The Cerwin-Vega Stroker Pro 15 arrived on my doorstep in an Anvil-type case with steel flip-up handles, just like those used to carry concert gear. Opening the box I was blown away--the subwoofer itself looks fantastic. It's tall, massive and damn near 70 lbs.! But it's the clear dust cap that captures your attention, allowing you to view the front spider and the carbon-fiber cone structure beneath. Beautiful!
Once I got the sub out of its case (with a little help), I quickly pulled out the instruction manual to see what the power handling was. I damn near fell off my stool when I read the 2,500 watts RMS power figure and the mind-bending 5,000-watt music rating! But this technological wonder doesn't come cheap. As a matter of fact, the Stroker Pro 15 is the most expensive subwoofer I have put through its paces on these pages with a staggering retail price of $1,699.00.
Installation
A quick call to Cerwin-Vega got me to Bob Diamond, CV's senior design engineer. He recommended I use a sealed enclosure with an internal volume of 2.7ft3 for the best overall sound quality. Jayson Olson, master installer at Speaker Works, was enlisted to build this special enclosure. The enclosure would be constructed out of two layers of 3/4" MDF with internal bracing to add strength and minimize flexing of the enclosure walls.
Connecting the wires was fairly simple. The Pro 15 uses heavy-duty metal blocks with Allen head set screws to lock the wires in. The subwoofer's dual 2-ohm voice coils were wired in parallel for a 1-ohm load.
Mounting the subwoofer into the enclosure was a bit tricky. First, you are dealing with a front panel on your enclosure that is twice your regular thickness and Cerwin-Vega supplies these threaded steel plates and cap screw bolts to hold the Stroker in. My guys predrilled the holes in the box's face and then glued the threaded steel plates into position. Remember, this is a large and heavy enclosure at an estimated 70 lbs. Combine that with the Pro 15 and we're dealing with approximately 140 lbs.
It was time to see if we could fit this behemoth into my Scorched-Earth Black Ford F-350 truck. There was no way to place it in my normal location on the floor, so we placed it carefully on the rear seat. We tried the Stroker facing up and forward, pointing left and right, but it did not sound correct. With the enclosure on the rear seat, my seating location was in a null point and the bass response was pitiful at best. If I put my head up by the steering wheel, bass level increased exponentially. I flipped the polarity of the Stroker, which did not help, so it was back to the drawing board. Our solution was to pull the rear seat out of the Ford. This would allow us to get the Stroker into the location that generally works best for most subwoofers in my truck. The acoustic match greatly improved and now we had a great-sounding subwoofer (what I won't do for CA&E magazine, jeez!).
To power the Stroker Pro 15, I installed a Zapco C2K-9.0XD amplifier to run it. The 9.0XD features a 24dB-per-octave crossover. With the 1-ohm impedance of the driver, this Zapco will deliver 2,000 watts of power. The front half of my reference speaker system consists of a pair of USD Audio B-72Pro WaveGuide separates. I power these with a Zapco C2K-6.0X amplifier at 150 watts per channel. The built-in highpass crossover filter was used to block the bass to the component system. These amps are fed via Zapco's Symbilink balanced line driver SLB-U. There are no other signal processors in the signal path.
Listening
After four hours of break-in time I inserted a favorite track--Tracy Chapman's "Heaven's Here on Earth." This subwoofer goes from very low frequencies all the way up the scale smoothly without drawing attention to itself. The bass imaging was extremely good. The bass line always stayed up front and did not pull to the rear of the vehicle at any point. The bass drum was tight and the bass guitar smooth and proper. That's what's so intriguing about the Stroker Pro. There is nothing faint about the looks of this subwoofer, indicating that it could not be anything less than a brute, yet it had an articulate and delicate reproduction quality when the music called for it. And, it had no trouble replicating layered bass lines. Overall, each instrument stayed well defined and taut.
On Diana Krall's Love Scenes album, the stand-up bass note changes were clear and well defined. The note-to-note levels were equal and at no time were they out of proportion to each other. The bass plucks were very punchy and taut. This subwoofer is no one-note wonder. It accurately reproduces the frequency changes up and down the scale from the string bass to the guitar and the drum kit. It was very snappy and tight with excellent control. The Pro 15 exhibited no blooming in the upper bass frequencies like many of the other subs I have tested.
A great benefit to using a large diameter subwoofer like this one is how well it energizes the interior of your vehicle at really, really low frequencies. Case in point, I had to remove my garage door opener and sunglasses from their usual perch overhead at far lower volume levels because they were rattling almost instantly.I played the 10,000 Maniacs remake of "Peace Train" next. It opened with a bass drum kick that was very low in frequency. Many subwoofers will do an adequate job on this passage, but the Stroker Pro 15 really got the job done. Each kick of the bass drum was sharp, solid and deep. This track illustrated the performance gains that large format subwoofers have over smaller subwoofers.
Wrapping up, I put in Usher's latest album and cranked up the "Intro" track that leads into the track "Yeah!" "Intro" uses mostly acoustic instruments with super dynamics and at 0:23 secs into it, the Stroker punched out a super tight, loud bass line that was still very realistic sounding. On "Yeah!" it simply laid down powerful, pumping bass that went down to the lowest bass notes clearly. Even on this repeating boomfest, the bass image stayed up front, solid and fixed.
Conclusion
The more I listen to the Cerwin-Vega Stroker Pro 15, the more I like it. It is the best all-around large-format subwoofer that I have tested by a large percentage. It did not matter what type of music I played, the Stroker Pro 15 made it sound correct and good. It does its job at all volume levels and can handle fantastically high amounts of power. This thing is very expensive, but its performance is exceptional! Looks like I am going have to do some begging to get a couple for our VW Beetle show car. Hey, Mr. Diamond! We need to talk.