JL Audio 13W7D15 owner manual An Introduction, Green minimum, Black WARRANTY VOID

An Introduction

Thank you for purchasing a JL Audio W7 subwoofer driver. The W7 embodies JL Audio’s commitment to pushing the envelope of speaker technology, with eight patented technologies, a design patent and a completely unique set of component parts. Each W7 model has been meticulously engineered to reproduce sub-bass with extreme fidelity at any volume level, provided it is installed and tuned properly. Please review the information in this document carefully so as to maximize your enjoyment of the W7’s capabilities.

Two enclosure recommendations are listed for each model, one sealed and one ported. The sealed enclosure design will, in most cases, give you the best overall sound quality and take up the least space in your vehicle. The ported enclosure design will deliver additional output over the sealed enclosure (about 3 - 4 dB more) and will also maintain excellent sound quality, but it will require significantly more space to install. The recommended ported enclosure is not designed for peaky “competition SPL” performance, it is designed for music listening. It will be very loud and sound extremely good when set up properly.

In addition to the enclosure recommendations, we also provide recommended amplifier settings for JL Audio amplifiers used with W7’s. Some of this information is also applicable with other brands of amplifiers (like crossover points and slopes), some is not (like the voltage levels specified for input sensitivity settings). You will notice that our recommended settings do not include any bass EQ boost... this is because W7’s rarely require any equalization to produce smooth frequency response. If you have an equalizer in your system (or one is included in your head unit or amplifier), defeat all bands below 125 Hz before dialing in your new system settings. Please turn off all sound processing that would affect the subwoofers (loudness circuits for example).

For optimum sub-bass performance, the amplifier input sensitivity must be adjusted to avoid excessive distortion (clipping) of the amplifier output. With W7 subwoofers, a clipped amplifier output will manifest itself audibly as a low-level“mechanical” sound coming from the speakers. Proper input sensitivity setting will avoid this problem. Overly high input sensitivity settings result in no additional clean output but will result in poor sound quality and reduced speaker reliability.

Please consult the input sensitivity setting information on page 14 of this book.

Recommended Continuous (RMS) Power Range for One Subwoofer Driver:

1 2 5 W 2 5 0 W 5 0 0 W 1 0 0 0 W 2 0 0 0 W 4 0 0 0 W

GREEN (minimum):

From a reliability standpoint, this zone represents a very comfortable operating power range for each driver. This level of power will not stress the woofer but will not extract all of its performance potential, either.

Use of less than the minimum power level will not damage the woofer, but may result in unsatisfactory performance.

YELLOW (OPTIMUM):

This zone represents the best balance between long-term reliability, high output and low distortion performance. In this zone, you will be taking full advantage of the woofer's optimum, low-distortion performance range without undue risk of failure.

RED (MAXIMUM):

In this zone, low-distortion output and long-term reliability will be compromised (especially by an aggressive user). Slightly more SPL will be gained by pushing the power into this zone, but typically not more than 2dB, compared to the yellow zone. The closer you are to the black zone, the higher the likelihood of driver failure. Operate with caution.

Black (WARRANTY VOID):

We do not recommend operating woofers at this level of power. In this zone, there is a very high probability that the driver will fail due to excessive heat and/or mechanical stress.

Subwoofer drivers operated at these levels of power are NOT covered under warranty.

When designing systems with W7 drivers, it is very important to achieve a good power match between the subwoofer amplifier and the subwoofer driver's capabilities. The power levels listed in the above chart represent continuous (RMS) amplifier power per woofer and assume that the user will regularly make full use of that power without drastically overdriving (clipping) the amplifier(s). Make sure you factor system impedance and the total number of subwoofers into your calculations. Adhering to these power recommendations will result in systems that are both reliable and enjoyable.

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