Originally posted by tglisson I HATE how people go around with their little thuds around my town, I hear this kid saying hes got the **** system, he has this shitty custom box with two 12's their audiobahn getting pushed by a american legacy amp, first of all you dont need flame Q's if your gonna push em with that ****, I mean I have XPL's and atleast you can hear more than my car raddling and mine isnt all distorted, I beleive sealed is the best, bandpass is to shitty for me, but you guys know what I mean ? those freaks with their liil 500watt thuds or trucks that have neons but are shitty and they arent even slammed or anything
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The only thing funnier than seeing Mom's hand-me-down minivan go down the road with a system in it, is a rusty Ford Escort with enough bass that it makes a little rust fall off the car each time the bass hits... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/nono.gif.eca61d170185779e0921b0faa9704973.gif
I mean, I have a couple frequency-dependent resonances in my car here and there, but I hate them... certainly nothing that I am proud of, in fact, it would drive me nuts like Chinese Water Torture, and would embarass me if I were driving around...
Who wants their car's license plate and muffler buzzing to be the first thing heard? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/eek.gif.771b7a90cf45cabdc554ff1121c21c4a.gif
How embarassing... I'd rather stand at the bus stop with my pants around my ankles...
I want people to hear - no, feel - BASS... if I want, of course...
At any rate, I hate to say it, but you have got some LISTENING to do...
The flame Q's are fairly widely regarded as "poser subs"...
That is, they LOOK pretty, and sure, they can get plenty loud when provoked, but there is nothing pretty about their sound...//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif Don't hold them in too high of a regard, I wouldn't at all be shocked to see them run off an American Legacy amp, any more than I would to see them run off of a Boss amp, or Kenford or Rockwood...
Typically not the "I did a lot of research before I bought my stuff" kind of a demographic.. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif
But where I disagree is your assessment of bandpass designs being poor, and of sealed being superior.
You can design a bandpass box to yield superior sound quality, just like you can design one to yield superior SPL. It's a matter of first identifing (possibly via Qts) whether your sub is "best suited" in a ported, or sealed environment, and then designing an appropriate 6th, or 4th order bandpass, respectively.
The second component in that, is to design the enclosure to do what you want.
Do you want a broad passband, offering high distortion-masking benefits?
Or do you want a narrow passband, centered around a frequency that you want to exploit in your vehicle?
It can do both well.
The only downside, really, is complexity of construction.
In that respect, sealed wins... but I'd rather design my enclosure around superior performance, rather than a gravitational draw to the sofa... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif
Even as far as the decision to go sealed vs. ported, properties of the woofer MUST be taken into account.
There are plenty of woofers that will perform excellently in the high-pressure (above the tuning frequency, anyways, of course) ported environment, and will fall flat in a sealed environment **cough.. Cerwin Vega cough Stroker...cough **
And plenty of woofers that will perform excellently in the easier Sealed environment, that get simply bloated in a ported environment.
At a minimum, you are looking at a potential 3dB to 6dB increase in SPL, just by going ported... so for a basshead, or an "SQL" audiophile even, you just might want to find a sub that not only excels by the specs in a ported box, but one that has proven to show superior control in that type of enclosure.
