Opinions on the following 12" Subwoofers/ Amps

[inspector3711]

I'm an old school audiophile, but have mostly concentrated on home audio. Just got a new Kenwood head unit and Alpine amp with component speakers installed in my 2009 Civic. Very happy with the sound I'm getting but I want more bottom end.

I'm mostly a rocker but I do listen to a little Outcast and the like from time to time so the big boom isn't my main objective. I like good tight, powerful and accurate bass in my music. I like to attempt to recreate a live performance. In a car, not so easy. Anyway....

I'm on a limited budget. I was originally looking at doing a single 10 but then I got a nice ported enclosure (3/4" MDF) for a single 12 from the neighbor the other day. So with my revised plan I'm looking at the following 12 inch subwoofers:

Infinity Reference 1262W, JL Audio 12WXv2-4, or Polk Db 1240

I'm leaning towards the Jl at the moment.

For amps I've got the JL Audio JX250/1 which only puts out 175 watts RMS at 4 ohms, the Kenwood KAC-8105D which is CEA compliant and rated at 300 watts RMS at 4 ohms, the Rockford Fosgate Punch P300-1 at 150 watts RMS at 4 ohms, or the Rockford Fosgate R500-1D rated at 250 watts RMS at 4 ohms.

Those are in order of price, the Jl being the most affordable. Both Rockfords are at the top end for me right now and are the same price.

Opinions?

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[DoesDad 10+ year member]

So you're only wanting to run around 300 watts @ 2 ohm it looks like? How big is the box your neighbor gave you cubic ft. wise and do you have any idea what it's tuned to? Another good sub for SQ that doesn't need a huge enclosure is this: Dayton Audio RSS315HO-44 12" Reference HO DVC Subwoofer 295-467 Dayton is pretty affordable and great SQ. It would do great on 300-500 watts.

 

[inspector3711]

All of the subs I listed are 4 ohm models, so thats my dilemma... Are any of those amps capable of driving a 12" subwoofer to respectable levels?

I'm not sure about the volume of the enclosure he gave me but it's fairly compact, well constructed, wedge shaped, and has a plastic slot port...

 

[DoesDad 10+ year member]

All of the subs I listed are 4 ohm models, so thats my dilemma... Are any of those amps capable of driving a 12" subwoofer to respectable levels?
I'm not sure about the volume of the enclosure he gave me but it's fairly compact, well constructed, wedge shaped, and has a plastic slot port...

The Infinity Ref is a nice cheap sub and they have that in a dual voice coil 4 ohm as well as the single coil so you could run it at 2 getting more power from the amp. That would be a pretty cheap affordable sub that should work pretty well in a smaller ported box. I was going to do a budget build with 4 of those a while back just to see what kind of #'s I could put up for 250 bucks. Lol! And of the amps you mentioned I'd lean towards the Punch 300.1. The R or Prime Series from Rockford is garbage. The Punch is also underrated and will probably do around 400-450 at 2 ohm.

 

[inspector3711]

After looking at other enclosures I'm going to say it's right around 1 cubic foot.

 

[DoesDad 10+ year member]

That's pretty small... And I'm going to guess it's tuned in the 40's like most prefabs. Not good. How handy are you? You could always get some cheap plans and build your own or buy a decent prefab. Trust me when I say it's all about the enclosure. You don't want to stick a sub in a crappy, high tuned tiny POS. It'll make a 1000 dollar sub sound like garbage. Invest the time or money and do it right.

I'm leaving work right now and getting off here but I'm sure some other folks will chime in. Good luck! Maybe I'll see you around the site.

 

[inspector3711]

So you're talking about the Infinity 1262.. I'll look into it. I can get the single coil for 60 bucks.

 

[DoesDad 10+ year member]

Here's the Dual coil for 70 (cheaper on Amazon I think): Infinity Reference 1262W (REF1262W) 12" Dual 4 ohm Subwoofer

 

[inspector3711]

I can build an enclosure. I have all the equipment and build things for the house often. It was just a way to save a buck for now since it was a freebie. Also I was hoping to save some space.

What about the Audiopipe AP-10001D for an amp?

 

---------- Post added at 12:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 PM ----------

 

I found the 1262w for 66 with free shipping if I order an amp too.

 

[h2h0e]

ap 1000 is a great budget amp . its rated 1000 but it will give you around 750 rms at 1 ohm witch is good for the price.

if you want infinity with ap 1000 i suggest getting 2 dvc 4 ohm , and put these in sealed 1ft each dot

 

[inspector3711]

So I ended up ordering an Infinity 1262W dual voice coil sub. I doubt I'd want 750 watts RMS.

Anyway, I ordered a Soundstream Rubicon (400 watts @ 2 ohms) to go with it. At $162 (free shipping) for both hopefully I get some decent sound quality for the dollar out of them. The Rubicon has a very low distortion rating for a sub amp. It'll probably be fine for my purposes, although I originally planned on a class D for size and power consumption. The Rubicon is a class A/B.

An update on the volume of my enclosure, it's 1.8 so a little more than I thought. I would prefer a sealed enclosure so I may build one in the near future, I've always had a preference for acoustic suspension loudspeakers. The plastic port in this enclosure is actually horizontal above the speaker hole, somehow I got it in my head that it was on the side before. Apparently the neighbor has some type of port plug that came with the enclosure, he'll dig it out next time I stop by.

As I understand it, a sealed enclosure should be a little smaller so I guess in a pinch a guy could figure a way to reduce the enclosure volume.

One think I'm trying to figure out now is whether or not to order a grill. Thought about designing my own just to be different... Then I may just be able to fit up a Polk Db grill and have it work out. Not sure. Not much info online about grills that work with the Infinity subs. Would like to protect them.

Found out today the the store that installed my system won't honor their 2 year installation warranty if I install my own subwoofer. Guess I'll just hope nothing goes wrong. They wanted too much money for an install with my current budget.