Voice Coils

Edwin T. Socket discusses Voice Coils and some of the technical aspects of coils in woofers. He teaches us about DVC vs. single voice coils and Copper vs Aluminum.
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[@twentyhurtz]

As a car audio enthusiast/competitor and engineering student, I really appreciate the time, effort, and technical detail that you put into your videos.

[@BIGGIEDEVIL]

The most informative video on subwoofers ever anyone who's into speakers for a car audio needs to watch this video

[@Bassotronics]

Thanks Edward Lester for making the video and giving me props too. I appreciate all your videos and thanks to you we all have a better understanding of car audio in general. Keep those vids commin'!!

[@souprchrgd]

Dude....You had some CRAZY science in your presentation. Totally awesome video. I wish that I could send you my blown amps and speakers I have accumulated over the years.

[@JadeB628]

So far, this is the Best explanation of aluminum voice coil vs copper coil. and single voice coil vs dual VC.

[@elultimonobles]

awesome video ... hate when people make videos and don't know what they're talking about. I liked!!! Straight to the point.

[@Loudizzzzle]

Hands down the most informative publisher on KZbin. LIKED! FAVED!

[@SparkedEd]

It all depends on the woofers design. Both flat, and round wire have their advantages and proper applications. Flat wire has greater surface area so it may cool better. So many SPL woofers use this. Round wire allows you to fit more windings in the gap for greater efficiency and many SQ woofers use this.

[@LimitIsIllusion]

At about 0:34 when he just slowly gets closer and closer to the camera I just started laughing my ass off

[@stancnet]

LimitIsIllusion Funny shit bro!...Too funny...rofl!

[@jasonc8931]

lol ikr

[@robh3398]

I liked that part

[@callmebigpapa]

One of the clearest explanations I have ever heard......big thanks !

[@juss-passin-thru]

You have a very good point there my brother. I apologize for the comments. Your a awesome guy.

[@154Jamesp]

Great info. Thanks! Also, you're very well spoken.

[@DJeimaXe]

HOLY CRAP, I have learned so much here. The rap artist Migos bass frequency, had destroyed 2 of my speaker voice coils, be warned. My sound system was a 3500 watt PA. Thanks, ShowtimeSPL.

[@SparkedEd]

I have designed and built my own frames and wrapped coils. But more production quality than homemade. Magnets have almost nothing to do with power handling, it is all based on the coil and suspension. So yes, a stiffer suspension will change that. We have 2 terms, thermal power handling (voice coil) And mechanical power handling (suspension and tolerance of parts). Distortion is caused when the cone/coil moves in a non linear fashion. Usually when the coil moves beyond X-Max.

[@curtpemrick5516]

Great video bro. Had me listening attentively whole time. Very informative but also to the point.

[@madjimms]

Would like to see some insane underhung coil designs, would be super big and heavy though. Imagine seeing a 4 inch top-plate with a 1" length coil.

[@ralphlu2007]

ED THX FOR THE GREAT INFO I JUST GOT MY 18 INCH AQ HDC3 WITH LEVEL 6 SOFTPARTS AND A SPACER FOR THE MAGNET FOR BETTER COOLING.

[@jithinjayan2670]

buddy i was just beginner in this thing. u r video did lots of help to understand

[@123BenjaminYates321]

Im also on SMD forums its really great I like your videos there very informative and are easy to understand keep it up

[@786abcfull]

Thanks for sheding light on this once mystical technology. Did you know Jamaica is the loudest country in the world?

[@UNIQUE-eu9ik]

awesome video i wana build my own subwoofer and see about that voice coil over voice coil and take everything you just explained in to concideration ima try

[@WorkflowBeats]

Wow! You really know what you're talking about! I'd love to see a video how to rewind a voice coil.

[@SparkedEd]

A few SQ and HT companies did that back in the day. You can even use a potentiometer to fine tune the adjustment

[@SparkedEd]

I havent heard them in person so I cannot say. But more x-max does not necessarily mean more air moving or louder. What it does mean is that the coil is controlled further. If the motor and woofer is design with low strength and low power, this can aid in SQ. If the woofer is designed with a strong motor, this can help is make more pressure. Whether it gets louder or moves more air or not, depends on the suspension.

[@DJInclined]

Ed Lester you are the man!

[@kylesa1323]

I love what your saying about efficiency I was thinking almost through the whole video please make a follow up video of what you find thanks for your videos

[@kylesa1323]

In the end its efficiency vs sound quality

[@1boostup]

Its about time someone educated people on voice coils, ive been arguing that for along time how sloppy the new subs are with big open gaps with lots of spiders to control movement ! But you failed to mention edgewound voice coils like most of jbl speakers and subs use , And there jbl gti mk series subs that have 2 separate vc gaps and 2 seprate voice coils on the same former !

