XxAndreaxX
Member
Hi all, just joined this forum.
Wanted to share my experience of watts of bass.
All started when I bought my smart roadster coupe 2009.
It had a standard 2 way Hifi, a double-cone 5" woofer (maybe 35W) in the door and a tweeter on the front.
Normal CD player and tuner. no MP3 player. One day I decided, CD player *****, and put a home made aux cable for my mobile phone.
It was cool, but very soon I found out I needed more bass and general output.
so I decided tu buy a 2 way JBL system, 55W x woofer If I remember well.
Replaced only the woofer, the tweeter are still around there, because its tricky to replace.
Then I realized something very interesting. the sound was not different at all, slightly more bass and cleaner sound but that's it, despite the bigger magnet and the watt output.
I was very disappointed, and figured out, the smart roadster has very lightweight doors and plastics, so the box acoustic is totally absent. With too much bass, the only result was vibrating plastics and finally, distortion of the woofer itself.
After a while, I was fed up and I wanted a cheap solution for that.
I took my pc subwoofer, 20Watt, and connected it through AC-DC converter and double AUX connector directly on the mobile phone. Now the bass was finally there, no freakin comparision between on and off of the sub. I was happy, It did the trick with spending only 20€ of the converter. But there were 2 problems: the sub had to be placed on the passenger's floor, making it very unconfortable for passengers. and due the sub was directly connected to the Phone, the volume regulator had to be the phone itself, so if I had to quit the volume fast, that was impossible. but I was happy. I was looking at possibilites of a total rebuild of doors, to place a right enclosure for the woofers, but the work would have cost a crazy money, and the result wouldn't have been much different from what I had with the PC sub.
shortly after that, the radio burned out, maybe because my home made cable, so I bought a new radio with bluetooth and RCA output. nice improvement, finally I had unified volume control over the sub and wireless play. And right after that, the sub burned out too, so I bought another one, little smaller but same watt output.
after that, I had a long time the car configured like that, but less than a year after, the volume control got broke and I had to change the radio again.
there's where I did the big step.
I had a little bit of money left, and I decided to get rid of the pc sub, replacing it with a custom made sub that fitted perfectly giving back room for the poor passengers.
As I saw that the sub had 110W RMS i got hyped, wow, 5 times more power than the PC sub, it will literally shake the whole car, I won't even put the volume at more than 50%
I bought an one channel LPF 140W amp to drive that.
as soon as everything was connected I got my biggest diasppointment after the JBL woofers.
Yeah, the bass was there, but not nearly 5 times as strong as the pc sub. maybe 2 times.
The LPF was set at 128hz for default and I set it at 50hz because I love very soft bass. monster disappointment, distorsion kicked in quiet immediately, so I had to set it back to 128hz to have at least some decent bass.
I heard my friends 300W sub and it sounds amazing.
Finally, I ordered a sundown X8 woofer for the sub and hope I get rid of the distorsion.
With all this, i learned, The enclosure does big part of the job, and the watts, are never enought!!!
Wanted to share my experience of watts of bass.
All started when I bought my smart roadster coupe 2009.
It had a standard 2 way Hifi, a double-cone 5" woofer (maybe 35W) in the door and a tweeter on the front.
Normal CD player and tuner. no MP3 player. One day I decided, CD player *****, and put a home made aux cable for my mobile phone.
It was cool, but very soon I found out I needed more bass and general output.
so I decided tu buy a 2 way JBL system, 55W x woofer If I remember well.
Replaced only the woofer, the tweeter are still around there, because its tricky to replace.
Then I realized something very interesting. the sound was not different at all, slightly more bass and cleaner sound but that's it, despite the bigger magnet and the watt output.
I was very disappointed, and figured out, the smart roadster has very lightweight doors and plastics, so the box acoustic is totally absent. With too much bass, the only result was vibrating plastics and finally, distortion of the woofer itself.
After a while, I was fed up and I wanted a cheap solution for that.
I took my pc subwoofer, 20Watt, and connected it through AC-DC converter and double AUX connector directly on the mobile phone. Now the bass was finally there, no freakin comparision between on and off of the sub. I was happy, It did the trick with spending only 20€ of the converter. But there were 2 problems: the sub had to be placed on the passenger's floor, making it very unconfortable for passengers. and due the sub was directly connected to the Phone, the volume regulator had to be the phone itself, so if I had to quit the volume fast, that was impossible. but I was happy. I was looking at possibilites of a total rebuild of doors, to place a right enclosure for the woofers, but the work would have cost a crazy money, and the result wouldn't have been much different from what I had with the PC sub.
shortly after that, the radio burned out, maybe because my home made cable, so I bought a new radio with bluetooth and RCA output. nice improvement, finally I had unified volume control over the sub and wireless play. And right after that, the sub burned out too, so I bought another one, little smaller but same watt output.
after that, I had a long time the car configured like that, but less than a year after, the volume control got broke and I had to change the radio again.
there's where I did the big step.
I had a little bit of money left, and I decided to get rid of the pc sub, replacing it with a custom made sub that fitted perfectly giving back room for the poor passengers.
As I saw that the sub had 110W RMS i got hyped, wow, 5 times more power than the PC sub, it will literally shake the whole car, I won't even put the volume at more than 50%
I bought an one channel LPF 140W amp to drive that.
as soon as everything was connected I got my biggest diasppointment after the JBL woofers.
Yeah, the bass was there, but not nearly 5 times as strong as the pc sub. maybe 2 times.
The LPF was set at 128hz for default and I set it at 50hz because I love very soft bass. monster disappointment, distorsion kicked in quiet immediately, so I had to set it back to 128hz to have at least some decent bass.
I heard my friends 300W sub and it sounds amazing.
Finally, I ordered a sundown X8 woofer for the sub and hope I get rid of the distorsion.
With all this, i learned, The enclosure does big part of the job, and the watts, are never enought!!!
