Whether you're looking to enhance your home theater, stereo or computer's sound system, a high quality subwoofer is an essential ingredient for room filling, chest pounding bass. This is not a problem if price is no object to you. There are a few good subwoofers available for $1500  and up that sound great, but most of the ones available in the range many of us would prefer to pay, say $300, either sound too muddy, boom too much or just don't hit the low frequencies we want to hear in a home theater system. For me, this meant the search was on for that  'one exception to the rule'. That affordable piece of equipment that competes with the best of them. Remember the 3D Acoustics 3D6/10B's from the early 80's? Most reviewers agreed that these $500 speakers sounded as good, in every category, as a pair of popular $5000 speakers.  Or, how about the surprising sound of the B.I.C. DV62CLR center channel speaker for under $100? 

    My search ended at audioreview.com. After reading several subwoofer reviews, I kept coming back to Adire Audio's 12" Shiva subwoofer. I had not planned to build my subwoofer. I hope you gents (and ladies) that have read some of my articles on this site understand that I felt I was capable of building it, I just didn't think I had the time to do it. T&R (slottweak.com) keeps me pretty busy and things at  work are just crazy. I'm the only architect and we're building over 60 houses a year.  Finally, I realized that to get the sound quality I wanted, there seemed to be no other choice. The reviews of the Shiva won me over.

    Adire's site (www.adireaudio.com) has all the information you need to build your own subwoofer,  including plans for several cabinet designs with different sound characteristics in sealed, vented and passive radiator enclosures of many sizes. They have an online store where you can buy all the parts you need and a 'links' page that also  brings you to other dealers of this subwoofer. Check the list for best prices. I suggest checking out their site and taking your time. It's not the easiest site to navigate, but you'll get used to it. Adire's support is very good. I've corresponded with Dan Wiggins and Nancy Wiggins and always received a reply within a day. 

    I chose to build the 85 Liter vented subwoofer enclosure. It's a good compromise for listening to music and movies on a home theater system, and at about 20" cubed it's small enough to keep my wife happy (very important). A smaller, sealed enclosure would be good for anyone using this to enhance his computer sound. It should give a slight boost to the upper mid-bass and be great for any racing game or FPS (first person shooter). I ordered my parts, bought a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" MDF for the cabinet ($16 at Home Depot) and set aside a weekend for building it.

    The parts arrived on Friday. Here's something that'll surprise those of you who've raced with me online -  I actually got excited. Although I knew I'd be building the cabinet the next day, I just had to try the subwoofer. It came in a box not much bigger than the woofer itself with just enough room for some molded packing material. I went into my basement and grabbed a piece of sheetrock about 2' square, cut an 11" hole in it with my jig saw and put it in the corner of my living room. I grabbed 4 soup cans out of the pantry to use as legs, wrapped some speaker wire around the Shiva's terminals and connected them to my Carver 400 cube amp which was connected to my receiver's subwoofer output (no need for a crossover network). For a temporary cabinet, I took the packing out of the Shiva's box.  Then I placed the woofer on the sheetrock and put the box over it. The first boom from Linda Ronstadt's cd sent the white box flying about 2 feet into the air. Wow! This Shiva really moves some air! I put the box back on and took a pillow off the couch, placed it on top of the box and then put my 20 pound tool bag on top of that. Obviously I didn't take sound measurements, but I can say that with a cardboard box (with pillow and tool bag added) and sheetrock for a cabinet, and the driver held in place by it's own weight, the Shiva sounded as  good as many $300 subwoofers I've heard, and I've heard lot's of them over the years. I listened to music and movies the rest of the evening and was so pleased with the sound (and the punch) that I may build another Shiva subwoofer based on their smallest, sealed cabinet design. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know how it performs.

Part II  Building the Shiva 85L Vented

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Part III  Conclusions & Finished Pictures

GTX_SlotCar  (Gary DeRoy)

August 26, 2001