i gotta 2001 monte carlo ss. its a daily driven car and I would like to put 15s but i dont know if they will fit. I need to look for an amp also but I have a alternator an optima in front and a kinetik in back
For daily, the 2 XXX 12's would sound the best, IMO.
I would not do 4-12's in that trunk. You will choke it off so much that all you would get is alot of rattle, the lack of airflow back into the cabin would suck.
IMO, a ported box for 2-15's in that trunk would choke it off pretty bad. 8cuft+ gross would be huge back there.
2 nice 12's can get pretty dam loud in there. Or, possibly 4-10's. You could do 5cuft net w/ 2-6" flared ports 18" long. That would tune to ~36hz on paper and slam.
to me it sounds like your after spl more than sq i would say rule out the re and go with digital designs. maybe a pair of 3512s. they sound good off of 2.0 to 2.5 cu ft each so you will have plenty of air flow, so using a ported box 5.0 cu ft tuned to 35 hz will sound amazing, im sure others may say tune lower, but honestly ive tried many different boxes with dd and i like 35 hz the best, make sure you use your sub sonic filter though and set it to 30 hz also i dont like the way .5 or even 1 ohms sound, it sounds so sloppy to me and if being loud is your main goal thats fine to run more power, but still im sure you want it to sound decent at least, and understand the lower the impedience the lower the efficiency, also a class d is going to be more efficient than a class a/b
it seems you have a good electrical and you could easily push 2000 or more to a pair of subs
if your going to try to run that much power make sure your port width is at least 3'' if not more, you dont want port noise. and for some reason people like to always recommend aero ports, but like i said if you after spl a ported box will get you that.
and no one on car audio forums like mainstream subs for some reason.. has anyone heard a pair of mtx 9500s or a pair of memphis mojos? they are very very nice subs, and its not like a pair of fi ssds is going to kill a pair of 9500s in output just because it has the fi name. but i would recommend 2 12'' dd 3512s in a proper box, it will be very loud, i just hope you can handle all that bass, it sure would suck to put in all that money and time and have a system in your car that you cant handle not trying to make anyone mad, but just giving an honest opinion, im not biased, but i notice many people are very quick to say "go with fi" when im sure most of them have never even had an fi sub
also if you do want 2000+ watts check out alpines new mrp-2000d or something like that, it will push out 2500 watts at 2 ohms while being very clean sounding and efficient. you could buy 2 ohm dvc subs and run them in series to get that power, or go the classic aq2200d and run 4 ohm subs in parallel and get 2200+ watts at 1 ohm. i dont think there is a cleaner sounding amp than the alpine though, its like 410 brand new online
^^^ Do NOT listen to that statement from BIGGS... ignorance at its finest the size of the woofer will not give you more highs or lows, plenty of 10s can get lower than 15s. its all about the right sub AND INSTALL for what your desired outcome is.
The whole 15s are for lows and 10s are for rock is BestBuy BS
first off, subs don't do highs. that's not their purpose. They should have a LPF set to about 50Hz anyway, leaving them to do your bottom octave only. second, the only thing a larger cone will give you is usually more moving mass resulting in a lower Fs for the driver, and more cone surface area to move more air. It can sometimes also lead to a greater Xmax for the driver compared to the same model sub in a smaller size.
like glasswolf said, normall the larger the driver the lower the fs which basically means the lower that number is the lower the driver can play without botomming out. so yes you could say a larger driver will hit the lows better than a smaller driver, but many high performance 12's can drop down to 20 hz, which you wont really ever hear that tone or use it, unless you are watching movies in your car, or playing slowed down songs. but for the majority of hip hop which normally has lower bass tones than other music you wont drop much lower than 25 hz, and that really doesnt happen too much.
