vid after "Push th' Little Daisies". For all you Van Halen fans.





If you like song off the CD, then you'll enjoy this live version. If not (or if you don't know Modest Mouse), well, you'll really hate this, I would imagine. But if you're willing to give them a try then check the following video. I threw in "Willful Suspension of Disbelief" for the heck of it. Why not.







Dinosaur Jr. on some British show playing "Start Choppin'". I'm sorry, but there's something odd about this. Especially with the ridiculous quasi psychedelic background effects. J. Mascis saves it, however, with one of his patented "junky" guitar solos.



Does anyone remember these guys, the Meat Puppets? I barely did. Seriously though, some of the better alternative rock from the time. There was always a hill-billy quality, for lack of a better term, to their music. And yet it still somehow worked. ;) In large part because of Curt Kirkwood's guitar playing and those hooky riffs!

Focal tied for second in our recent Speaker Poll. Products like the Utopia Be are in part responsible for the company's popularity among sound quality enthusiasts in car audio. We are running our reviews of various speakers by manufacturers from our poll so you can read for yourself what makes these products worth the money. Here we have Pat Turnmire and Eric Holdaway for the objective and subjective analysis. In the case of these Focals, it's not only the high-end materials and the product engineering, but also the cosmetics that justify the price. We don't mind paying a little extra for something that looks as good as it sounds. Looks like we'll have to run a Top 10 list of best cosmetic speaker set, like we did for amplifiers. —Ben Oh

I get to test (and play with) pretty much every high-end woofer and component set available in car audio. I guess this gives me a unique perspective, but mostly it leaves me bored with much of what I see. When the huge box arrived totaling some 35 pounds, supposedly containing a new component set from Focal, the last thing I was, was bored. When I opened the box I saw the strikingly beautiful brushed aluminum flight case that enclosed the system. Upon opening it, I started looking at the components themselves and the crossover.I was even less bored. In fact, I felt that very rare feeling of excitement over something new and very cool.



I guess that someone crazy at Focal said, "What if we build the very best component parts and put them with a completely variable crossover? Oh yeah, and cost is no object." That has to be what happened, because that is what arrived.

With the Utopia Be line, Focal has put together a really flexible range of component parts that can be mixed and matched with their crossovers to fit pretty much any high-end car audio situation. (You are not going to find these on the www.focal-america.com site. You need to go to www.focal.tm.fr to check it out.) They are sold as systems No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7, which are basically a 5. 2-way, a 6-1/2" 2-way and a 6-1/2" 3-way with a 3" mid. (All use the same tweeter.)

The set that showed up on my doorstep was the No. 6, which will probably be the most popular. It is comprised of a 25mm Beryllium Tweeter (Be is the atomic symbol for beryllium), a 6 1/2. neo magnet midbass and the (gasp) extremely versatile Crossblock crossover. These components are also the heart of the JMLab, ultra-high-end home audio products that cost up to $80,000 for the flagship "Grand Utopia Be".

The tweeter is pretty much perfect. Beryllium is the ideal diaphragm material. It is 0.5 times less dense than titanium and 1.5 times less dense than aluminum, but is 3 and 5 times stiffer, respectively. For domes of identical mass, beryllium is 7 times more rigid than one made of titanium or aluminum, and the velocity of sound waves traveling through it is 3 and 2.5 times faster than through, respectively, titanium or aluminum. It.s also rare, expensive, hard to form into a dome shape and produces highly toxic fumes when it is machined or abraded. There are serious disclaimers in the instruction manuals about what to do if you damage a tweeter. (This brings up the very real possibility of a serious problem if you car is ever involved in an accident.)

The diaphragm is inverted unlike most tweeters and is coupled to the frame with a wide flat edge. This combination gives a very extended top end with little or no diffraction artifacts that exist in virtually every other tweeter. You will see the graphs later in the article that go out to 40kHz. This is pretty much the limit of my test system. It appears that at least on-axis it goes much higher than this with no breakup modes.

The woofer is equally advanced with a "W" cone that is described on their website as follows:

"The "W" cone uses two very fine tissues of woven glass that are lighter and thinner than aramid fibers. In addition, the molecular bond between the foam and the glass tissue is far superior to that of the aramid fibers. This results in a cone structure which is mechanically more stable and with superior stiffness. This construction allows us to further optimize the transmission speed of the sound wave in the cone. This new construction process allows the amount of internal damping in the structure to be very accurately controlled by varying the thickness of the foam: the thicker the foam, the higher the damping factor. The relationship between the thickness of the glass tissues and the foam core allows us to finely optimize the cone structure depending on the particular application and the frequency area to reproduce. The .W. cone produces an extremely transparent and neutral sound free from coloration and distortions normally associated with loudspeakers. Its only limitation, the price; more than 10 times the price of a quality paper cone."

