Deep bass lacking on K's...

[evilsaint 10+ year member]

For some reason, when it comes to sustained low bass, my 2 12" K's seem to not play at their fullest. I'm trying to figure out whether this could be a problem with the acoustics in my car, or with the way that my system is tuned, but I think it has to do with the enclosure that I have them in.

I can't remember what the recommended enclosure sizes were, but my enclosure (shared, sealed chamber) ends up with about 1.25 or 1.3 cubes per sub. Is this too much for a sealed enclosure when it comes to K's? They almost seem to get kind of "floppy" on the low bass sometimes. The only other subs that i've had in my car to make a comparison to were 2 12" Alpine Type-R's in a slightly smaller box (which pounded the low bass, but didn't hit with all that much impact), and 2 12" CDT Audio Long Excursion subs (which had amazingly hard impact, and pretty good low bass response). Also, as vague as this question may be, how do K's sound in a small ported box tuned low, as opposed to a somewhat small sealed box? I want to keep as much SQ as possible, and they're already loud enough for me, but I just want to try and find a way to increase the range of freqencies that they can play effectively.

I don't think its the way that my system is tuned, because i've tried enough configurations to probably have discovered how to make the low bass come alive again. Currently, for reference, I have the low pass on my HU and sub amp at 120Hz(sometimes lowered on my HU to 80), I have the bass boost a little less than a quarter of the way up, with it's center frequency at a little under 60Hz. The center frequency of the bass on my HU is also at 60Hz. The subsonic filter is set at 10Hz (in other words, it's off), and the gain is set a little below half. The gain itself on the amp goes from lowest (9v) to highest (.25V), so it should be a good match with the 4v preouts of my HU from what I can see.

I know this post is really vague, and probably d@mn hard to read, but if anybody could share some insight as to what might be limiting the low bass output of my subs, i'd really appreciate it.

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[abcdefg 10+ year member]

maybe ur just getting use to them, so they seam weaker than b4

 

[evilsaint 10+ year member]

I definitely know that they're just as loud as before, because I look at how much my rear-view vibrates if I need to know just how loud they are. I hadn't really been listening to much stuff with low bass, because I love the quick response of the K's on kick-bass drums which are in full-force in most of the music I listen to. I just started listening to a lot of rap and drum-and-bass again recently, and the subs are definitely lacking on the low end.

 

[Brock 5,000+ posts]

ive got 1 10 in my car and the low end is great...and thats sealed with 0.7 cubes...

 

[evilsaint 10+ year member]

I think that my box just has too much space per sub. I'm going to try some polyfill, and if that makes it worse, new enclosure, here we come. Thanks guys.

 

[Jdg784 10+ year member]

You could use polyfill, or just stick some bricks in there to take up the extra volume (temporarily) to see how it would sound. Just tape like3 bricks together w/ duct tape and tape them in there.

 

[Mercureie 10+ year member]

can you change the center frequency for your bass boost or is it fixed? if u can change it try settin it a lil lower, ive got mine set jus below 40hz with a 15 k and it sounds really nice all over the bass spectrum.

 

[evilsaint 10+ year member]

Yeah, on my amp I can go from 30 to 150 I think. If I set it low on the amp, but the HU still

has it at 60 (the minimum), do you think it'll affect anything? Also, how high should I have the bass boost up in relation to the gain? The gain seems to be at the perfect setting voltage-wise, but when I turn up the bass boost, it seems to make the bass a bit more muddy. Any ideas?