So you like bass do ya?

[e46inperrycounty]

Hey guys,
I design competition grade stereos. I have many contacts in the industry and a pretty wide knowledge of the aftermarket world of audio. Feel free to ask for advice on builds, gear, enclosure design, electrical support, ect. I've been doing it for a while and have pretty good standing within the audio community nationwide. A lot of the brands currently are not widely known and the build quality is much better than what you will find in the audio section of your local electronics superstore. If you want to get the most out of your $ just ask! I can design a custom enclosure and give you specs based on your goals and equipment as well. I don't charge for advice or design help. I just like to help others with their builds. I'll post some links to my current build in the BMW this evening.

 

[e46inperrycounty]

2 15's with batteries low at idle with the amps strapped at 2ohms (probably about 3000watts rms with a clamp meter) The rattle sound is the gutter on the garage. I have vibrated some nails out while doing testing runs with the spl labs meter and software. The garage door flexes and rolls as well. Pretty neat if you ask me! At this point I have about 2-2.5k total including wood in the build. Wiring, batteries, head unit, woofer, amps, the whole deal... it does 154dbs peak at 38hz (tuned at 25hz) and does 150dbs+ from 27hz-44hz. If you haven't sat in a 150+ certified vehicle, do it once. Its pretty amazing!

 

[marlinsfan]

Hey Josh, thanks for the offer to answer questions. I have a '14 SR5 Premium. I have left the stock entune HU in place, but have added 2 amps (one under each seat). I have replaced the stock speakers with a set of 6.5 components in the front (mids in the door, tweeters in the dash), and replaced the rear doors and the rear hatch speakers as well. I added a 12" sub in a big Qlogic box which is taking up 1/2 of my cargo space.

My truck has the 3rd row seat option. I'm looking for alternatives to get the sub box out of the cargo area. The JBL sub box supposedly does not work with the 3rd row.

What options do I have? I have searched for an OEM sub enclosure but can't find one. new it is a lot of money, and I'm not convinced a little 8" sub will work for me. Do you have any ideas?
Thanks.

 

[e46inperrycounty]

Hey Josh, thanks for the offer to answer questions. I have a '14 SR5 Premium. I have left the stock entune HU in place, but have added 2 amps (one under each seat). I have replaced the stock speakers with a set of 6.5 components in the front (mids in the door, tweeters in the dash), and replaced the rear doors and the rear hatch speakers as well. I added a 12" sub in a big Qlogic box which is taking up 1/2 of my cargo space.

My truck has the 3rd row seat option. I'm looking for alternatives to get the sub box out of the cargo area. The JBL sub box supposedly does not work with the 3rd row.

What options do I have? I have searched for an OEM sub enclosure but can't find one. new it is a lot of money, and I'm not convinced a little 8" sub will work for me. Do you have any ideas?
Thanks.

What kind of power are you wanting to run your sub stage with? What kind of music do you mostly listen to? What kind of subwoofer,(brand, model, impedance of coil/coils, single voice coil or dual)? What frequency do you have your front and rear speakers crossed over at on the amp/amps running them? I have lots of ideas already, and I you would be astonished at what an 8" sub is capable of with the proper enclosure!

 

[marlinsfan]

That's a lot of questions that I'm not so sure how to answer. But here goes.

What kind of power are you wanting to run your sub stage with? My sub is currently powered by a JL Audio e1200 mono amp. The amp gets it's input signal thru the 'pass-through' RCAs coming from the first amp, which is a Rockford Punch P4004. The JL Amp is rated at 200 w for 2 ohm, 120 Watts for 4 ohm. My sub is 4 ohms
http://data.manualslib.com/pdf/8/80...?fef31c1532ae250213cab4f1592af06d&take=binary

What kind of music do you mostly listen to? 75% of the time I'm listening to RUSH, the canadian rock band. Best band in the world. But that's for another thread. If not Rush, I'm listening to Dire Straits, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Police, mostly rock from the 70s and 80s.

What kind of subwoofer,(brand, model, impedance of coil/coils, single voice coil or dual)? My current sub, and it's a bit old, is a 12 inch pioneer. Not sure what model it is anymore, I'd have to take it out of the box to see.

What frequency do you have your front and rear speakers crossed over at on the amp/amps running them? The Entune HU does not have a crossover (one of the things I miss from my kenwood HU). The JL Amp I have set to LP (low Pass on the Filter mode). I don't remember the settings on my Rockford amp for the front and rear speakers.