Did you catch that last line, the one about price? I haven't seen the prices on these yet but my guess is, if you have to ask—well, you know the rest.

Finally we come to the crossover. I have tested crossovers with lots of flexibility. I have tested crossovers with really high-grade parts. I have never tested, seen or imagined a crossover that is this flexible or uses this many absolutely highest-grade available parts. Here again from their website:

"It (the Crossblock) is a fantastic tool, which helps to precisely adapt the crossover to the acoustical characteristics of the car in order to integrate its acoustics into the whole sound system ... Instead of using more than 10 coils we designed a single Multicoil air core inductor which is in essence, thanks to multiple connection points within the winding, 10 coils wound at once into one. This allowed us to use a very large gauge copper wire, which guarantees a very low insertion loss. The same way, instead of using a multitude of capacitors, we designed a Multicap capacitor, which is nothing else but a number of different-value capacitors wound together as one. These Multicaps are indeed high-efficiency metallized polypropylene capacitors made with the strictest specifications by SCR. We also use high-quality switches with very low insertion loss, and we even went as far as wiring in parallel some of the terminals of the switch."

In short, they built a crossover (that's as big as some amps), that uses the absolute best parts, has 4,480 possible settings and can adjust the frequency response to perfectly match your car. Of course, as you will see later, adjusting the crossover is not for an amateur or even a moderate level car audio shop. These should really only be installed by a shop with test equipment like multi-microphone RTAs, which can make the most of the product. How much does this cost? Again, if you have to ask.

On to the testing.

Parameter Testing

[My testing setup has changed dramatically with the addition of the Klippel Distortion Analyzer. I still use the ACO Pacific 1/4. microphone" lab amplifier and IEC baffle; however, all of the testing is done through the Klippel now. It is the "be all, end all" analysis tool for the loudspeaker engineer. The Klippel is revolutionizing loudspeaker design in virtually every application. Check it out at www.klippel.de.

Klippel testing has given us a new way to look at a speaker's linearity under power. The non linear Motor Force (BL[x]) and Compliance (Cms[x]) are graphical representations of what the speaker is doing while it is playing. They tell us if everything is balanced and working together.

Both of these curves should be centered on the X(mm) 0 line and have essentially the same shape on either side of this point. The dashed lines on the graphs are the mirrors of the actual test and make it easy to see if the curves match the ideal.]

My testing starts with "Small Signal Parameters" for the woofer.

If you have been following the reviews for the last few years, you know that I actually measure "Small Signal" at a more realistic level than traditional tests. Small signal for the Klippel system can be measured as the highest voltage before the speaker starts to become nonlinear. For the "Utopia Be 6 W2" woofer this was at 2 watts, which is a pretty good starting point considering the very high efficiency of the speaker. The key parameters are listed in the Small Signal chart.

Parameter Small signal 2 Watts
Re (Ohms) 2.91
Qms 4.21
Qes 0.62
Qts 0.54
Fs (Hz.) 42.6
Vas (l) 21.05
Cms (mm/N) 0.85
Efficiency at 2.83 volts (dB) 91.5

So how do these stack up? Good, straight down the line. These speakers are going to be used with a subwoofer so the relatively low Q / Low Fo is not an issue. The stand-out parameter is the efficiency. The high-tech cone certainly shows.

[Note: unfortunately we could not find the first set of graphs mentioned below. We'll restore those as we find them. —Ed.]

The Bl(x) (Graph 1) curve for the woofer isn.t perfect, with a shift of about 1.5mm. The question is why is it biased on such a high-end speaker and, more importantly, will it affect the performance? The Cms(x) (Graph 2) curve shows the same bias, in the same direction. This typically means the suspension is forcing the coil out of position. I checked the speaker visually and there is a slight dip in the spider, which is probably the culprit. The good news is that although the curve doesn.t look perfect, the resulting distortion will probably not be audible, especially when used with a subwoofer and active crossover.

The Bl(x) and Cms(x) curves can also be used to predict the maximum excursion for the speaker (Xmax). It is defined by Klippel as the point at which the compliance or Bl nonlinearities create 10% harmonic or intermodulation distortion. This happens when the Bl has dropped to 82% of its x=0 value (XBl) or Cms has dropped to 75% (Xc). For the Focal woofer the XBl point is 3.7 mm and the Xc point is 4.4mm. My guess is that if the suspension bias was corrected these numbers would be closer to the 4.5mm listed in the specifications. Again, with an active crossover and subwoofer, these are still good numbers, especially if the frequency response is stellar.

