AT-10 Review

[mojo8472]

So, over the summer holidays I decided to completely overhaul my '89 Pug 205's sound system (much to the amusement of my school peers! They couldn't understand why I would spend more on the stereo than the actual car itself!).

After throwing in a new headunit and some 5.25" door speakers, it was obvious that there was something lacking...bass!

I looked around Halfords for basic ported enclosures and subwoofer drivers, but for some reason I was put off by the manufacturer's design idea of cramming as many ass-quality drivers into a horrible enclosure! I was after a much more efficient solution!

Enter the autotuba! After seeing the description on the BFM homepage, the line saying that the 8" AT runs 10dB higher than a 12" ported sub, I was sold!

After reading through the plans, I decided to go for the 10" version (solely because, for me, bigger is better!). Fast-forward 1 week and I have my Eminence HL-10C (a beautiful piece of speaker engineering I have to say!), my plywood, and my jigsaw ready to go. Plans were simple to follow and total construction took around a week of fairly casual work. Annoyingly though, I couldn't run the thing for another 2 months due to not having enough spare funds for a monoblock car amp!

Fast-forward again to last week: Now I have a car, a monoblock, and a massive 18" wide AT! I was actually quite amazed at how little boot-space I had left after installing the AT (the 205 is not a big car!), thats fine though, I never used that space anyway!

Onto the sound:
Usually at this part of BFM reviews, common words being thrown around are 'WOW', 'amazing' and 'unbelievable'. Now, I don't usually follow the crowd, but WOW AMAZING and UNBELIEVABLE! Seriously though, cranking the volume up produced the same sensation that is heard/felt at a live gig.
This is the part where I'm having trouble describing the sound! The bass notes themselves in the music are really well defined, not like some other subs I've heard where the notes seem to 'blend' into a bassy mess, with the AT, each note is distinctively heard. As far as the percussion sounds are , they can best be described as 'punchy', the kind of punch that hits you right in the ribcage!

But how did the AT compare against a more typical car sub design? Fortunately I have a friend who is into his ICE systems in a big/huge way, he was more than willing to destroy my 'puny 300w' system with his 2x12" 1.21jiggawatt monster! Honest to God, the AT sounded soo much better in every genre of music we tested. From Pendulum to Ludovico Einaudi!

So in essence, the AT-10" kicks ass and leaves the user with no space left in the back....but hell, its worth it!

[AntonZ]

I'd like to see a picture of the AT in your car!

I was actually quite amazed at how little boot-space I had left after installing the AT (the 205 is not a big car!)

You are right about the small boot. One of our first cars was a '87 205. It still is my best ever buy, did some 300.000km and the only mechanical repairs it ever needed were an exhaust pipe and a second hand water pump. It had an LPG system installed (liquid propane gass, needed an extra propane gas tank in the boot). While the tank would only hold some 20-25l (refill every 250km/160miles), there was not much space left in the back. An AT surely would not have fit in anymore.

Thanks for the glowing review, makes me wanna built an AT too