I might consider going with a Morel or Focal or even a dynaudio but for right now, I want to hear more about enclosure advise for the Daytons that I am going to purchase. I believe that the 10 inch and 12 inch Daytons, they call for a 1cubic foot sealed box, correct? Does this need to be any thing fancy such as special internal bracing or anything else? Suggestions? Also what amp would you guys recommend that I use with these? How much power do they need?
Here is what WinISD recommends for sealed box size if you want qtc of around 0.707:
Dayton Audio HF10, 4ohm: EBP 51.4, box volume 1.086, F3 around 44Hz. About 250 watts to reach xmax excursion at 30Hz
Dayton Audio HO10, 4ohm: EBP 75.8, box volume 0.317 cu ft, F3 around 60Hz. About 700 watts to reach xmax excursion at 30Hz.
Dayton Audio HO12, SVC 4ohm: EBP 70.2, box volume 0.627 cu ft, F3 around 57Hz. About 800watts to reach xmax excursion at 30Hz.
Dayton Audio HO12, DVC 4ohm: EBP 49.8, box volume 0.935 cu ft, F3 around 40Hz. Needs >1000 to reach xmax of 14mm at 30Hz.
I would like to add some notes.
* The power handling (based on excursion limits) is calculated with WinISD's excursion graph based on the recommended box. This is the wattage that's necessary to reach the speaker's one way xmax limit, which for all of these speakers except for the DVC version, is 12.5mm. The DVC version's xmax is around 14mm. This shows how "bad" the sensitivity of the HO drivers is. For example, the HO10 with 700watts will be about as loud as HF10 with 250watts.
* You can push the cone excursion beyond xmax during musical peaks if this is necessary, but cone excursion outside of xmax range means the subwoofer is operating outside of its "SQ" range and will sound distorted.
* It's ok to use a box that's a little to big or too small. Add or subtract 20-30%. I have heard people saying that the low end of the HF subs sounds bloated in the recommended box, so I'd look into using 0.7-.8 cu ft box. The HO subs could easily work in bigger boxes if you wish to use them. This will only reduce power handling near sub sonic frequencies by a small bit.
* The F3 (-3dB) frequency is probably not relevant, due to unpredictable nature of the cabin gain.
* The EBP is the efficiency bandwidth product which a ratio of some T/S parameters. As a rule of thumb, the EBP over 70 strongly suggests that vented box be used, although the subs with high EBP may still sound decent in a sealed box. Nonetheless, there is a strong indication that the HO subs prefer a vented box. Notice their high F3 and low sensitivity in a sealed box. However, they have the advantage of working in a relatively small box (specially the SVC models) which is very valuable in many car installs.
* I did not model the 12 inch Dayton HF sub because, the last time I did, WinISD recommended approx 2.5 cu ft sealed box. Clearly this sub is not meant for car audio, although some people had used it as IB subwoofer.
Looking at these results, the 10 inch HF seems like the most reasonable subwoofer to use for car audio if you can spare for it a box with about 0.8cu ft internal volume. It has good sensitivity and box size is reasonable. The only problem is relatively low output. 12.5mm xmax and 10 inch cone diameter means it will not get extremely loud. It should still be enough for most music genres except for some hard hitting rap and hip hop. For a while I have been thinking of putting two HF10 subwoofers into sonic sub boxes 1.5 cu ft dual subwoofer sealed box that's sold by
sonicelectronix and wiring them in parallel for 2ohm load. This should offer very good output, SQ, and power handling (up to 600watts) while taking only 1.5 cu ft of box space, which is still reasonable for many cars.
The HO subwoofers should work best in tighter install areas, but you will need a relatively robust amplifier. Either a good monoblock amplifier that can provide >500watts at 4ohm or a bridged 2-channel. If you want to run the amplifier at 2ohms, then the DVC subwoofer makes more sense, but note that it has even worse (modeled) sensitivity than the SVC version.
Looking at the model results, I am not extremely fond of how these Dayton subwoofers model. Consider that fact that you can buy 12 inch subwoofers that work fine in 1-1.2cu ft sealed box, have 17-18mm xmax, good sensitivity, and good power handling. I still curious to hear the sound of Daytons though. I might look into them if I ever need a subwoofer for a tiny sealed box.
By the way, if you're interested in a subwoofer with good SQ that works in a small sealed box, take a look at the new Alpine Type-R Thin subwoofer line (not the regular ones). These are supposedly very good. I have read a review that showed that Alpine's posted T/S parameters are very close to what they measured. They think the 12 inch Type-R thin could handle around 700watts.