Frequency Response

This is where the story starts to get really interesting. I started by measuring the speakers without crossover to see what the exotic materials were bringing to the table. Graph 3 shows the woofer and tweeter response on-axis—killer high-end on the tweeter and a really nice controlled top end on the woofers. It's interesting that the woofer does not have a dust cap—part of the motor extends through the center of the cone. With a less stiff and damped cone material, the high frequency roll-off would look terrible. This woofer.s response is about as good as it gets. Graph 4 shows the woofer's on-axis and 30-degree off-axis responses together. The roll-off is still smooth and well damped.

The tweeter on- and off-axis response in Graph 5 shows a marked roll-off starting at 10kHz, but this is to be expected from any dome tweeter.inverted or not.

Now that I had a good idea of what the speakers could do, it was time to see what the crossover was about. I ran through the range of settings on the front panel. They include a woofer lowpass switch (changes the woofer x-over frequency) with 10 settings, a Q switch (changes the shape of the response) with eight settings, a highpass switch (changes the tweeter x-over frequency), with seven settings, and a tweeter level switch with eight settings.



Graph 6 above shows the range of lowpass settings on just the woofers and Graph 7 shows the system response with all of the other switches set to 1. Note that the first five settings change the shape of the high-frequency roll-off and the last five settings change the roll-off and the woofer level. The system responses are terrible because the tweeter settings have not been optimized, but you can clearly see the wide range of responses available (Graph 8).





Graph 8 above shows the far more subtle range of Q settings on the woofers response. In the system response (Graph 9) you can see that these settings affect both the roll-off shape and the interaction with the tweeter at the crossover point (the notch at 2,600Hz).



Graph 10 shows range of tweeter highpass settings on the tweeter by itself. The top line in pink is the response of the tweeter without crossover. It is clear that the crossover has an insertion loss of about 3dB. This should not be a problem however because of the tweeter's very high sensitivity.



The system response is shown in Graph 11 below with the woofer lowpass set to 10 (lowest frequency) and Q to 8 (smoothest response). This wide range of variations illustrates how complex tuning a system would be with all of the available setting options.



Graph 12 illustrates the precise 1dB steps of attenuation over an 8dB range that will let you fine tune the tweeter exactly to the wide range of mounting placements in car systems.



The results of about 30 minutes of tweaking the settings are shown in Graph 13 below. The red line in the center is the best that I could get for an on-axis response. The lines above and below show the results of the two closest highpass settings. This is a very respectable response - +/- 3dB. From 200Hz to 20kHz.



Graph 14 below took about five minutes of tweaking and shows the 30-degree off-axis response. If you ignore the range above 10kHz the response is +/- 1.5dB! This is phenomenal and represents what you can expect in your car. It.s important to note that the tweeter.s response at 20 degrees is almost perfectly flat to 20kHz, so in most systems this response error will not exist.



I was a little concerned about the wide range of crossover frequencies on the tweeter so I decided to really push it at the lowest point to see how much distortion it produced. Graph 15 shows the results of a 100-watt sweep from 1kHz to 40kHz. The harmonic distortion in the range below 10kHz never gets much above 3% and even at the 20kHz is only 5%. To put this in perspective, you ear will be creating more distortion at this listening level and you will be risking long term hearing loss after only a minute or two. This is by far the best distortion results that I have seen from any dome tweeter!



RESULTS

On-Axis Response: 10
Off-Axis Vertical: 10
Off-Axis Horizontal Mount: 10
Flexibility: 10
XBl: 8
XC: 8
Distortion: 10
Parameters: 10

So what is my final opinion based on the tests? If the woofer didn't have the small misalignment, the speakers would have scored an almost perfect score. The on-axis response wasn.t as smooth as the off-axis, but it was still better than any other component system I have tested. This is without reservation the best component set I have tested, seen or heard about. So Eric, how do they sound? —Pat Turnmire

Subjective

Focal has been producing speakers for a long time now. They have always had a very good reputation in the market as a builder of high-quality and great-sounding loudspeakers. When I first saw these beautiful Focal Utopia Beryllium speakers, I thought the packaging is fantastic. The Utopia Be No. 6's come in an oversized briefcase, with aluminized sides and frame. I immediately called Orca Designs, the importer for the Focal brand. I was in luck too, because I got the big cheese himself, Kimon Bellas, president of Orca Designs, on the phone. He answered a few questions and gave his personal tips for getting the maximum performance out of these beautiful speakers.

Bellas told me that the No. 6's were designed for the customer who wants a high-end home audio system sound in their car. Of course, one would have to afford the $3,900.00 retail price. Bellas told me that Focal, through their JM Labs brand name, actually makes an ultra high-end set of home audio speakers called the Utopia Be No. 6 that uses the same inverted-dome beryllium design as the car audio versions.

I have used other beryllium diaphragm drivers in the past, such as the Technical Audio Devices 2001 1. compression drivers which have always been extremely impressive in their high-frequency detail and low distortion. I asked Bellas why beryllium is such a big deal in speaker design? He replied that the material has all the qualities that you would want in a diaphragm material. It is extremely stiff, very light and exhibits superior internal damping. Of course, nothing is for free in the world of speaker manufacturing, which is true with beryllium. It is very expensive and extremely hard to successfully form, because it is brittle and delicate.