[@tomdempsey4394]

Man, you are a great teacher!!

[@SparkedEd]

It depends, sometimes you can cook off the non conductive coating and short the coil and the impedance will drop close to 0. Or if it heats up enough, the coil wire will open and impedance will be super high or even just fully open. Anytime you see it still in operating range means that you just smoked off the adhesive and the coil's mechanical attachment to the former is weakened.

[@SparkedEd]

Hey those are your thoughts and there is nothing wrong with that. Good life depends on your idea of what a good life is, if you mean a lot of money, nice house and stuff, nah, I struggle to pay bills just like most Americans. But I do have my idea of a good life which is working in a job I love, having a girl I love, having access to knowledge, being able to experience the beauty of the world, being able to understand how the universe works, and all of the little things that make me smile.

[@vivekprakash8053]

Great video.. I was searching for this type of tutorial. thumbs up.

[@gweezy1]

GOTTA BE THE BEST VIDEO IVE WATCHED LEARNED ALOT AND U MAKE A GOOD POINT BRO

[@JohanSegeborn]

Great clip

[@SparkedEd]

Its up, link is on the screen and in the description

[@conebread58]

Can you show what separates each layer and what separates each coil or just do a video on how to wind a dual voice coil.

[@nenginickol1160]

Men you are indeed a good explainer, easy to understand you. Good job. Thanks for all the info. I'm doing a DIY project on voice coil, though i don't know electronics, my confusion is how do you determine the gauge of the coil, to be used, the height of the coil, number of layers to get either 4 or 8 Ohms, don't know if i spelt it right, but i mean the impedance. Thanks.

[@wal]

Excellent vid bro! If the car audio thing doesn't work out for you, you have a future as an instructor... BigDWiz - OldSchoolStereo-com

[@DJInclined]

you should make a video of you designing and building a hybrid woofer

[@THISLOVETHISHATE99]

ok now i understand how this stuff works better and now i can get to work on making my own working sub now to get magnetic wire

[@CoquiAudio]

so the must common voice coil size is 3" ?

[@troydefond2307]

Can u discuss the different sizes of voicecoil size. Gap, all that stuff please.

[@gpcaraudio]

Nice, an educational voice coil strip tease.

[@picobyte]

Don't forget the "dust" cap,it traps the air making the voicecoil acting as a piston,pumping air around it.cooling the coil.

[@audiofanaticz]

Good video, I do a lot of recones for people myself, I try to stay away from the custom stuff, and I tell the person that the company usually uses their best parts for that woofer as its how it is designed to be used. However I always get told that If I go and use this coil from a 3000 watt woofer in there 1500 watt woofer that is being reconed it would be louder. I often try to explain to them that now you have more heat to dissipate that the motor was not designed for. som never understand it

[@OGTelisBASSchannel]

So if I buy a 1000rms dual voice coil subwoofer, I sould give to each coil 500rms?

[@wattage2007]

Really informative. Thanks!

[@the_niceking7011]

Awesome video! The only thing I don't think it touched on was flat wound vs. normal coil. I would assume that a flat wound coil would yield more surface area, but it's also quite a bit more thick, so you would need more length of it to end up with a reasonable resistance, thus raising your mms and changing your Q values. I'm about to choose a re-cone for my AA Havoc V1, Fi being one of the options, and they let you pick between Flatwound or "x-max" for your coil. Does a flat wind affect x-max and x-mech?

[@robh3398]

I don't know if twins or bipolar or what, but the second you is better. The nerdy type is better for this type of vid. Very good vid too. I like it. Very interesting.

[@mdove89]

Wow learnt a lot!! Great vid subscribed

[@SparkedEd]

I think, besides price, the main issue is melting temperature and hardness. Gold is softer than copper. Now Titanium coild have been used. I am just not sure on how they perform.

[@joe3393]

Great instructional video brother

[@xfire54x]

Your the best Edward

[@Dakingz5150]

I believe its the magnet. there for the use shimes to center it when placing the coil in.? maybe?

[@kevinAuman1]

I learned quite a bit watching this thank you, but I feel you could have gone further in depth about the differences in a 4 layer VS an 8 layer coil which is why I searched out the vid to begin with as I have 4 Addictive Audio V4 15's with an 8 layer copper coil and I wasn't exactly sure what the difference was between these and my last woofers which were Sundown Sa15's with a 4 layer CCA coil also which coils are best suited for which applications ie. SPL or sound quality so on and so forth

[@ostube6035]

Your videos are really informative thank you. :-)

[@4lokochallenge]

Love the videos, I used your recone giveaway video to learn how to recone on my own! Great videos, maybe you can give some of your knowledge on motor cooling options and how they affect heat dissapation of coils!