I spoke to a guy at a local car stereo shop. He recommends a JL Audio box that's supposed to be very small, with a 10 inch sub. He says it's only 6 inches deep. I'm going in on saturday to see it, he said he would let me plug it into my car so I can hear how it sounds.

what ideas do you have?
Thanks!

 

[e46inperrycounty]

I would honestly consider getting a slightly more powerful amp for the sub. Something that does around 600wrms. Then I would run a sundown sa8v2 subwoofer in .75 cubic feet with a single 2.5" port tuned around 38hz. Outer dimensions about 12×12×13.5 and port length would be about 10.75" long. Should sound great on rock and be compact enough to give you a ton of room back with also giving you the output you desire. Even an sa8v1.5 would do very well in that enclosure and setup. It just wouldn't have as much excursion therefore slightly less output.

 

[marlinsfan]

Thanks. Do you know of a box that is already made with those specs?

 

[e46inperrycounty]

If you go to home depot or Lowes, they will use the panel saw to cut the pieces out for you and you will just have to screw/glue them together and insert your speaker/wiring. I can get cutout specs for the speaker and everything for you and post up an actual cut sheet with the exact dimensions for each piece. I can also do a 3d model to give you an idea of what it will look like? Won't be beautiful as far as the rendering but it will give you an idea as far as speaker/port placement

 

[marlinsfan]

Thanks, but I don't have the time or skills to build my own box. I work all day and have a wife and two little kids at home. I can barely find the time to go to a store and buy a ready-made box.... I'll search to see if I find something with those specs already built. I appreciate your help.

 

[e46inperrycounty]

I can build you something. Shipping would suck, but it will be to spec for the subwoofer of your choosing. I could also build you a 4th order enclosure to boost output in the frequencies you will be mainly needing it for. Really it all comes down to budget. How much are you wanting to spend total? I can find lightly used subwoofers, amps, ect...

 

[cpark_12]

I can build you something. Shipping would suck, but it will be to spec for the subwoofer of your choosing. I could also build you a 4th order enclosure to boost output in the frequencies you will be mainly needing it for. Really it all comes down to budget. How much are you wanting to spend total? I can find lightly used subwoofers, amps, ect...

Do you use software to calculate everything? If so, what software. I've always used WinISD to model all my boxes. I have an Infinity Reference 860W in a box tuned to 27Hz and 300 watts running to it at 4 ohms that sounds great! I'd like to throw another one in with it and load them down to 2 ohms and push the full 600 watts to them, but that'll take up more room than I'd like to give up!

 

[e46inperrycounty]

WinISD is great for baseline modeling, you have to take what it tells you with a grain of salt though as cabin gain isn't calculated in winISD. Where you tune and where your subwoofer peaks at will be different. That being said, its trial and error and experience that will make it all come together in the end. Use winISD to get you a baseline of where the enclosure will peak at, then use a SPL meter like SPL labs or term lab to determine cabin peak. Then shoot for a tuning that is about 2/3 octave below cabin peak for a flat musical response, or tune about 3-5hz below cabin peak for a one note wonder SPL competition build. I usually try to build for flat response from about 28hz-50hz in a simple ported enclosure. Port area really comes into play for different woofers so you have to be careful to not have too little port area or you'll end up choking the higher end off. Too much port area and you'll lose compression and the low end response will suffer as you'll reach x-max or x-mech before you get into the lower frequency band and before you actually reach rated power of the woofer. 8-12" per cube is about right for an aero port, 12-16" per cube for a slot port. There are always exceptions based on the woofer you choose to use and how much power you plan to run. Also keep in mind that if you are going to run less than rated power on the woofer a larger than recommended enclosure will really help output, however if you run over rated power you will want to build smaller than recommended to increase cone control and stave off x-max a bit. If you are blowing surrounds off, increase port area or enclosure volume to reduce compression. If you are breaking spiders off the basket, shrink enclosure volume or port area. Low tuning flattens response curves quite a bit but at a certain point you lose higher band output. Walking the fine line is usually the best of both worlds, finding the line takes time and experimentation though!

 

[cpark_12]

Yea...I never understood how much a cabin could affect the sound of a sub until I got the 4Runner! I had this setup in a single cab F-150 and it was great, but completely different than the T4R. I tend to go for sound quality more so than sound quantity. I like to get all I can out of the sub.