While the 6 W2 Be, 6-1/2" woofer does not have the difficulty of being made from beryllium, Focal has done a great job of creating a woofer that should actually fit most cars! The 6 W2 Be is only 2.84. deep. This is achieved mostly by the use of a high-power Neo magnet structure, driving the composite multi-layer cone. It.s nice to see a manufacture keep this important point in mind!

The "Crossblock" (crossover) is fascinating. With no less than four knobs, each with several detents, getting the crossover setting dialed in was the most time consuming part of this test. Even after putting in all the effort that I did, I am not 100% sure that I got the most out of them.

So, where did I end up on the Crossblock for the adjustments? Well, I'm glad you asked! The first knob on the left is called S1 and it has 10 lowpass frequency selections available. Position 1 has the highest frequency passing and really gave the woofer too much signal, while position 10 was nice and smooth, but seemed to leave an under-lap in the response curve. It will be great to see the data that Pat comes up with once he has measured this device. I ended up with the adjustment right in the middle at the #5 position.

The next knob, labeled S2, also affects the shape of the lowpass filter by changing its .Q.. It has eight adjustment detents. Position 1 has the most energy at the crossover frequency and position 8 has the flattest electrical response. I tended to like the flatter electrical responses, so the final position that I did the testing on was 5.

The S3 knob has seven levels of adjustment for the highpass frequency to the tweeter. In position 1, I found the highs to be dull and missing any sense of air, while at position 7, the tweeters are too bright. I liked position 4 and position 5 depending on the music selected.

Finally the S4 knob, adjusts the loudness level for the tweeter. Position 1 has the highest level of output and position 8 has the most attenuation. I found that position 5 was where the N°6 provided me with the smoothest response.

Listening

After giving the Utopia Be No. 6's a break of over 20 hours, I sat down and inserted Diana Krall's Love Scenes album. The big upright string bass plucks came through with surprising tactile output. I could feel them in the seat of my pants. The overall detail was good on the note changes and frequency shifts. I could also hear the fret and string noises easily.

The vocal quality was a touch "bitey" on attacks, but the vocal imaging was fixed and centered; however, the height seemed low. The piano was a little light in body, which surprised me because the string bass was so full. As with the imaging the sound stage was fixed in size and position, but the room size was unrealistic.

The No. 6's sounded very nice, but I was a bit disappointed so I decided to try an old trick. I flipped the polarity of the tweeter and gave that a try. Instantly the vocals were better, much smoother. Image height was improved, a sense of ambience became apparent, and the piano thickened. Much better overall for sure.

Picking up with Tracy Chapman's Heaven's Here on Earth, I found that the big bass drums impacts were light and that the fundamental frequencies were well attenuated, which would be expected on a 6-1/2" woofer. The acoustic guitar was clear and nicely detailed. The tambourine bangles had good individuality and moderate shimmer, but I would have liked to have heard even more shimmer.

The woodblock in the rhythm section was recessed sounding but "woody" in tonality. The vocal reproduction is sharply focused with good breath detail and very nice realism.

Moving to a full acoustic recording I selected Telarc's 20-bit recording of Schubert's Symphony #9, "The Great," to test for a sense of space and tonality. The French horns were very accurate but sounded distant. They did not come through as intimate as on the Alpine F#1's, but the overall ambience of the No. 6's was more pronounced. The violins were full, quite beautiful sounding. They were the best part of this playback! The string bass was tight and plucky with the oboe's coming through silky and reedy.

I changed gears with a move to some male vocal tracks. First up was Garth Brook's Thunder Road. The thunderclaps were large and distant sounding. They did not put me outside, but definitely gave me a sense of being in a large area. The guitar was crisp and very well detailed. Brook's vocals sounded really nice. He was closely mic'd and there was no problem with the transients or his level, from soft to loud. The cymbals and drum kit were fixed and again well detailed.

Finally, finishing off with some good ole rock and roll, I popped in ZZ Top's La Grange. The opening rim taps were crisp and the electric guitar was well shaped. The vocals were fantastic with solid imaging stability. The toms in the drum kit were thin sounding but taut. I would have liked more midbass and bass punch, so adding a subwoofer would be a good idea.

