In a market as saturated as car audio, it's rare to see new manufacturers emerge. Realm, now two years old, is the brainchild of the folks at Scosche Industries. You know Scosche as a longtime leader in manufacturing radio installation kits, sound damping, affordable amplifiers, and speakers, and for the Autosound Encyclopedia. With Realm, the company hopes to reach new customers by setting high standards with an emphasis on products that provide accurate musical reproduction-not sizzle and boom. To achieve this ambitious goal, Realm introduced a limited number of models in an effort at getting the most out of each design.
This brings us to Realm's newest model introduction, the LFT12-D4 12-inch subwoofer that retails for $350. It's packaged in a glossy black display carton that's dead sexy. The subwoofer itself keeps up the presentation with a molded, single piece, inverted domeshaped cone made of high-strength IMPP (polypropylene) with a doublestitched butyl-rubber surround that's integrated into the edge gasket. The molded edge sits on the heavy-duty case aluminum frame powdercoated in a black crinkle finish. The frame itself has plenty of venting in the landing behind the huge dual spiders. These new frame designs, which are integrating this venting into the area behind the spider, improve power handling by allowing more airflow around the voice coil while improving the linearity of the subwoofer's motion by equalizing the air pressures on both sides of the spider. Also, the large springloaded speaker wire terminals, which are mounted directly onto either side of the frame rather than using stand-offs, make hooking up the LFT12 a piece of cake.
The top spider features woven-in tinsel leads that attach to the 2.5-inch hightemperature aluminum voice coil former. A four-layer dual voice coil seated within the 88-ounce double-stacked magnet structure is wrapped around the former. This design allows the LFT12 an impressive Xmax of 11.5mm and a solid power handling of 400-watts RMS and a peak rating of 800 watts.
The view from the rear of the LFT12 is also dead sexy. The motor's back plate is chromed with the Realm logo and LFT12-D4 model number laser engraved onto it. The magnet itself has a unique molded cover wrapped around it that gives a very integrated look. These little elements stack up, proving Realm is out to set high standards.
InstallationI broke open the owner's manual to see what Realm puts in print as their recommended enclosure sizes for SQ. Realm put together a very nice manual featuring a full list of specifications, power handling, wiring configurations, and tips for the DIY customer on how to calculate the enclosure volume and even the formula on how to convert your port volume from a round or rectangular port. While I was going through the manual I also called Realm Audio headquarters and spoke to product development manager Chris McSweyn. He said to go with a sealed alignment with 1.3ft3 (gross volume) to achieve the best SQ. With the LFT12-D4 displacing just about 0.1ft3 our net enclosure volume ends up being a respectable 1.2ft3. McSweyn's recommendations were exactly the same as those printed in the owner's manual.