I'm going to be building a box for two 12" type r's. I thought vented and ported meant the same thing but my friend says no. he says ported is with plastic tubes and vent is with vented airholes (slot port). Which one would be better? plastic tubes or slot port? If i do port, which side of the box should i mount the tubes? i'm probably not going to have enough room on the front because the subs are going to be there. would it be ideal on top or on the back? if i vent, i'm defintely going to vent it on the front due to the small space it takes up. thanks.
vented and ported are the same thing. if you mean slot-vented then say as much. even then, slot-vented and round ports serve the same mechanical purpose. It's just a matter of box design, tuning frequency, etc. slot-vents tend to help reduce things like port whistle, due to the amount of air they can move at high output. they also tend to take up a lot more volume in the vehicle. for 12" subs with round ports, use nothing smaller than 4" ID ports to avoid port whistle and you'll be fine.
which side of the box would be more ideal to mount the port tubes at? I don't think i'll be able to mount them in the front with the subs because of the limited space. maybe on the back?
Depends how many subs. If you have a box for 2 subs what I would do is have 2 dividers in the middle and the port would be in the middle of the box between the dividers. The dividers would also act as the internal slots of the ports. Make sure that the slot is about 1 1/2 to 3 inches wide. Might want to have the slot the height of the box minus approximately 6 inches(3 inches on top and bottom of port). I saw a complex port set up for 3 subs. The guy whom build that box was an engineer and knows a lot about amps and how bass works and what improves bass. I can't explain how it was set up but I can provide a drawing of how this 3 sub box was constructed. Will do that later.
i've seen some designs where they separate the subs with a divider in the middle. would i rather separate them or make a whole big box? plus, wouldn't the subs be pushin and pullin on each other if they were in one big box?
It's better and more convienent to put them in one big box. The only way the subs will actually "fight" each other is if you don't have a divider in between. If you just have them sharing air space then they most likely will start fighting for air space. That what a divider is for, so each sub could have it's own independant air space. Or you what you can do is use more than one divider and divide the subs but don't completely divide them just leave just a little space under the divider and actually seperate the dividers about 2 inches apart and cut a slot in the box and there you have a port/vent.
build the box with no divider-make sure your slot port runs into the side of vehicl if poss-thus will reflex the bass signal causing an increase in vol--if in back of pickup use a vent on both sides -low vented to the sides of truck--read the sub specs for vent style-make sure you are on or just little over and it will sound fine-if your under on air port vol and do not seperate the cab it will start to force other sub--ive noticed no divider actuall will give higher spl. but lower sound quality--if you compete for sound quality and your going to have an rta in car divide the box-if not dont waste time!!!!!!!!!!1