Conclusion

What can I say; Focal has done it again with the Focal Utopia Be No. 6, 2-way speaker system. Space age technology and materials, everything combined to create a top-of-the-line speaker system. If you can afford these, they are worth a listen. The Crossblock, while being very easy to use, can be a bit overwhelming to get set up to its full potential, so you want to find a dealer who hears what you hear and is willing to spend some time setting up your system. —Eric Holdaway

Subjective Score Chart
Utopia Be No. 6

Overall Sound Quality 15 (of 20)
Tonal Balance (above 80Hz) 7 (of 10)
Low-Frequency Extension 7 (of 10)
Clarity at Low Volume 8 (of 10)
Clarity at High Volume 8 (of 10)
Image Stability 8 (of10)
Listening Fatigue (moderate volume) 7 (of 10)
Flexibility/Ease of Installation 16 (of 20)

Total Subjective Score 76 (of 100)

We've been looking at compact amps the last week, so we thought it would be fun to take a look at the other side of car audio amplifiers. We're going to look at a few different mammoth amps over the next week or so, starting with this huge technological marvel from Kicker. —Ben Oh

Circuitry
Looking under the cover, the first thing you'll notice is the four planar transformers and the huge buss bars that run across the topside of the main circuit board. The transformers are about the size of your hand and resemble a stack of pancakes. The primary and secondary windings are stacked on top of each other rather than being several strands of wire intertwined. The turn ratio is 19 to 1, meaning there are literally 19 turns of flat wound copper for each secondary and one turn for each primary. The primary looks more like a big horseshoe-shaped PCB trace. Each planar transformer is rated at 5,000 watts for a total capacity of 20,000 watts.

The positive and negative power cables feed the transformers directly by way of the plated copper buss bars. The B+ power supply is stabilized by a total of 50 3,300F/105 C capacitors. That makes for a lot of instant juice on tap.



The entire backside of the heat sink is occupied by 64 MOSFETs, 16 for each of the four transformers. Normally, I'd call these devices "switcher" to drive the transformers and create the positive and negative rails, but this is where we deviate substantially from every other amp. These MOSFETs do actually drive the transformers, but not at a steady rate to create a "reservoir" of output power. They actually drive the transformers directly to the speaker outputs in a pulse-width modulation fashion. This effectively eliminates the section of the amp that would normally be called the "output" section, and also eliminates the efficiency losses associated with output sections, whatever class they may be.

Let's look at the input section. The analog music signal from your head unit enters the amp by way of a pair of gold-plated RCA connectors, and goes pretty much straight to a Texas instruments DSP chip. There's plenty of support circuitry around the DSP. In fact, the input board is about 6 inches by 8 inches, but all of the processing goes on inside the chip. The gain, crossover, bass boost, and limiter controls are all single element potentiometers that feed reference signals to the DSP chip. In other words, they have no direct effect on the analog signal; they just tell the processor what you want it to do. Once the analog signal enters the DSP, there's no more analog signal until you get to the output filter at the speaker outputs. Because the crossovers and bass boost are handled in the digital domain, the curves are picture perfect and very precise.



Here's where things get even stranger. In a typical amp you have an input stage, a power supply stage, and an output stage where the first two stages work together to kick out the tunes. The power supply runs at a constant rate, creating a "reservoir" of power (called "rails") that's fed to the speakers through the output transistors as the input section commands. In the Warhorse, there's an input stage as usual, but the output and power supply stages are combined. Instead of creating a reservoir of power for the output stage to use, the DSP causes the power supply to actually create the output signal directly. Instead of running at a constant level, the power supplies are constantly going up and down (signal modulated) in response to the DSP to create the output voltage. There are no output transistors.



That's the conceptual picture, pretty much devoid of the details. At this point you may be thinking, "That's too easy" or "Why hasn't this been done before?" While the concept is easy, the execution requires a fairly powerful DSP, as well as a fairly powerful brain trust to program the DSP. On this scale (remember this amp puts out 10,000 watts), it also requires the planar transformers with specific coupling and power characteristics.

The DSP is in complete control of the transformers, running a constant pulse of 24kHz. That doesn't mean the transformers are creating a large 24kHz output signal, but that's the clock speed for the pulse-width modulation. When a signal comes into the DSP, it sends off/on pulses to the transformer switchers of the appropriate duration to create both the frequency and the amplitude of the output. In a pulse width modulation format, the length of the pulse will correspond to the output voltage level, and in this amp the length of the pulses will be limited to 1/24,000 of a second. A maximum pulse (100 percent) will result in maximum power output, while a half-length pulse (50 percent) results in half power. At idle, there's zero current going through the transformers, but it's still happening at 24kHz.

This is where the amp is like a Class D amp. If the transformer is completely accurate (not possible, by the way) the output will consist of really large squared waves. In reality, the transformer will round these square pulses considerably, plus there's an output filter consisting of a coil and capacitor(s) to finish converting the squared pulses to nice round sine waves. The output filter coils in the Warhorse actually look just like large transformers that would be used in the power supply of a big Class AB amp.

So you now have output signal to feed your speakers, and it should resemble the analog input signal that came into the DSP to start with. The DSP takes feedback from the speaker outputs and makes real-time adjustments to the pulses to create a more accurate reproduction of the original signal, only lots bigger.