 

[e46inperrycounty]

Whip up a 2.5:1 ratio 4th order in winisd. Try for a sealed resonance around 44hz and then tune the ported side to 44hz as well. Should give you a nice bump in output to bring levels back up to the same as they were in the truck as well as play pretty flat from 60-22hz before x-max. WinISD will show about an 8db peak at 44hz, but in reality it will probably be about 3db+/- from about 28-55hz. Just make the ported side 2.5× the size of the sealed side after displacements(woofer, baffle)

 

[91'4bee]

Hey josh this thread caught my eye at the most perfect time. In my runner I installed a aftermarket stereo system about 5 years ago. However I can never get the subwoofer tuned just right, where the bass is perfect with the song and not overbearing. The amp is a basic kenwood KAC-8105D hooked up to 2 kenwood 10in subs. I bought the amp new but subs second hand so I don't know much about the subs.

On the back of this basic amp there are 3 control knobs, bass boost 0-12 db, LPV (I know this one), a input sensitivity knob from 5-.2V(It says it recommends the pre...something from the head unit which would make it set at 4V but when there there is no bass until when its set at 1V). I have never delt with these things before so maybe you could help me.

Thank you so much for taking the time!

 

[e46inperrycounty]

Hey josh this thread caught my eye at the most perfect time. In my runner I installed a aftermarket stereo system about 5 years ago. However I can never get the subwoofer tuned just right, where the bass is perfect with the song and not overbearing. The amp is a basic kenwood KAC-8105D hooked up to 2 kenwood 10in subs. I bought the amp new but subs second hand so I don't know much about the subs.

On the back of this basic amp there are 3 control knobs, bass boost 0-12 db, LPV (I know this one), a input sensitivity knob from 5-.2V(It says it recommends the pre...something from the head unit which would make it set at 4V but when there there is no bass until when its set at 1V). I have never delt with these things before so maybe you could help me.

Thank you so much for taking the time!

Does your head unit have a subwoofer level control or any subwoofer eq settings? Without an oscilloscope it is difficult to set the gain, bass boost should be off. It will boost a set frequency and once you think the levels are right, a different song that peaks at the same frequency that the bass boost is trying to boost comes on and the bass is just overbearing. Gain that is set properly should be much easier without the bass boost on, I suggest using your favorite song and setting the subwoofer level on the amp to match how it sounds with a good set of headphones. The quick, fast, and easy fix for subwoofer level is to get an "lc1" from eBay. It is a level controller with a potentiometer. Set the amp at .5-1v, hook the lc1 up in a location that is easy to reach from the drivers seat. It is just an rca in/out so you'll need a short set of RCA's to run to the head unit from the lc1 and then hook the other set from the amp into the output side of the lc1. Then you can adjust the subwoofer level as easily as the volume on the head unit. That is how I did my BMW. I actually put the lc1 under the center console armrest so the knob is hidden but still easy to access. If you find that you aren't getting enough output without the bass boost then you "can" use it to help out but usually it just clips the signal and gives you distorted bass that seems loud because our ears perceive distortion as louder than clean sound waves. Again, the only way to know if you are getting clean waves or clipping is to use an o-scope or dd-1 distortion detector. Neither option is cheap, only one has multiple uses and they generally aren't easy to use. In a perfect world your speaker will move constantly while a tone is being played, the movement will be perfectly linear and the sound waves produced will be clean. A clipped signal makes your speaker pause on the furthest points of the in stroke as well as the out stroke. You can't see it happen, but if you have ever looked at an o-scope, the wave is the movement your speaker follows. A clipped signal is just what it sounds like. The wave is too large so the furthers peak at the top and bottom of the wave are cut, or clipped, off resulting in a squared off waveform instead of rounded peaks and valleys that show clean and linear movement. Hopefully I have answered your question somewhere in there. I have a tendency to go off on tangents so I apologize for that! Some people know a lot about sound, some people don't so I try to explain things in enough detain to give a fuller understanding of what is going on. The simplified point is bass boost plus high gain level on the amp will damage the voice coils of you speakers, everything else explains how. When a speaker stops moving for any point in time there is straight DC current flowing through it and that cooks the coil making it brittle and weak. On powerful setups you can smell it happen within a few seconds. If you have ever heard of people having speakers billow smoke or catch on fire, that is why it happened...lol

 

[91'4bee]

