Sub-woofer placement

Single RE Rex 8 in a custom sealed .7 cube enclosure between the rear 'seats'. Facing passenger side. My rear seats won't flip down anymore, but I don't use them anyway. I'd have preferred to fire this up or down, but this works well. It also allowed me to do this without any permanent modification...which was a requirement.



I personally try to never fire a sub forward or anywhere near on-axis. Up in a vehicle is always my first choice.

 

I have a very small 8" sub w/ integrated amp under my driver's seat (fires up). Works great to help fill in the low end.

 

I dig the enclosure. Your work? Did ya do a build thread on it by any chance? Yer givin' me ideas. Either way, looks very nice.

Err, and what's a sealed port?

 

The enclosure is from Subthump.com. It was approx $130.00 and was covered with grey carpet from factory. The sealed aspect is the type. It does not use a port, so the box is enclosed. I like it because it sounds great and works as a support for my panels for the dogs platform.

 

Man, that's a nice price for a carpeted, finished, purpose-built enclosure. Love the platform too. Way cool!

 

I'll post mine up. Have this on it's own thread, but since he asked. Two Sundown 8's sealed with Audison Amp. Fit-up is tight in the 2016's. The vent in the rear wall get in the way of going all the way up.

 

Clean rig! Is that the SA8? Care to offer your opinion on it? I'm torn between a single SA8, SD10 and E8 for my next enclosure.

 

No its the SD 8. Opinion is hands down the best sub I have ever owned. I was actually a bit surprised. Running the pair with the Audison Voce amp. Very clean 1000W which is quite a bit over their RMS rating (300 WRMS). I talked with Sundown and got a response back saying not an issue to push them over RMS. When we tuned it and set the gains the amp is actually pushing more like 1.2K. Subs literally don't care. Been running them for about three months, pushing them hard, and not a single issue. So for less than $400 for the pair they would be pretty hard to beat.

 

Aha! The surround fooled me. I forget the inverted surround is a new thing.

That's a solid endorsement I'd say. Thanks for the review. Yeah, I've run across a few articles where Jacob (of Sundown) mentions RMS power is very conservative. You clamping for your numbers?

 

This is not entirely accurrate because you are forgetting about wave maturity. Just to keep the math simple IE: a 10" sub needs to be 10ft from your ear for you to hear a matured sound wave. This is why a lot of cars and trucks sound better when you stand out by the front bumper. So, with the sub box facing forward in the back seat the sub is only 3 feet from your head and you are not hearing the mature wave, simply turning the box does in fact increase sound quality and increase the distance. Sound quality is far more important than air impact on your body.

 

There are many things to consider in this argument. Even flow is pretty much correct. Bigger air space or smaller airspace in a car has nothing to do with how Zac is interpreting it. The main place airspace plays a roll is box internal volume. Look at the top Db drag scores, those cars internal air space is so so small but they also Burp relatively high freq. Its about less air to compress. Now wavelength of a sine wave is technically what we are going to discuss here. The lower the freq the longer the distance has to be from the sub to the dash to reach "maturity" The sub size or Sd has absolutely nothing to do with it wavelength and maturity. For Big demo setups they get much louder when you open the door.... but mainly on LOWER notes for that reason that lower notes need distance to mature.

Sub box internal air space works similar : The smaller the space the higher the peak freq of that driver will be or FS. For example in sealed boxes, the upper limit range of box size will allow for increased lower freq extension but may suffer a power handling loss.

 

Not sure how he got the power numbers. After the install it gets over my head as far as tuning etc. I hung around for a little while, but he had the thing for about 10 hours when he did the tuning. I know he had it on an O-scope and an RTA, but I am not really sure where the power numbers come from. I too am a bit surprised to be offering up such a solid endorsement. I had set aside about $1,500 for subs, and was looking at either the Morel Ultimo 8 or the Mille 2500 10". Both high end SQ subs that could take the power. When I saw the spec's on these, and all the positive reviews I gave them a call, and he actually answered the phone. After talking to him he convinced me to give them a shot, and for a grand total of $339 for the pair I was just blown away. Especially on the enclosure size. They advertise built for small enclosures. Mine is 0.18 ft^3 per sub. In the Tacoma about all I could get without some major mods.

 

Yes wave maturity is a huge part in the sound of your system. Of course you have to have the proper air space IN the box as well as OUTSIDE the box to get the proper response/sound out of your speaker. I'm not sure how turning the box around would increase the distance... i would like to get some clarification on that if you would. I only say that because if the box is behind the seat and you simply turn it around... your getting a 6-8 inch difference in distance. I'm not sure how that helps, especially when you say you have to be so far from the speaker to hear the mature waves. But hey i will admit when i'm wrong and always willing to learn something new.

As far as having the box and sub facing a wall.... I'm not sure how good that is for your sub. Wouldnt that mean that your sub would be muffled by its own box a bit and the speaker itself maybe hitting the wall and damaging the cone? Would that cause more stress on the speaker and/or amp limiting the movement? Also would that cause more rattle on the back panel with the sub firing right into it?

One question i do have is would it be beneficial to have a ported box if you have a sub but can not build a box that has enough air space and fit behind the seats?

Thanks

 

TO be honest, figuratively speaking in a tacoma your really not going to notice much or any of a difference due to various limitations. Facing the subs forward, up, backwards( not sure how ur gonna do that) won't make any difference at all. In my truck when i was SS NW Sub and port up was definitely the loudest BUT it wrecked havoc on my roof. I switched it forward and i was only about .8db less on burps. Music had a negligible difference. On either setup if i opened the passenger door it gained substantial decibels.

You can lower your Truck and sound systems resonant or peak frequency with many different changes. I.e a relationship between box size, port, sub FS, Stiffening your truck or some deadener will help Especially on the roof and floor. I was able to drop my Trucks peak freq from 55hz down to 48hz by simply adding a ton of deadener to the roof and back wall.

now, within the limits of a regular setup in a tacoma there is absolutely nothing you can do to yield any result worth mentioning in this thread or warranting anyone to worry about

 

so i take it your sub box is not sitting behind the back seats of a double cab...?

 

For a SS nw box ( for db drag ) not a chance it was 9CF

For behind the seat there are some minor mods one can do to get to around 2cf net or tad bit more.
Subs wil always be forward unless some people side fire them but imo thats a waste of space.

The biggest question is ported or sealed. If ported you can play with tuning but then thats about it

 

haha. 9cf? that is a huge box!! Do you think it would benefit any by having a ported box behind the seats?

Also right now i have a l5 solo baric that is in a custom box that does not have enough air space. Do you think it would benefit me to port the box?

 

ported needs bigger boxes than sealed so it would depend what sub it is, size and what the volume requirements are.
THE ABSOLUTE MAX i think you can get ported is around 2CF net with a side firing port with minor mods

 

do you know if that box fits in the 2016 access cabs?