There are two separate sets of speaker outputs on the Warhorse, but they're not parallel. You have to use both of them and you have to use them on a dual voice coil speaker, one output to each coil of the speaker. One set handles the positive side of the wave and the other handles the negative side. The + and - labels on the amp correspond to the labels on the speaker's voice coil terminals. At full power this amp is making around 141 volts between 20Hz and 200Hz. Household AC is 120 volts at 60Hz. If you fed the amp with a 60Hz signal, you could probably use it as a backup generator for your house, so don't mess around with the speaker outputs when this amp is on!

Performance
The amp tested as advertised in all respects. The frequency response is exactly 20Hz to 200Hz at the -3dB points, though we used +0/-1dB for the test results. The crossovers and bass boost are exact as well, which is a direct result of the signal being handled in the digital domain by the DSP chip. Power at 14.4-volt input exceeded 10 kilowatts by 350 watts-the equivalent of a decent subwoofer amp. While 10,000 watts is pretty impressive, the fact that the WX10000.1 can deliver it with almost 90 percent efficiency is amazing. Class AB amps hover around 50 percent, so this amp can deliver almost twice the output power for any given power input. You can feed two of these amps for the price of one.

There was no indication on the scope of any turn-on or turn-off noise. Who needs a 10,000-watt turn-on pop?

Slew rate and damping factor have been omitted from this test due to the way the amp works and the importance of such specs for an amp of this size. Testing was complicated by the fact that the DSP is instantly responding to the output feedback. The compensation by the DSP resulted in a negative ratio for the damping factor. The precision of the DSP also resulted in a very low slew rate at the output, which corresponded very closely to the actual slope of a wave at 200Hz. In other words, we were only able to measure what the DSP was causing the amp to do, rather than what it might be capable of.

Manual
The owner's manual is a pretty comprehensive affair. In fact, I suggest you read the manual before purchasing the amp, just to make sure you're equal to the commitment. The manual is where you learn about having to build an electrical substation to feed the beast. Yes, I'm exaggerating but seriously, Kicker recommends no less than eight batteries of 800cca plus two alternators putting out 200 amps each. That's in addition to the battery and alternator just to run the vehicle. As well, you have to run ought-gauge cable everywhere to boot.

Besides the electrical requirements, and the structural mounting bracket, the manual shows several wiring configurations, and explains the controls clearly. The warranty is three months (consumer installed) or two years when installed by an authorized dealer.

Conclusion
Kicker has managed to break new ground here, and do it in a big way. The Warhorse is expensive, but it's intended for use in decibel machines and show systems. The retail dollars-to-watts ratio is a pretty high 97 cents, but using this amp will reduce the overall cost of batteries and alternators due to its high efficiency. Check out the Kicker Warhorse van making appearances around the country if you want to experience what this kind of power is all about. —Bob Norvelle

Test Results
Output power @ 1% THD, 50Hz, 14.4 volts
Mono @ 4 ohms	1 x 5,494 watts
Mono @ 2 ohms	1 x 10,350 watts
Output power @ 1% THD, 50Hz, 12.5 volts
Mono @ 4 ohms	1 x 4,050 watts
Mono @ 2 ohms	1 x 8,052 watts
Distortion at rated power, 50Hz, 14.4 volts	0.66% @ 2 ohms
Input sensitivity	165mV to 5.2 volts
Frequency response (+1dB)	25Hz - 170Hz
S/N ratio (A weighted, below clipping, min. gain)	>82dB
Idle current	3.5 amps
Maximum current consumption, unclipped	801 amps @ 10,350 watts
Efficiency at one-third power, lowest impedance	88%
Efficiency at full power, 1%THD, lowest impedance	89.7%
Crossover slope	24dB/octave
Crossover range, lowpass	50Hz - 200Hz
Crossover range, highpass	20Hz - 60Hz
Low-frequency boost	+18dB @ 40Hz
Dimensions	35"L x 17.75"W x 3.75"H
Weight	66.8 pounds

With the article on the BMW 550i which shows you how to create a vent into the vehicle cabin we thought it would be appropriate and helpful to some to go over some fundamentals on which way to point woofers and how to address issues related to the trunk. —Ben Oh

Questions:
I have an '06 Buick LaCrosse with 12s in a sealed enclosure pointed forward in the trunk as far as I could get them to the back seat until the seatbelt bolt sticking down from the rear deck stopped me in my tracks. Then I screwed it from the rear deck intot the top of the box to secure it. Which way should the subs have been directed to be the most efficient? Some years ago I saw an article that showed subs in different positions in a trunk. There were pics of the front waves and the rear reflections for each position. Should I point the subs back or up? I've heard that in order to point them forward you have to isolate the entire area behind the baffle, which I haven't done. I thought that pointing them backwards would just cancel the bass out by the time it got through into the cabin. In my experience, pointing them up sounded too flat. I've pointed subs forward before, but the baffle isolated the whole rear seat area from the trunk. Will it be OK to point a box forward pushed up in the trunk without sealing the whole trunk off from the baffle or should I just point them back? I'm not trying to make a one-hit wonder with this system. It would be nice to have a broad spectrum of sub harmonics.

