Vibe Subwoofer

Listening Test of the Space 12d4

Vibe, which is new to America, is a part of British Audio that designs and engineers the Vibe Audio line of products. Vibe is actually an acronym for “Vented Innovative Bass Enclosures.” Vibe's USA Partner is Metra Electronics of Holly Hill, Florida. Metra is world renowned for their hard work in engineering solutions to installation problems in just about every car, truck, motorcycle and boat in the world; and they have a very informative website to support this product at www.vibe-usa.com.

 I tested the Vibe Space 12d4, 12" dual voice coil subwoofer. Now the Space 12 is available in dual 4 or dual 2 ohm configurations and retails for $409.99 American dollars. That is a lot of money. So what do we get for it?


You get a very cool looking subwoofer for one thing. It utilizes a unique cone, made of a 3mm thick, spherical shaped aluminum, with its outside edge folded backwards to radically increase the cone rigidity. The cone is then attached to another unique item, the flanged 2.5" aluminum voice coil former. The top section of the VC former has been shaped to match the radius of the cone. This creates a large area for the cone to attach to the former, achieving two very desirable effects: more area to bond the two parts together that should increase reliability; and, with all that surface area, heat from the 4-layer voice coil should flow up the former and out to the cone itself. This should radically improve power handling (hence the claimed 1000 rms / 3000 bsw of power handling) and power compression.





The frame is a fully machined cast aluminum design. The motor structure is made up of a 156 x 25mm dual stack of ferrite magnets with a net weight of 120 oz. The pole piece has a bumped back plate to help prevent bottoming at high SPL levels and the center pole vented, but I do not know if it is undercut or overlength in design. The oversized spider is a very high quality and has the tinsel leads stitched into it to eliminate slapping and the chance that the tinsels would short out against the aluminum cone. The mounting depth runs right at 7 ¾-inches and the cone X-max is rated at an impressive 14mm's.



Installation

Ron Wiggins at Metra Electronics was my contact so I gave him a call since I had a few questions. He recommended a sealed enclosure of 2.4ft3 as the optimum size and type for sound quality. That’s a LARGE box, 2.4cubic feet! When I blurted out my surprise a the size, Ron told me the vented box size for SPL is at 2.75ft3 and the vent sized at 30sq inches x 20 inches long. My guys at Speaker Works built the seal enclosure at the2.4 ft3 and installed the Space 12 into it. They paralleled the Space 12’s dual 4-ohm voice coils for a 2-ohm load, and installed a Zapco C2K-9.0XD amplifier to run it. The 9.0XD features a 24 dB per octave crossover and will pump out a throbbing 2000 watts of power at 2 ohms mono. The front half of my reference speaker system consists of a pair of USD Audio B-72 WaveGuide separates that are powered with a Zapco Competition C2K-6.0X amplifier at 150 watts per channel. The built-in high-pass crossover filter was used to block the bass to the component system. These amps are fed via Zapco’s Symbilink balanced line driver SLB-U. There are no other signal processors in the signal path.



Listening

The first album that I listened to was Harry Connick Jr.'s album We’re in Love, the title track. I really enjoy this track. It’s well recorded with great detail and fantastic dynamics. It opens softly with Connick’s smooth crooning and then you are assaulted by sharp, staccato attacks of horns, percussion and a fine recording of a closely mice’s stand-up bass – lots of string action up and down the scale.

The Vibe Space 12 reproduced the string plucks from the stand-up bass loud and punchy, but the playback was humpy in its response. The Space 12 had no trouble going low, but the “jolt factor" was not as good as expected. Some of the note shifts were not as smooth or equal in loudness either.

I broke out my Boston Acoustics’ Music for Bottom Feeders, for it 3rd track, Ramsey Lewis’ “People Make the World Go ‘Round”. The Space 12 did a very nice job on reproducing the fundamental low frequency stuff, but it wasn’t as tight as some of the other subs I have tested. Its low frequency extension was very good (this is where the large sealed box really allowed the Space 12 to go low. If it were in a smaller box, 1 to 1.5 ft3, there is no way it would have been able to be this musical. I know because I tried it).



Bass Mekanik’s V5.0 album, track 6, "Dubalicious", is a sick suspension stretcher of a track, to be sure. It has these great note shifts between 60 Hz and about 30 Hz. Here the Space 12 got a workout and earned its stripes. The 30 Hz notes were very close to the same loudness as the 60 Hz notes, as they should be. The Space 12 maintained good solid linearity between the two-note shifts. During this part of the test I really twisted the throttle and cranked it up. The Space 12 kept getting louder and louder. As we got close to the 2000 watts from the Zapco 9.0 there was a little bit of barking. So even when pushed well over its 1000 RMS of power handling the Space 12 held its own.



To finish off my listening test I put in Seal’s latest album IV, and listened to track 10, "Heavenly… (Good in Feeling)". Single bass notes were clear, and very punchy, but the bass clusters were not as individualized bass notes, like I have heard on some other subs. The bass line did not blur into one long bass note; rather, it just was not as articulate as I know it can be. Interestingly, the Space 12's articulation improved wehn the frequency went lower and lower. 



Conclusion



The Vibe Space 12d4 is very clean looking subwoofer. I like its simplicity and the fact that the instruction manual is clear and honest. While it does require a really large enclosure, which will need to be factored into your decision on how it will fit, the Space 12 uses that enclosure volume to go low and sound good. I would like to try a pair of these in a free-air arrangement. I think they would be great setup in just about any car or truck. Mount them under the rear deck, taking the time to seal up the rear tray and the back seat area making the trunk into the enclosure. That is how I think these could really shine.