single sub or two?

[onenonly696]

I'm ready to upgrade my sound system. My question is should I get one 15 in. 900W bass or 2 12" 400W subs? Which one will hit harder with bass? What one will sound better etc. I only have a 800W pioneer amp.

[scort2498]

i would get 5 200w subs.

[SeRiousZX2]

12" subs will hold a better sound quality at higher volumes. There is less cone to distort. So if you want sound quality, go for 2 12s. If you want loudness, go for the 15.

Also, you need to read the RMS wattage, not max.

[ZX2 Sleeper]

I have one single 12" subwoofer. I downsized from having 2 12". I like having 1 sub because of the weightloss, i have my trunk space, and also it BUMPS pretty damn hard.

[SeRiousZX2]

I would recommend 1 12 too, but everyone has thier taste.

[ZX2 Sleeper]

Thanks serious for backing me up there. One 12" sub still produces enough bass to make my car rattle like hell and also hurt my ears....

[SeRiousZX2]

I have 1 12" in my car in the right sized box and a decent amp. Everyone swear I have 2 subs.

Basically saying, if you throw crap cheap subs in your car, it will take more of them to reach that level of sound you want. If you buy quality the first time, you can go with a simple design that saves room and will out perform many other subs.

[ZX2 Sleeper]

yeah i made my box without any note of having the right demensions or anything. I winged it. All i did was cut an old school rockford fosgate box that held a single ten inch subwoofer and was off centered and skinny. I bored the hole out, cut the box to fit where the spare tire is and then sealed her up tight

[vega]

can the sound of 2 12" sub be too distorted ???, i just bught 2 of them, more for the looks but i dont turn up the volume much.

vega

[CJW]

I personally will not run 2 subs. It's too "average". Everyone runs 2 subs.

I run 1 or 3 or more. No 2.

My 98 will have a single 15" sub with 3000rms. My red car is going to have 4 6.5" subs with 30rms to each one.

98 will have 65rms to the components. red car will have 50rms to the components. No rear speakers in either of them.

red car's trunk and rear half is deadened. 98 the entire car will be deadened with liquid deadening and then a top coat of teklite.


Get a single big sub or like 4 8" subs. Sound Quality is all in the tuning and quality of equipment you use. My 15 will sound just as good as a 12 setup the same way, only my 15 will be louder and drop lower. Anyone who plays their subs over 80hz is a damn fool anyway.

[SeRiousZX2]

can the sound of 2 12" sub be too distorted ???, i just bught 2 of them, more for the looks but i dont turn up the volume much.

vega

Yes. Any sub size can fall victim to distortion. Even if you have top of the line stuff. You have to know the limits on them and not to push it past those. Thats part of tuning. It can literally take several hours to get everything tuned with cross-overs.

[JonsZX2SR]

...to say nothing about box design. Put the speaker in too large of a box and suffer excessive excursion. Too small of a box will cause the low freq. to roll off too quickly and if you equalize and push the speaker harder it will distort more.

If you tune a ported box at too high a freq. it will cause a peak around the tuning freq. that is by nature distorted and boomy. Tune a ported box too low and the port and speaker will decouple resulting in excessive excursion.

Buy a cheap speaker with too high of a Qts and you will never will tune it correctly or if you try to use a speaker intended primarily for a sealed box in a closed box.

I realize that most of this is going to sound like a foreign language to 90% of you, but buying a premium speaker and using it in a properly designed box is more important than if you have one sub or two.

You might want to check out the following...

-> Simple Loudspeaker Design Spreadsheet (home.att.net/~wessonj/Images/Spkr_One.XLS)

-> The Subwoofer DIY page (http://www.diysubwoofers.org/)

[SeRiousZX2]

...to say nothing about box design. Put the speaker in too large of a box and suffer excessive excursion. Too small of a box will cause the low freq. to roll off too quickly and if you equalize and push the speaker harder it will distort more.

If you tune a ported box at too high a freq. it will cause a peak around the tuning freq. that is by nature distorted and boomy. Tune a ported box too low and the port and speaker will decouple resulting in excessive excursion.

Buy a cheap speaker with too high of a Qts and you will never will tune it correctly or if you try to use a speaker intended primarily for a sealed box in a closed box.

I realize that most of this is going to sound like a foreign language to 90% of you, but buying a premium speaker and using it in a properly designed box is more important than if you have one sub or two.

You might want to check out the following...

-> Simple Loudspeaker Design Spreadsheet (home.att.net/~wessonj/Images/Spkr_One.XLS)

-> The Subwoofer DIY page (http://www.diysubwoofers.org/)

I mentioned having the "right sized box" :shrug:

[CJW]

I mentioned tuning. Which entails box size and port calculations. :-D

[NYRichyone]

One 'decent' 15" facing backwards...you will not be sorry. That is assuming your amp puts out good power.

The ZX2 trunk has outstanding reproduction.

[JonsZX2SR]

However selection of speakers based on characteristics is as important as box size or tuning. Fs and Qts are determinants of low freq. behavior that cannot be fixed by box size or design (Vas just scales the size of the box, all things being equal a speaker with a higher Vas needs a proportionally larger box.)

You need to run a quick model to see if the speaker is well behaved at the lowest required freq. in 3 or 4 (sealed, ported, bandpass, hybrid, etc.) designs. You can mess up the behavior of a good speaker by putting it in a poorly designed box, but you can't fix a speaker with poor characteristics.

The bad ones are out there, and sometimes they aren't cheap. people sometimes get fooled when they buy a $75-\80 speaker from a disreputable source and find it works worse than an entry level $40 8" speaker from a known brand.

Try modeling a speaker with an Fs= 48 hz and Qts= 0.90 (Vas would be 1.00 CuFt just for scaling) and see what you get.