I have a '93 Custlass Supreme coupe with two Alpine SWR-1241D's and an Alpine MRV-T757. The subs are in a custom sealed box in the trunk, which is completely sealed off from the cabin of the vehicle. How do I get more sound into my cabin? I love these subs for SQ, SPL, aesthetics, everything. But I want to be able to push more boom every once in a while. Is there any way to port my trunk so the sound will flow into the passenger area?

My bass isn't as loud as I'd like it to be (isn't that always the case?). I have an '85 Corolla and one 12" KIcker Comp VR in a sealed 1.2 cubic ft. box, running off a Profile Cali 600msx (600-watt mono) mounted in the trunk. It hits pretty hard, but I know it wants to hit harder. It's my trunk that's holding it back. What can I do to get more dB from my Kicker sub? I've considered adding ports into the trunk. How many should I add and where? Is this the best solution? And what is the best direction to have my woofer face? I've read a bunch of articles (don't quite understand them completely) and noticed they recommend a ported box facing toward the cab with the port pointed toward or even going straight into the rear deck. They state this based on the fact (they think) that the bass increases inside with the trunk open. I don't know about everyone else's car, but with my trunk open the bass sounds like crap.

Derek Lee: Regardless of the vehicle platform this is a common issue, one that affects all different brands of equipment (although it varies with cabinet style). Add on a variety of Internet articles and random opinions and you have a huge field of confusion. Let's see if we can put some of the voodoo into context.



There are several options for how you position a subwoofer. First, if the speakers aren't in cabinets, they must be prevented from suffering bass cancellaton by mounting them to a baffle that keeps the wave emitted from the back of the speaker from finding the front of the speaker cone. This is a crucial part of the installation of what is known as a "free air" application. If your speakers, however, are in a sealed enclosure, there's an entirely different set of rules to consider.



Firing Upward
First, in a sound quality audio system, our industry is obsessed with the "bass up front" philosophy. That means your bass should sound like it's coming from the front of the vehicle even though the subs are behind you. This is considered essential for proper staging and imaging. To achieve this, the question of where the speakers are firing is important. When firing upward, the higher frequency harmonics that the cone of the subwoofer naturally produces will reflect off of the window, causing your attention to be pulled to the back of the car. The bass will seem to be coming from behind because of the sonic cues that you hear, defeating our goal of "bass up front."



[Of course you could install a woofer in the front as in this sound quality competition vehicle]


Firing Through the Seat
Firing speakers through the seat is thought of as being the wrong thing to do, yet it's a very common technique and for good reason. The seat will act as an acoustic filter that prevents the high-frequency sonic elements from wiping out the "bass up front." While purists with too much free time like to argue this concept, it just works and is a long-standing trick of the trade. Essentially, the foam or other semi-porous materials in the seat will allow the deep bass to conduct its energy into the vehicle, but high frequencies are turned to heat.



The Importance of Front Speakers
Since deep bass is omni-directional, we can't tell where it is coming from if two things are in place. First, there can be no higher-frequency harmonics to reveal the real source of the sound. Second, there needs to be some dominant sound coming from where you want the bass to also seem to be originating. If you had only a sub firing through the back seat, but no front speakers at all, you'd still be able to figure out the sound is originating from the back of the vehicle. Add front speakers and now the sub bass can "hide" within the music.

Seat Port Superior to Rear Deck Opening
As a result, I'm not a big fan of doing a lot of extra work just to fire subs through a rear deck opening if I can filter through a back seat. However, if the subs are in the trunk of a sedan or coupe with a pair of rear deck speakers, then the bass can find another route into the vehicle through the rear deck speaker cones—not good! The pressure produed in the trunk by the subs will beat up the small rear deck speakers unless they're isolated. This means that the rear deck spekaers are in their own tiny sealed cabinets that prevent any pressure in the trunk from pushing them around.

Another option would be to create some kind of duct or port to carry bass into the passenger compartment without firing through a seat. This would make more sense to me in an SPL competition vehicle where it's important to squeeze every last bit of energy into the passenger compartment. For sound-quality applications, it isn't the best way to go.

Size of Vent
The key problem is that if the vent isn't large enough, it will begin to behave like a resonant tuned port as found in any bass reflex (ported) speaker cabinet. This will cause the bass to become very unnatural as the vent begins to add its own sounds to the mix. If you plan on creating a pathway for the bass to enter the vehicle, it needs to be short and wide. For those of you worried about efficiency—I'd be happy to trade off some efficiency for more natural and realistic-sounding bass in a system of my own.

