Large sealed box or small ported box?

[Raven 10+ year member]

Still throwing around ideas before I take a saw to MDF...

187s like larger boxes. For the 12s ported, IA recommends 2.25 cubes per sub or more along with a huge 60^2 inch port. For sealed, it's more like .75 to 1.5 cubes a sub.

I believe that bass is best when felt. Knowing that, would it make more sense to have a large sealed box, or a small ported one? Right now I use a small ported box, and it's already tuned pretty high, but the output isn't quite what I was hoping for. Thanks.

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[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

Well, large sealed will give you good efficiency, better low frequency extension and smoother response (as well as better transient response), at the cost of overall output levels. Small ported will give you more output but won't extend as low as the large sealed (since the ported box is limited by it's tuning frequency), plus it won't have as "smooth" of a response and somewhat degraded transient response.

Really up to you on which direction you want to head.

 

[DFW40 10+ year member]

I'd choose the larger sealed.

Can you get a medium sized ported box with 24 inches or port area??

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

I currently use 1.66 cubes with 30^2 inches of port tuned to 35hz.

I was going to put them in a 2.3 cube sealed box, but I didn't know how it'd handle the lack of air pressure in the enclosure, so I ported it instead. It's louder than my old sealed 15s in the same size enclosure (drag & drop amp/hu settings) but after a slight drop in the gains, I found myself maxxing out the volume on the HU and not being happy with it.

I'm going to point them at the front of the car before I try a new box. The whole point of pointing them at the rear is to avoid cancellation by the back wave (IMO), but since porting it will redirect the back wave, pointing it at the front should (in theory) give a noticable boost.

If that works, then I'll keep the box and wait on Jmac, whos building a better ported one (Cmon, don't be shy, Jmac, I took 30 minutes and an online calc to do my design. =p) then I'll do the same thing there.

I'm trying to get the highest output out of these subs before I get a bigger amp.