Opinions on my ideas for bass

[Serjical]

I know there's a million posts of people wanting opinions for their systems, but if those people are at all like me, I understand. I'm sort of obsessive over my purchases (especially on the car), so I just want to make sure I'm making a good decision. Anyways, to the point of this post....

I did some research and decided I was going to try and get this amp to power this sub. If I wire both voice coils in parallel, I should be able to get a 2 ohm load from the amp, and 350W to the sub. My question is, would that be underpowering the 500W RMS sub? I just can't see the justification in spending almost twice the money for an amp that will only give me a little more power. But if I gotta, I guess I gotta.

Actually, another option I was thinking about was just to upgrade everything inside of the car. I would get some components in the front and 6x9's in the deck that could handle lots of low-end. If I power them right, would I be able to get a good amount of bass? I was suprised at the amount of bass I could get with the stock speakers powered by my Panasonic deck, so maybe just some more improvement would get me where I want. Anyways, sorry for the long post, go ahead and put whatever input you want.

By the way, I'll most likely be buying all of my stuff from Best Buy, because the employee discount is just fabulous. But I would build my own sub box and install everything myself.

 

[chuyler1]

This is a question people usually ask when they pick out a subwoofer first and then realize they cannot afford to power it. I always suggest picking out an amplifier that you can afford first and choosing a subwoofer to match it. If you were to buy that amp, I honestly think a single (or possibly a pair) SWE-1242 subwoofer would sound better. In order to get a subwoofer to fully extend into the lower registers, you have to give it the power it needs. I'd rather see someone over power a sub than under power it.

Going with your second idea, you could pick up a 4-channel amp, a set of components, and a set of 6x9s such as these...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat03077&id=1117177858033
I would set the crossover on the amp to high-pass the components at 80-100Hz and low-pass the 6x9s. This would essentially disable the tweeters on them and designate them to subwoofer duties. They're not going to pound out 20Hz test tones but it will sound better than what you have now and take up less space. A 6x9 has close to the cone area of an 8" sub so the only thing they are missing is an enclosure. Kicker used to sell Infinite Baffle 6x9 subwoofers back in the day. I never had a chance to listen to them though.

 

[Serjical]

This is a question people usually ask when they pick out a subwoofer first and then realize they cannot afford to power it. I always suggest picking out an amplifier that you can afford first and choosing a subwoofer to match it. If you were to buy that amp, I honestly think a single (or possibly a pair) SWE-1242 subwoofer would sound better. In order to get a subwoofer to fully extend into the lower registers, you have to give it the power it needs. I'd rather see someone over power a sub than under power it.

Going with your second idea, you could pick up a 4-channel amp, a set of components, and a set of 6x9s such as these...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat03077&id=1117177858033
I would set the crossover on the amp to high-pass the components at 80-100Hz and low-pass the 6x9s. This would essentially disable the tweeters on them and designate them to subwoofer duties. They're not going to pound out 20Hz test tones but it will sound better than what you have now and take up less space. A 6x9 has close to the cone area of an 8" sub so the only thing they are missing is an enclosure. Kicker used to sell Infinite Baffle 6x9 subwoofers back in the day. I never had a chance to listen to them though.

Nice, thanks for the input. I still don't really know what I want to go with. I think going with good deck speakers to try and use them for the bass would be pretty good for space efficiency, but I don't know... I don't care about bumping my s*** down the street, I just want it to sound good.

If I do go with the sub, I read somewhere that placing it in the back of the trunk facing backward would result in the best sound, due to less cancellation. That would be pretty awkward when putting things in there, so could I possibly put it off to the side, maybe right behind the wheel well? Bass notes aren't too directional, so I doubt it would sound off-balance inside the car.

 

[chuyler1]

It's not the directional part you have to worry about, it's the cancelation of the wave coming off the subwoofer and it's reflection off the back of the trunk. With a single 8" subwoofer, cancelation can make a huge difference.

With a sedan, sometimes the best thing to do is to mount the subwoofer(s) facing forward into the cabin and seal the front of it off from the trunk. Then the air will be forced to push through the seat. Here's an example...
http://www.huyler.net/personal/album/corolla/images/IMG_0124.jpg
Of course, mounting the woofers to the rear deck is better but not always possible in some cars.