Which Direction to Point a Cabinet and Transfer Function
Another concern is the direction to point a sub cabinet for best results. You hear about people who've placed cabinets against the back of the seat, in one vehicle with the subs facing forward with that not working and in another car with the subs backwards and that not working as well either. In yet another vehicle it didn't matter—facing frontward or backward resulted in poor bass. What's up with that?



Ever notice that when you move your home stereo speakers, the sound changes? If you play a great-sounding set of speakers in a school gym, the sound really falls apart. One concept we need to factor into the mix is that you're essentially sitting inside a box with a speaker cabinet. How everything reacts within the bigger box is often referred to as the "transfer function". Just about everything that can conduct sound has a transfer function, including the speaker itself. It takes some pretty complex math to determine the transfer function of a group of objects, so we just never bother, opting instead to work with the "trial and error" method of determining how to deal with the acoustic environment.

There are many vehicles in which you can predict whether the cabinet position is correct or not, based on experience in other vehicles. That doesn't help, however, when you encounter a new vehicle shape. For instance, installers learn very quickly that placing a cabinet at the middle point of a van will cause problems. As they experiment with positioning, they find that everywhere you locate the cabinet will result in different bass characteristics. This is where changing one or more variables in the transfer function changes the whole result.

An installer's typical rule is to "go with what you know". By sticking with approaches that work well, the results can be predicted to ensure that the customer gets a predictable result. But what about when the vehicle is a fresh unknown, or the installer is too inexperienced to have encountered the various differences?

Test Enclosure Locations
Experimentation is the key to keeping yourself in the ballpark. I like to take a "test cabinet", which is any old subwoofer I happen to have mounted in an enclosure gathering dust. I connect the cabinet to any amplifier and play bass into it as I move it into different positions in the vehicle. I note the differences in sound character and specifically where the real problem areas are located so I don't build the vehicle around a bad location. You'd be amazed at how many installers will design a system based on dropping subs in where they want them rather than on where they perform the best.



Try this technique for yourself: move a cabinet into a variety of different locations while it's playing. A surprise you might discover is that one of the better locations for delivering deep bass is to position the sub enclosure at the back corner of the trunk. Whether it's the act of loading the cabinet into the corner of the vehicle or that it's the greatest distance from the listening position might be a good guess—only the transfer function can tell you that. The key is that I changed my methods for designing systems as soon as I discovered this. I no longer stick cabinets into positions that I haven't tested or experienced first, unless I have no choice.



Buying tires for your ride is a similar example. If you had a set of tires that were perfect in every way, they would change the performance of each vehicle you put them on in a different way. Is there a problem with the tires? No, it's a matter of the combination of variables.

Transfer Function Database?
I was excited many years ago when I heard that a car audio company was beginning to run tests to map the transfer fucntions of all the different cars on the road. This was going to be huge. We would have a way to plug the unique trasnsfer function of the vehicle into the box design software on our computers to determine the exact construction of the cabinet that would work best in a particular vehilce. For years we had been able to plug the speaker specs into a program that would determine the perfect box—if you were playing it in a test chamber. Put that perfect box-cabinet combination into a vehicle and a new random variable ensured that your perfect cabinet sounded like trash!

This new mapping would ensure that the sonic characteristics of the room (car's interior), the cabinet and the subwoofer were all balanced to work together for the best overall performance. Unfortunately, the company called off the project at some point and we never did get the benefit. I suspect it was because there's a differenct transfer function for each location within any vehicle, so the database would be unimaginably large and expensive to collect. And so it's with aftermarket car audio. Even without a database, we customize based on matching our wants, or the customer's, as the case may be, with the appropriate product that will do the best job. And the extra effort is worth it because an aftermarket system still beats factory sound hands down—notwithstanding the difficulties discussed here.

Derek Lee is the former owner of Mobile Dynamics, Toronto, Canada and was a contributing tech editor to Car Audio and Electronics magazine.

Related Articles: 8 Ways for Better Bass

Box Basics

We love custom cars as much as the next guy, but some of the vehicles on display at the Lexani event were off the chart! Car club, Nokturnal, had a large crew at the show with a wild range of rides. Some of the installs were even wilder. Not everything was quite so extreme; there were some higher end cars with some tasteful systems. But the festival had a lot more than cars on display. They had a drifting exhibition, music acts and a bikini contest (of course). See the gallery for all the action.

The Lexani show took place in Anaheim, CA, at Angels Stadium.


An old friend of the magazine, Ivan Tampi, with his Mustang full of Kenwood gear.


We weren't sure if this was a car or an audio system on something that looked like an automobile.



Photography by Sora Loewen