okay, I am going to have a custom fiberglass boxes built for each side of my trunk in my 04 Z. Each box will hold one 12 inch subwoofer. I am getting this done for sure. But my question is :: I am thinking about getting one of the boxes from corvettecaraudio.com that holds two 10 inch subs in the rear of the trunk. Is it a good idea to mix the two different size subwoofers? And i am going to be running two totally different amplifiers.

i was thinking that with the fiberglass box pointing forward, and the two tens pointing straight up it would sound good. but i don't know much about this stuff. so, I'm hoping for some help!

Heres a pic of the fiberglass box i am having built for me by fellow forum member BADMFR. This is just the mold of the box.

 

Unless the size of your subwoofers are radically different: i.e. a 15" and a 10" or a 12" and a 8" I'd stay away from mixing sizes simply because tuning them to sound right would be a nightmare.

there is a forum member in the "what do you run in your system sticky" who i believe has two 12" and two 8" subs. you may want to ask him about tuning.

 

Without getting into the whole subwoofer speed discussion again,

People like to mix them to get the low end of a 12, and the speed of an 8.

I think its doable,

If you do it as such

12: 50hz @ 12db
8: 50hz @ 12db 80hz @ 24db (bandpass)


But if you just get a quality 12, you'll get perfect accuracy, and volume.

My IDMAX 12 (single sub) is only down 3 or 4 db at 20hz, compared to 80hz.

 

I am going to venture a guess and assume that you are a bass head. That is all fine and to each their own, but randomly adding speakers to attempt to get more output usually does not have good results.

I would either go with the 2 12's in the 'glassed enclosures you are having done, or the dual 10's from Dave, but not both. If you are trying to have what is effectively a 5 way system (5 speakers to play the entire musical spectrum) I can tell you that it is not worth the effort. 4 ways are generally the max .. and the majority of the sub range is always covered by one driver in all top installs .. never 2 that I have ever seen in a competition car. And believe me if it was better ... those guys would be doing it.

Match your subs to your enclosures .. give them a solid amount of watts (I would say 800w RMS plus for you) and boom to your hearts content. If you need more bass than what 2 12's and 800+ watts is going to give you .. get a bigger car bro

G'luck
Fej

 

lol, yea i love bass.. I guess I will just go with the two 12's.

 

Give 2 the the recommended amount of air, push them with an amp that has enough power to play loud AND still have room to be dynamic, and take it easy with the EQ or bass boost.

2 12's in a Z06 wired\amp\boxed properly should play low and pound you into submission.

Dont count subwoofers to determine if youve got good bass. Your ears and your @ss have way more input on the subject than your eyes.

 

Yea, I don't know a whole lot about car audio. I have always owned a good system, but I just went somewhere and had them install it for me. I am running a directed 1100d mono amplifier pushing out 1400 watts, and two diamond audio macdaddy 12 inch subs. they are a few years old, but were in a car that was in a garage for two years not being used.

I am sure this will be enough bass, but when i see subs i always think the more i can fit in there the more bass i'll have. I guess thats normal for a newbie

 

I might get flamed for saying this but in my experience, the boxes that have multiple woofers usually sacrifce air-space. By the time you factor in bracing, woofer cone displacement etc. It takes a large box to house a 12" subwoofer. I think a lot of installs cut corners and they cheat themselves out of the lowest frequencies.

When you lose air-space the sound can get boomy and resonant with some woofers. I think this means that the sound its best at playing tends to be a slightly higher frequency. I dont "feel" this kind of bass as much and when I want a sub to hit hard, its so I feel it as much as hear it.

I usually prefer enclosures that are on the large side of what the manufacturer recommends to make sure I get a nice dry bass. If you want to see a large enclosure, check out SV Subwoofers 16-46PCi. Its 4 feet tall and almost cracks the floors out of my house

http://www.svsound.com/products-sub-cyl-pcpow1.cfm

And dont worry about being a newb. The most non-newb thing you can do is ask questions. Many people would just plow ahead thinking they know everything already and end up with an install that sounds like a Wal-Mart PA system

 

eh, stick with the 2 12's.

I prefer 2 10's myself, but to each his own.

I have a single 10 now, but am not too happy with it. It sounds good, but its not enough.

The BEST setup I ever had was a dual sealed 12" box. One 12 each in its own enclosure. No ports, and speakers faced front. That was the hardest, cleanest, sharpest hitting set I have ever had.... then some douschebag stole them right out the car

 

400 reasons. your right on the money about the boxes. You need to get the right sized box or the right size sub for what box you may already have. You also need enough power going to the sub as well. My IDQ-10s sounded pretty good for 2-10's, once I added some more power to them, they sounded even better. Didn't think they could sound better.

 

Dynamic Headroom used to be a huge selling point for audio gear, but nobody talks about it now. We have marketed people to death with peak power ratings, but music that has impact needs power in reserve to react and sound great.

I believe some manufacturers "underrated" their amps wattage so they could maintain good headroom some years ago (yes Im talking to you Rockford). These days, thats suicide unless you rely on word of mouth marketing instead of a showy p.p.r. stamped in big numbers on the box

Dont even get me started about the amp circuits in mp3 players \ ipods getting overdriven and clipping!

 

There is a reason that the "old school" amps like the PPI art series and the Soundstream Reference series and the old a/d/s pre buyout stuff are all still desireable amps as they were underrated and generally had output above and beyond the advertised RMS ratings .. even sometimes when taken at 14.4v. Todays amps are not nearly as versatile and are lucky to give you 90% of rated watts and far less than that unclipped.

Most knowledgeable audio people today throw a ton of watts at drivers with minimal gain settings to give the amp a chance to handle transients without getting into clipping. Headroom is your friend My next system currently in install mode has 164w per midbass, 164w per midrange and 40w per tweet with 743 on the sub all RMS ratings.

Fej