[@billytucker6759]

Perfect!! ......You are the only one. Thanks

[@420sycoholic]

awesome vidio. tnx

[@Lazerturret81875]

wow. designing a speaker is a lot more complex than i thought.

[@SparkedEd]

What about me lol, Im the one that did all the hard work of learning these things over many years.

[@vancemccarthy2554]

The trouble with speakers of that design is they are far less efficient than all others. It takes 500 watts to just get them moving and past 1000 watts, it is a waste of power and the coil blows up. Like towing a trailer with no wheels - you can move it - but it takes a bigger engine.

[@SparkedEd]

Actually it's very efficient in it's frequency range. The motor design works quite well and it can perform nicely even with under 100W. Coils like this are also good up to a few thousand watts with no blow up action at all. So you get a wide, usable power band for multiple types of enclosures and applications. Sure there might be more efficient designs, but not much that have as wide a power band or efficiency band as this.

[@craiglist5354]

+ShowtimeSPL I have a mtx 9500 15 inch single coil I want to change it to dual so what's the easy step

[@anselmjoseph697]

nice video, i would like to play around with the speaker design, how would the height of the coil and its resting position affect , the linear displacement , frequency response and power output of the speaker?

[@SparkedEd]

nah, he's alright, he was just sharing his thoughts which is cool with me.

[@Tekjive]

Amazing vid, not many like this on the net. Helps a lot when choosing/upgrading a coil. Speaking of, having a hard time finding a 3”, dual 2 or .5, 8 layer, thick flat copper wire voice coil. LoB, etc does not carry them :/ Any pros to a quad coil flat alum bifilar? What is bifilar pros vs cons?

[@SparkedEd]

I think it depends on the amount of windings you can get into the gap. Coils in general have been a bit tough to get lately

[@Tekjive]

@@SparkedEd so with my research it seems bifilar is said to produce more “tight” based bass because of the greater magnetic field it creates, lowering resonant frequency as well. I have to find my notes (just saw noti) and will edit this proper when I do but apparently bifilar seems to be more SQ based, which is a goal for upgrading my SWX-1243D, seems someone needs to produce a super nerdy tech explanation of coils and what makes what and why ;) you should def make a vid of SQ coils vs SPL coils and how to achieve what goals you have in mind ...and ya I can’t find 3” dual VC 8 layer flat copper wire coils anywhere :/

[@TEAMCREAM_96]

I already commented on another video but this video is more suitable, one of my voice coils has no ohms the other has 2.2 I can't Imagine that it's blown because there would still be some resistance and all of the leads that I can see with out removing the cone are fine, what's the problem?

[@TEAMCREAM_96]

Turns out one of the braided silver wires is not very conductive do i have to use that type of wire of can I use insulated wire

[@Sunrayman123]

Ed, thanks for the great video. My question, can you recommend a primer on speaker design that covers the fundamental science and develops from there?

[@frederikkarta3092]

Thanks man,

[@texasironforge.4913]

I have a question ? does it matter which side is the positive side ???? Please help me

[@Purple431]

I love your glasses xD 👓

[@buckfukem4486]

Can you "de-ohm" say a 3ohm JL 12w7 down to say 2 ohm by simply unwinding some of the coil? And I guess you would be removing the "coating" it may have over it. Reapply a coating using what exactly? Thanks in advance bham

[@tmmtmm]

Good stuff Ed.

[@Aaronelliott847]

Great video!! Thank you for making these videos very helpfull and enjoy them very much!!!

[@madjimms]

Sorry, I've been blowing up the comments, but what about putting a neo magnet instead of a voicecoil and running a stationary coil around it?

[@stuartwood2677]

The magnet in place of the coil would have far too much mass to move and dampen effectively.

[@2007drh]

Just smoked 2 15s. I got them cheap on amazon and destroyed the voice coils. I would like to just drop in another voice coil(s). Found a website and plan on buying new voice coils. I am hoping to bring up the RMS power a little. Is there anything else I can do to bring up their power handling? Anyways, great vid. Really informative for someone about to do a Voice coil install.

[@DJInclined]

Ed WIN!!!

[@DJInclined]

So who do you designs/engineer woofers for? or do you just make fun one-off subs?

[@777smitty4]

very interesting where is part 2 ??