Does your head unit have a subwoofer level control or any subwoofer eq settings? Without an oscilloscope it is difficult to set the gain, bass boost should be off. It will boost a set frequency and once you think the levels are right, a different song that peaks at the same frequency that the bass boost is trying to boost comes on and the bass is just overbearing. Gain that is set properly should be much easier without the bass boost on, I suggest using your favorite song and setting the subwoofer level on the amp to match how it sounds with a good set of headphones. The quick, fast, and easy fix for subwoofer level is to get an "lc1" from eBay. It is a level controller with a potentiometer. Set the amp at .5-1v, hook the lc1 up in a location that is easy to reach from the drivers seat. It is just an rca in/out so you'll need a short set of RCA's to run to the head unit from the lc1 and then hook the other set from the amp into the output side of the lc1. Then you can adjust the subwoofer level as easily as the volume on the head unit. That is how I did my BMW. I actually put the lc1 under the center console armrest so the knob is hidden but still easy to access. If you find that you aren't getting enough output without the bass boost then you "can" use it to help out but usually it just clips the signal and gives you distorted bass that seems loud because our ears perceive distortion as louder than clean sound waves. Again, the only way to know if you are getting clean waves or clipping is to use an o-scope or dd-1 distortion detector. Neither option is cheap, only one has multiple uses and they generally aren't easy to use. In a perfect world your speaker will move constantly while a tone is being played, the movement will be perfectly linear and the sound waves produced will be clean. A clipped signal makes your speaker pause on the furthest points of the in stroke as well as the out stroke. You can't see it happen, but if you have ever looked at an o-scope, the wave is the movement your speaker follows. A clipped signal is just what it sounds like. The wave is too large so the furthers peak at the top and bottom of the wave are cut, or clipped, off resulting in a squared off waveform instead of rounded peaks and valleys that show clean and linear movement. Hopefully I have answered your question somewhere in there. I have a tendency to go off on tangents so I apologize for that! Some people know a lot about sound, some people don't so I try to explain things in enough detain to give a fuller understanding of what is going on. The simplified point is bass boost plus high gain level on the amp will damage the voice coils of you speakers, everything else explains how. When a speaker stops moving for any point in time there is straight DC current flowing through it and that cooks the coil making it brittle and weak. On powerful setups you can smell it happen within a few seconds. If you have ever heard of people having speakers billow smoke or catch on fire, that is why it happened...lol

I greatly appreciate your response! That last bit with smoking speakers reminds me of when I would cook guitar amps with waaaayyyyy to much loudness(maybe the same principal:dance. So I am short on money (like most of us) so if i was to tune it as is I should turn down the bass boost and turn up the input sensitivity? My head unit has a little bit of eq for the sub woofer, loudness I think, LPV and a polarity reverse normal thing that only works if the head unit LPV is set to anything but THROUGH.

Again thank you for your time!

 

[e46inperrycounty]

I believe the lc1 is around $10 and a short patch cable from radio shack should be less than $5. Yes you can just turn the bass boost down and adjust the gain to where it sounds right but you be left with little adjustability if the head unit doesn't have a variable filter or level control to help ensure the right frequencies are getting there and at the right level. I have had to battle my cheap head unit that doesn't have a USB or Bluetooth due to budget issues and the 1/8 input on my head unit is wonderful but the iPod doesn't really level out all the different songs so one song might be louder or quieter than another so I decided to go the cheap route and just put the lc1 in. Plus, if you want to make someone jump out of their skin you leave it turned way way down and wait till its about a minute into the song and without touching the head unit all the sudden things get loud!! People look at me like "that's all you got??!!" and I just make them think that it is all I've got... for a little bit at least!

 

[91'4bee]

I believe the lc1 is around $10 and a short patch cable from radio shack should be less than $5. Yes you can just turn the bass boost down and adjust the gain to where it sounds right but you be left with little adjustability if the head unit doesn't have a variable filter or level control to help ensure the right frequencies are getting there and at the right level. I have had to battle my cheap head unit that doesn't have a USB or Bluetooth due to budget issues and the 1/8 input on my head unit is wonderful but the iPod doesn't really level out all the different songs so one song might be louder or quieter than another so I decided to go the cheap route and just put the lc1 in. Plus, if you want to make someone jump out of their skin you leave it turned way way down and wait till its about a minute into the song and without touching the head unit all the sudden things get loud!! People look at me like "that's all you got??!!" and I just make them think that it is all I've got... for a little bit at least!

Really that inexpensive? Man...Ok when I find myself around one of those places I will pick em up and see what happens. I will do the other things for now but you are right I wont have the adjustment for particular songs.

Ok man well thanks and if I have any more questions I know where to ask!:thumb3:

 

[e46inperrycounty]

Any time man. I'll post up some links in the morning