Subjective
Why is it that humans, especially younger males, love subwoofers? I haven’t studied a lot of psychology, but I’m guessing that it’s for the same reason that we jump out of airplanes, ride motorcycles, snowboard, drive fast cars, or do anything else that might cause severe bodily damage. These things scare the hell out of the primitive parts of our brains, resulting in an adrenaline rush. The more advanced sections of the brain can override the fear, control the panic, and ride out the fantastic natural buzz.

Of course, subwoofers aren’t as inherently dangerous as any of the above-mentioned activities, but I have a feeling that they cause the same type of brain activity. Back in prehistoric times, if you heard a loud low-frequency sound, it was bad news. A few million years of earthquakes, volcanoes, electrical storms, and huge hungry predators have conditioned the primitive part of our brains to fear loud low-frequency sounds.

That being said, the 15W3 made my inner child run screaming like a tiny little pansy. This thing is a brutal, vicious subwoofer. I was well impressed with its performance in general up to the point near the end of the listening session when, as usual, I pulled out the pipe organ stuff. At this point, I’ve usually made up my mind as to what I think of the woofer in question. I’m just looking to be sadistic, sitting there with way too much amplifier, waiting to sneer sarcastically when the woofer chokes, as they always do. I wouldn’t call myself jaded, but after a few hundred jumps, the edge does wear off. The 15W3 caught me feeling a bit complacent and completely ambushed me.

The first blast of the big pipe was a lot louder than I expected and far cleaner than any subwoofer that I have reviewed to date. Most woofers are well out of shape at only a few hundred watts with this type of program material, but the 15W3 seems to be completely in its element. Furthermore, turning up the volume actually increased the sub’s output rather than just increasing the level of distortion. The interior of our test car quickly became a violent place to be.

Now don’t go thinking that I was unable to drive this beast well into distortion — it has limits, just like everything else. All I’m saying is that the range between its faintest output and its maximum distortion free output is far wider than typical, especially at ultra-low frequencies. The last few seconds of Telarc’s “The Planet Krypton” made my eyes water and nearly made me vomit. That might not sound like a ringing endorsement to some folks, but bass freaks know exactly what I mean.

Beyond the rather limited appeal of pipe organs, I must admit that there is a small handful of woofers that I think sound a bit better straight out of the box and into our test vehicle. The 15W3 sounded a little soft above 50 or 60 Hz with most of our hi-fi test tracks, but if you’re really serious about SQ, you can use a low crossover point or equalizer to remedy the situation should it arise. With other types of popular music such as rock, hip-hop and boom music, crushing output below 60 Hz is pretty much what you’re after anyway, and the 15W3 has it to spare.

Objective
Our test sample was delivered with the voice coils wired in series for a rated impedance of 8 ohms. All subjective and objective evaluations were made with the coils in this configuration. Impedance measurements on the 15W3 show a maximum of 78 ohms at 42 Hz and a minimum of 9.8 ohms at 73 Hz. Average impedance measured 22 ohms. Out-of-car measurements show a rise of about 4 dB below 100 Hz followed by a 12 dB per octave roll-off below system resonance. In-car measurements show a 1-watt sensitivity that averages 102 dB between 10 Hz and 50 Hz. Overall system response at 1-watt fits within a window of about 9 dB. In-car power response sweeps reveal about 3 dB of power compression at 300 W and about 5 dB of compression at 1 kW. Maximum SPL at 1 kW measured 130.4 dB at 43 Hz. Note that the output at 10 Hz on the 1 kW trace is only 3 dB below maximum SPL.