Here you can see the rather large collection of ingredients that will be put together for the enclosure. I ended up using only two ports instead of the four I originally planned, so I only used half of the pipe you see. I did however, add two more 2 x 4 braces around the woofer, as you will see later. On the table are the top, bottom, and side panels, using 2 x 2 battens to which the front and back panels will be screwed. Next are some shots of the side panels joined to the top and bottom, then a dry assembly of the front panel just to make sure everything fits together. Incidentally, Home Depot cut all the plywood and particleboard for me, and even forgot to charge me! I cut all the 1 x 2's, 2 x 2's, 2 x 4's, and the pipe, by hand no less, using a miter box. The terminal and woofer holes were cut using my trusty Crafstman jig saw, for which I highly recommend Bosch blades.



You can see the back panel ready to be screwed on with 36 screws. The panel is also held by a layer of glue along the entire length of the 2 x 2 battens. It's not going anywhere. I countersunk the holes, but I had forgotten that regular particleboard is so soft that countersinking isn't strictly required. Whoops. To cover up all the ugly screws and particleboard, I used 1/4" hardboard. Conveniently, I made the front/rear panel 2' x 4', and you can buy that size pre-cut at Home Depot in many different materials, if I ever decide to change it. You can see that I also screwed up cutting the hole for the input terminal cup. I had to use wood filler to make the hole rectangular again, and for good measure, I put a piece of 1 x 1 oak inside below the hole. Next you see my four 2 x 4 braces partially installed. I later decided to add two more, so that there are four immediately adjacent to the woofer hole. You can see they are held on simply by three screws, no fancy carpentry here.



Ah, here we are after going crazy with the caulking gun. Amazingly, I ended up using all three tubes of caulking, plus about 1/3 of another tube I had left over from another project. Every single joint in the box was sealed, even though that isn't strictly necessary, since every single batten was glued to it's panel as well as screwed. Did I mention that I used about a pound and a half of screws in this enclosure? The 2 x 4 braces ended up being about 1/8" shorter than required, so I stuck on some rubber pieces where they would meet the front panel, which worked great. For the front panel, I used a thick bead of caulk around the entire batten perimeter, in addtion to once again securing it with 36 screws. You can see it in place finally, along with the braces, including the extra two surrounding the woofer hole. I also decided to put extra wood behind the woofer mounting screw holes, in this case, more 1 x 2 oak cut into small pieces. With battens along every single joint in the box, plus the six braces and extensive use of caulk and glue, this box is SOLID! Despite being immensely larger than any speaker enclosure I have previously built, this one is the strongest. Even with several hundred watts pumping through the woofer at subsonic frequencies, only minimal vibration can be felt on any of the panels. Too bad I can't say that about the rest of my house....



It hardly seemed appropriate to use my normal 14 or 16 gauge wire for this monster, so I used some 10 gauge that I had laying around, which barely fit into the binding posts on the woofer. You can see that I had to add casters to the bottom of the box so I could move the 130 pounds around. Fortunately I live in a one story house, so all I had to do was use a couple ramps to get it down the one step from the garage and up two onto the porch. It rolls surprisingly well on the carpet despite the $1.42 casters from Walmart. I saw the very same casters a few days later for $4.50 each at Lowe's. ??? The final pieces are waiting to be put on, the ports, and the cosmetic front and rear panels in their haammered green paint.



Finally, the box is ready to be stained! After perusing the huge collection of wood finishes at Home Depot, I settled on some Minwax Polyshades in natural cherry. I don't know if I would use this stuff again. It went on nice, but after twice the recommended drying time, was still sticky and a real job to get smooth with steel wool. It also is nothing close to the color portrayed on the sample board at Home Depot. The cherry was supposed to be reddish, but this isn't red at all. Oh well. At least it was cheaper than my old standby Tung Oil, and it does look nice once you get it smoothed out.



Now it really looks complete with the green front panel and woofer in place! I could have put the ports mostly inside the box, but I really like the look of them sticking up 27" above, and it should keep curious little hands from dropping anything into the box. My hole saw didn't make a very exact cut, so while the ports are a nice friction fit in the hole, I suspected there still might have been some minor leaks, and I didn't really like the way they looked with the exposed hole edges. Some foam rubber weatherstripping solved both problems nicely. You can see how the Emerald Titan compares in size to the Emerald Towers. Not quite as tall, but one heck of a lot more greedy in the floor space department! You may wonder why the back panel isn't smooth. I cut the hole for the input terminal on the wrong side, so I had to use the rough side of the hardboard. It's not really a bad look, it just doesn't show off the hammered paint texture. I contemplated several different ways to attach the front and rear hardboard panels, but in the end decided to simply screw them on. I didn't glue or caulk them, so I could remove them later if so desired, but there doesn't seem to be any problem with them resonating or rattling. The front is held on by quite a few screws, and being as they would all be visible, I thought, why not make them into an easily recognizable pattern? The third letter is actually in the copper coloring around the woofer, but is a bit tough to see.

So how does it sound? Well, in a word, awesome! I have listened to it with the ports both open and closed, and there is not a huge difference in the excellent quality of sound. Having the ports open simply gives it a bit more extension in the low end, in particular the octave between 10 and 20 Hz, and gives the subwoofer considerably more power handling and output capabilities. Due to the low port tuning somewhere close to 11 Hz, in normal operation, there is very little air coming out of the ports, and thus no port noise. When I put in my DTS (Digital Theater Systems) test disc however, with a frequency sweep starting at 10 Hz, I do get a little port noise with 200+ watts. At that point, my trusty Kenwood THX amplifier ramps up it's internal fan to what sounds like full speed. As the frequency increases, various fixtures and who knows what else starts rattling all over the house. Maybe I should have bought a concrete house first. I was concerned with how smoothly the subwoofer would integrate with the Emerald Towers, given my receiver's limited crossover. However, I'm happy to report that the Emerald Titan blends with the rest of the system quite well! My original plan was to use it behind my sofa as a sofa table, but unfortunately, the sound there was less than exceptional. It sounded good if you were sitting on the couch, AND the woofer was aiming through the back of the couch. But anywhere else in the room, it sounded anemic, not the way you expect a 130 pound 10 cubic foot subwoofer to be. In the front right corner of my 14' x 20' living room, with adjoining 7' x 8' dining area and three hallway openings, it seems to fill the area quite uniformly.