I'll ponder on a set of W800Neo's I'll model them up against the MW182's I currently have and see where they stand. They are definitely a heck of a lot shallower which makes them more versatile.
Another thing I noticed is that these drivers are really lightweight at under 2.5# as well as super shallow. I'd feel really good about putting them in doors as they're so incredibly lightweight. My other 8 inch drivers that I have lying around are at least 5# each.
Anything that was paid for got shipped out today, 3-day UPS Select on all of them except the package to Arizona. I figured Arizona was going to be 3 days from California no matter what, so went with regular UPS ground on that one. Thanks everyone!
Anyone have the full parameters for the W800NEO? AD's pdf didn't have everything needed to enter it into WinSID. Think I'll be able to build a .35-.45 cu ft enclosure, guessing they want a decent bit more.
These aren't full parameters, but they're good enough. I got pretty good results by entering Qms, Qts, Fs, Re, BL, Sd, Xmax (I divided Xmax in 2 because I just can't believe the listed xmax is 19mm one-way) in that order and letting it calculate the rest.
I loaded the attached picture into a CAD program and captured some relative dimensions. According to this drawing Xmech_max one way is about 6.5mm. That's about 13mm peak to peak. From this I would expect LINEAR Xmax to be around 5mm one way.
I have no idea why AD published that silly number but it is physically impossible given the drawing they provided. Still a promising driver. I wish Fs was a tad lower but don't necessarily need this for a dedicated midbass.
Here is just a crude representation of my train of thought using a paint program vs. CAD.
Take the known dimension of 56mm and divide by ten.
The gap between the bottom of thew voice coil and bottom pole piece is a little greater than 5.6mm. This is to prevent a hard collision between voice coil and the pole piece which I call XMAXmech.
From this same crude diagram you can see that about 5mm of coil travel can occur while still keeping coil in the magnetic gap. This is what I called XMAXlinear.
So, not the 19mm advertised. But, 5mm is still pretty respectful in its class group. The best I've seen in this class is the Gs690 at 5.5mm. My Dyn MW182's are 4.6mm. The Audison AP8's are 3.5mm.
It means the "ideal" enclosure size in a sealed configuration is a minimum of .59cf for this driver to get to Qtc .707. I think people have gone smaller and enjoyed the result, but it's not considered ideal. If you don't have that kind of space available, it's probably best to make them free air. Many people swear by that ideal Qtc, but there as just as many people who find Qtc of .7 too dry, and prefer something closer to say .5, so they would prefer the IB install. For example in my kickpanels, after I cut out a little sheet metal, there's quite a bit of airspace back behind there, so I could get away with sealed. If I feel like I'd like a lower Qtc and want to try free air, I'll just cut out a little vent to the outside in the wheel well. Additionally we have so much processing available these days that with good drivers you can make most installations sound good after tuning.
0.59cf = Qtc of .707
1.0cf = Qtc of .629
2.0cf = Qtc of .563
Free air = Qtc of .484
If it's a daily driver, factor in the car audio environment and road noise and it becomes even less critical.
Also we have to keep in mind that the published specs are already in question with regards to the xmax, so it's hard to say definitively that any of their specs are spot on. These may sound great in that .35-.45cf enclosure... There have been anecdotal reports that they do great in really small sealed situations.
So in a nutshell, a reasonable approach with this driver would be to try the easiest or best cosmetic install 1st, maybe it's sealed, maybe it's free air, depending on your vehicle and setup. If after tuning you just can't get it to sound right to your ears maybe try to find a way to vent the enclosure or seal it up, depending on what path you took.
I am by no means an expert... I know just enough to get myself in trouble, but that's my take anyway.
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