so with that said, if you were too have a 12'' sub in a 2.5 cu ft box tuned to 25 hz and compare it to a 15 in sub in a 3.0 cu ft box the 12'' subwoofer would hit the lower bass frequencies "better" than the 15 would. but the 15 would hit the higher frequencies "better" than the 12 in sub would. its all about the t/s parameters of a subwoofer, and the box its in. of course a better quality 15 would drop lower and be louder normally than a 12 in sub in a sealed box. but of course it all has to do with the t/s parameters of the sub, and having it in a proper enclosure.
but yes if you listen to kids that dont know what they are talking about and bought their system from a best buy their 15's would normally hit lower than 12's bought from best buy. but best buy and many other car audio stores really dont know what they are doing, they are more about sales than offering quality systems, most boxes at best buy are tuned way too high, and its just to impress you in the stores to make it seem louder. like when people compete they normally have a box tuned high like around 50 hz, because it is easier to gain higher spls, but once you play frequencies below your tuning, your subwoofer is going to bottom out, which will result in a blown subwoofer.
of course there are many factors that come into play but normally that is whats going to happen when someone doesnt know what they are doing
sorry i meant to say a 15 in a 3.0 cu ft box tuned to 35 hz. i didnt check my post for errors, and i wrote it fast so its probably confusing.. sorry but the reason people like to buy 15s is because of the fact the larger the driver the more cone area which results in more spl, if thats what your going for, or the ability to drop down low in frequencies that some 12's or 10's cant do
heh I ned to get a digital video camera eventually. At present I don't own one.
BIGGS, a larger sub requires more airspace, which not everybody has, but a larger sub will move more air, meaning it can produce more sound pressure. Personally I like going with a single sub in cars, as large as possible or the given installation. Just about any decent sub will play down to 20Hz (bottom end of audible frequencies for human hearing) and below. The Fs is more important when building a ported enclosure, as you typically don't want to tune a box below the Fs of the driver because it loses efficiency by doing so, negating the whole point of porting in the first place. Playing below the Fs of a driver like this can also cause issues with the presented load to the amplifier as, depending on the enclosure, environment, and the driver itself, the load varies by frequency (this is why it's called nominal impedance.) a "4 ohm" speaker doesn't always present a 4 ohm load to the amplifier. It can, and often does, drop to as low as the DCR of the driver.
Anyway, there are a lot of misconceptions that have been around for a long time about speakers. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
How "tight," "controlled," or "detailed" a driver is has nothing to do with the diameter of the cone, but has everything to do with the BL curve (motor control) of the driver. The better the motor control is, the more accurate and responsive a sub is. Poor BL means a sloppy, loose sub. This can happen with an 8" as easily as an 18" sub. The damping of a driver is dependant on the enclosure. a sealed box will result in a quicker sub with lower transient delay, and a flat response right down to 16Hz or below, whereas a ported box will induce transient delay, but you get a boost near the tuned frequency of the port, and increased mechanical power handling as a result. Ported boxes are larger than sealed for the same sub as well. it's all pros and cons. Power handling for a speaker has nothing to do with how much power you need from the amp to reach full output from the sub. This is more dependant on the type of box you use, and the sub's sensitivity. The power handling spec is a thermal measure of the heat the coils can handle without melting from the buildup of that heat. When an amplifier clips, the speaker coil sees DC voltage, which builds heat much more and faster than AC voltage from a clean signal. This is why insufficient current, sagging voltage rails, and turning the gain too high on an amp will blow a speaker LONG before too much clean power will.
There is a lot to this stuff that most people don't have any idea even exists.
Oh, and in short, the reason a 10" won't seem to hit as deeply as an 18" sub is because the 18" sub can simply move more air. Both can produce the same frequencies, but when the 18" has so much more cone area and excursion than the 10", you're just going to flat out get more output at those frequencies from the larger sub.
If you had similar excursion and cone area from multiple 10" subs in one car, as you did with a single 18" sub in another car, both equally powered in similar enclosures with similar response curves, and with both subwoofer motor designs offering similar BL curves, I doubt you'd really be able to tell the two apart.