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MMATS Juggernaut www.mmats.com |
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| MMATS’ latest sub offers big bass and enough brute force to take down a wall. | |||
| by Brian Smith | |||
| The Juggernaut is a 15-inch DVC subwoofer delivered for testing in a tuned enclosure of about 4 cubic feet. The voice coils are rated at 1.5 ohms each and were paralleled for all of our tests. The lasting impression with the Juggernaut is one of size. The woofer itself is a massive affair with a huge cast frame and a motor structure that puts most woofers to shame. This puppy offers 260 ounces of double stacked magnets, and a 1 1/4-inch-thick top plate with custom-drilled forced air induction vent holes that are designed to circulate enough air to cool a house. If that’s not enough, both the top and back plates are chrome plated. The sub also boasts a voice coil with a 3-inch diameter, a winding length of 1 1/4-inches, an electrical Xmax of 2 inches from peak to peak, and four spiders to keep it under control. This is not your everyday 44-pound subwoofer. Subjective Webster’s defines Juggernaut as, “a massive inexorable force or object that crushes whatever is in its path.” Given the way that this sub performs, that’s a pretty good name. Transients exhibit a little overhang and tonal accuracy isn’t great, but this thing hits like a nine-pound hammer and is absolutely loud as hell — if you’ve got the watts. Rock-style kick drums can be reproduced at a level that makes you grin and feel nauseous at the same time. This is not a sub for the weak-hearted, and if you come, bring lots of power. Objective The impedance curve for this system shows a maximum of 13 ohms and a minimum of 1.26 ohms over its usable range. These values occur at 52 Hz and 34 Hz, respectively. Average impedance measured 4.4 ohms. Out-of-car measurements show a sizable rise in response around the enclosure’s tuning frequency, followed by the steep roll off associated with tuned boxes. Now for the fun part, the MMATS rep called a few days before this woofer arrived to ask what kind of testing we would be doing. When I told him about the in-car test, he promptly asked if we could go up to 1200 watts with this test. Generally, when factory reps call up asking for a sweep in excess of 1000 watts, they haven’t a clue what they’re asking for. The last “big woofer” we tested gave up within the first few milliseconds of the 1000-watt sweep and hasn’t moved again. So sure, we can do a 1200-watt test. In fact, we thought we’d be really cute and go on to 3000 watts, on the off chance that it survived at lower levels. Well, chalk one up to the MMATS guy — I thought he was full of crap, but this demon actually completed a 3000-watt sweep with minimal power compression and it doesn’t even smell funny. In the process we measured an in-car 1-watt sensitivity of 101 dB at 30 Hz and an impressive maximum of 137 dB SPL. |
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| Price & Contact: $699; 561-848-7578; www.mmats.com |
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