SPEAKERS AND SUBS

Onyx LSM10
By Brian Smith
Posted on Wednesday, Jan 1, 2003

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The LSM10 is a 10-inch DVC subwoofer that was delivered for testing in a sealed enclosure with an internal volume of about 0.75 cubic feet. Features include dual 3-inch, 3-ohm voice coils, a compressed pulp cone with wide foam surround, an 8-inch progressive roll spider, a cast basket, and a triple stacked, 144 oz magnet structure. The woofer is offered in dual 3- or 4-ohm coils.

Subjective
Wow, the in-car sweeps are going to be pretty on this one. This is one very nice sounding subwoofer system. It isn’t incredibly loud, but that’s just the nature of a small box. It would surely be louder in a larger box, but it also might not sound quite as nice.

As it is, the LSM10 provides impressive tonal and transient accuracy and seems quite happy reproducing whatever is thrown its way. The stand-up bass is one of the first things that will sound like hammered crap on a less than stellar-sounding sub. I keep a small selection of bluegrass tracks on hand just for subwoofer listening sessions. Perhaps one sub in ten doesn’t make me go "ewwww" in the opening four bars of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." Hmmm, here’s the one...guess I know what to expect from the next nine.

The LSM10 did fall just a bit short on my favorite pipe organ tracks, but that’s to be expected from a single 10-inch in a tiny enclosure. However, even at these super low frequencies, output was audible and very clean, just not quite bone-rattling. I wonder how Mr. Spock would handle such a situation. Logic, what else? "Use a pair, Captain." Well said, Spock — you are the man.

Objective
Impedance measurements for the LSM10 show a maximum of 13 ohms at 40 Hz and a minimum of 2.1 ohms at 78 Hz. Average impedance measured 4 ohms between 20 Hz and 100 Hz. Out-of-car measurements show a rise in response of about 5 dB below 100 Hz, followed by a 12 dB-per-octave roll-off below system resonance. In-car measurements show an overall response window of about 3.5 dB and a one-watt sensitivity that averages 93.1 dB SPL between 10 Hz and 50 Hz. The system exhibited a maximum of about 4 dB of power compression at the lowest frequencies on the 1 kW sweep (top trace). Maximum SPL at 1 kW measured 123.5 dB at 40 Hz.

The Maximum Undistorted RMS Burst Power curve (pink trace) shows a distortion limit of about 900 watts at 80 Hz. At the lower end of the spectrum, about 150 watts at 20 Hz brought about the onset of audible distortion. Maximum Safe RMS Burst Power measurements (black trace) reveal limits of about 11 kW at 80 Hz and 2.7 kW at 50 Hz. We didn’t drive the LSM10 below 50 Hz on this last test because there’s simply no point in destroying a woofer that sounds this good.



Price & Contact: $289.99; Tel: 219-322-8602; Web: www.onyxmobileaudio.com.







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