Soundstream Stealth 13

Soundstream Stealth 13
Performance Evaluations
Before I test any woofer, I put it through a breakin or exercise period. (You don’t need to break-in a woofer when you buy it, a few days of listening to it will do the same thing. I simply break-in all loudspeakers before doing critical listening or measurements, just for consistency and accuracy in the information). I usually apply a 20Hz sine wave signal to the woofer at a level of about 25% of rated power, for a period of about 4 hours, with the woofer in a free air state. This process allows the mechanical elements of the drivers suspension to loosen up and normalize. After break-in, the woofer is allowed to cool for at least 4 hours before doing any further testing. In the case of the Soundstream Stealth 13, I let it sit overnight and then made all of the small signal parameter measurements first thing the following morning. As the owner’s manual made very clear, the specifications make the woofer ideally suited to sealed enclosures only… don’t even bother trying to come up with a vented design. Yes, port heads… I’m talking to you! Don’t do it!
Once those were completed, I mounted it in the optimum recommended enclosure, a 0.75 cubic
foot sealed box and took it into my listening room. With the woofer connected to my reference system, and the low pass crossover adjusted to about 80Hz, I began to evaluate the sound and power handling of the Soundstream Stealth 13. Because I have tested quite a few of these shallow designs, and because of the very reasonable price of the Soundstream woofer, I had relatively lower expectations. I have become used to accepting some performance tradeoffs for the convenience of a shallow woofer, but the Soundstream Stealth 13 has really raised the
bar for what I expect from a moderately priced shallow subwoofer! As usual, I ran the gamut of musical genres during the evaluation, and the Soundstream Stealth 13 couldn’t have cared less whether I played Bach or ZZ Top. The sound from the Soundstream subwoofer was much better than expected in this price range, with pretty decent low extension and nice warm “round” sounding bass. Definition and clarity were good as well, plucked strings and acoustic bass were well reproduced and sounded quite natural, with only a tiny bit of ringing or boominess,
which many people seem to prefer anyway! As is always the case, lower F3 and improved damping can be had with a larger enclosure, but you trade off output and power handling, which is never a good thing in a car. I’d trust the Soundstream recommendations on this one, unless you are very experienced with custom enclosure design. To test the woofers ability to handle power mechanically, I deliberately picked a couple of fairly abusive “Bass Mekanik”
tracks, and applied well over the rated 200 watts of power. Not until I got to over 400 watts did the Soundstream Stealth 13 woofer even show any sign of stress, so if you use it as as rated, it should be as reliable as a stone.
One of the best ways of summing up the performance of this woofer was a comment from a friend who happened to drop by during my listening test. He said, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive bass from a single woofer in such a small box.” Even more impressive… at the time, he had no idea the woofer was only 2 inches deep, and thought it was a conventional woofer design. On the bench the Soundstream Stealth 13 measured about the way it sounded… which was quite great! . My measurements were quite close to the published specs, which is another
good indication of a properly developed product.
Conclusion
If you have an application for a very shallow woofer and a relatively small
enclosure limitation, you’d be seriously amiss not to have a close look at the
Soundstream Stealth 13. Yes, there are better performing woofers, for either
more money or for much larger boxes, but there aren’t very many that will
outperform the Stealth 13 for the same money in a small sealed box. I’d love
to hear a pair of these in a standard cab pickup… Boom Yeah!