[@Handi75]

+ShowtimeSPL where can you pick up the Voice Coil Bobbins? Always been a little interested in how Speakers worked Plus how to do some Repairs on them. I actually have some Home Speakers that could be repaired. New cone mainly, but I'd like to use some of my OLD Speakers to toy around with by rewinding voice coils and such. So i'd like to know, if possible, where to Pick up some of the bobbins or could I basically make them out of anything but conductive materials?

[@matthewbarnard461]

It seems that it wouldn't quite double? Wouldn't it need twice the cooling surface area to dissipate the heat?

[@MrBass226]

Great vid bro...when are you going to upload the other part?

[@vinnithaking]

nice glasses dude. Good Video

[@thebestofall007]

I've also see some speakers use flat/square cross-section wire instead of round wire. What is your say on that?

[@SparkedEd]

Oh yes, it has a lot to do with x-max. X-max is the distance that the coil windings stay in the gap. The more winding height, the more the x-max

[@BigRichEHhthang100]

What would happen using .030 wire

[@djice2902]

What size copper wire do I need to recoil a 1000 watts 18 inch subwoofer?

[@jaroncory9349]

Best Vid on youtube. Thank you

[@avac4312]

do you need a lot more power to run a 5 inch voice coil versus a 3-in ?

[@Pulverrostmannen]

i have something i like to know for a long time. dual 2ohm VS dual 0,5ohm coil. booth connected so the load is 1 ohm and same power from the amp, will the heat generated from the coils be the same? as we know when you have a current flow trough a resistor it generates heat, but the higer resistance at the same power will give more heat right. example: 6KW trough the dual 2ohm in parallell = a total of 4 ohm wire on the way. and 6KW trough the dual 0,5 in series, a total of 1ohm wire on the way?

[@DJMANUEL200605]

that such a friend brought me a kicker 12 "L3 some video that you have how to repair this type of speakers help I am from Mexico

[@DAKODA65]

You're friends with bassotronics? That's pretty sweet. I'm new to audio and stuff but is it bad to play high frequencies on a subwoofer? because I have two 6 inch kenwood subwoofers with a 7 inch lg subwoofer hooked up to an old sony receiver. the tweeters have crapped out on the kenwood stereo so I'm just using the subs for the higher frequencies.

[@MinersEpicCraft]

You can get ceramic coated speaker wire that can take up to 2000 degrees before melting

[@frankrivera9083]

What WOW let me know we're i can get some il get a whole new sub made with it please let me know brother thanks.

[@robh3398]

I'm old-school. I like copper SVC motors with paper pulp cones and accordion surrounds. When I tell young bucks about this, they look dumb-founded. Well, probably because they have been dumbed down. That's OK. It's not their fault. The copper always sounds better to me. Some say that is psychological, but I don't think so. My perception of sound is very sensitive. I can literally hear the difference. The speakers with Al always seem to skip a beat, a hz range, or something like that. Copper seems to have a more linear response to the power input vs output sound, but it depends on so many variables. The highest quality systems I see use old-fashioned speaker "technology," i.e., copper, paper, accordion, etc. It's a speaker. It can only be so complicated. It's not like building a pyramid or something.

[@OwensFamily300]

Hey I have a question I need answered and I can not seem to find a answer. Is there a way I can message you for this? Here it is if you want it here, I have been repairing, reconing and customizing subs for a few years and I have played this safe so far and have not had to worry about VC bottoming out. How much room should I leave between the bottom of the VC and the bottom of the plate? I know motor depth will play a role along top plate thickness but could you give me a good rule of thumb or percentage?

[@r0taxx]

Don't forget, the finer (lower) your distance between the coil and the magnets are, the lower currency you need for the same motion at the coil. but will run out of space with air to cool off the coil, then you are limited lower then the coil is originally by manufacture ofcouse cause less currency makes more heat when that happens.. just my theory doh

[@areyouavinalaff]

a coil in a coil in a coil... you might think it would be more efficient but you're ultimately increasing the mass of your reciprocating parts. wouldn't that negatively impact on your efficiency trade off if it takes more energy to move the mass, stop the mass and change it's direction moving it back the other way... won't it still just heat up, maybe more?

[@stephenhui2246]

did the coil size 2.5 inch and 3inch work the same wattstage? ,or the 3inch play the low and loud ?

[@stevedalton8425]

Great video!! Thank you

[@zackk695]

Where do I get parts for a blown 10W7? Not even springfield speaker has them. The video is great but can you make one rebuilding a W7 start to finish without all the tech stuff? Its a little to much for me just wanting to get this woofer running.Thanks

[@Budacris74]

Ebay seller: lordofbass ebay store is: ultra_audio_1 Has recones for the W-7's

[@marcosbarron1129]

What's a good adhesive to maintain the winding together

[@SparkedEd]

I am a moderator on there actually. I go by HHR Ed