I stopped in the local audio shop to listen to a bandpass box, awsome sound,long, low, smooth... and loud! but NO punch! This box had a 10in. 400 w DVC sub that I was told will only handle 200w. HUH ? Help this newbie understand why a 400w sub in a bandpass box will only handle 1/2 rated power. Salesman sugested maybe a pair o' sealed 12's would be a good compromise between a bandpass sound and punch of subs. Any opnions?

 

The amount of power it will handle is dependent on the sub AND the box together.

A subwoofer has 2 limits. Thermal and mechanical.

Thermal is self explaning. It gets to hot and DIES.

Now for mechanical. The bigger the box and if ported, the lower the tunning, the less power it'll handle. Why? Because the air inside the box acts as a "spring". If there is not enough spring it reaches it's mechannical limits.

Not I'm not sure what the case was with the subwoofer you used but it could have been what I just explaned to you.

 

Happy Holiday's to all! I am back at work now and finally got the brackets made and the 6x9 boxes mounted. And have a small issue with sound staging! It seems that every disk [and/or song] has a different sound image so the staging has to tweeked again and again! Is this common? Or more to do with the placement of speakers?

 

Well I didn't get any input on the last question I posted but resolved the issue myself. Turned down the level on the rears so they don't drown out the subs.[8's can thump, sorta]. Then got some money from WSIB and am now the proud owner of a Fusion fp-1002 2 channel Power Plant amp [ www.fusioncaraudio.com ]and am waiting for a Image Dymamics 12" sub to arrive and be installed in the ported box built for it. Also got a Viper alarm installed to keep the low-lifes out [at least the lowest of the lows]. Nothing man made is perfect. So the Jenson will be running the 5 1/2's outa the front channel, the 6x9's outa the rear channel both set to high pass and the fusion set to low pass at around 45 hz.

 

Nice job on the new stuff [img]smile.gif[/img] Image dynamics is good stuff and Fusion seems to be a very good company too. Sounds like you spend all your time tweaking your system but it also sounds like you are spiralling out of control. My advice would be to slow down on buying things a bit and just enjoy what you have once you settle on something you like, otherwise you will waste about $3,700 (like me).

 

Thanks Nova. What did you do that wasted $3,700? Money is spent and life partner has declared this house a "No Car Audio Talk Zone". Even though I offered to put the little amp & 8's in her car,I got THE LOOK! sigh... Oh well. Yah back to tweaking sound, fixing up box to take 2 full sized amps, running cables, ect ect ect. A guy gota do something when stuck on steady nights and job takes 17 min. every 2-3hrs. It's a tough job but someone gota do it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

 

Well I got the Fusion amp wired [bridged] w/twin 16 ga to the ID 12 sub, 4 ga power & ground. Made new brackets to hold the Jenson, installed it and powered up the sys and, Puff the majic smoke appeared out of it !?!?! Is it possible to warp the alum heat sink and ground out a final drive I.C. ?? I can't think of any thing else that might have caused it to fail. Either that or it committed sucide rather than be in the box with a bigger amp. So it's in the shop for damage assement. Suffering from sever tunes withdrawl, I picked up an Clarion APA4202 4/3/2 channel amp to run rest of the sys. This time I checked all wiring for proper volts and restance BEFORE powering up and viola sweet blessed music. The old 8's thumped but the new 12 POUNDS. "That's what I'm talking bout!" to quote or mis-quote the movie line. Now I'm waiting for metal fab shop to finish the lid for the box in back bumper to install batterys 3 & 4 there. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ February 19, 2004, 08:28 AM: Message edited by: Drysuit John ]

 

I thought it was time to up-date this post. I added 2 Alpine 4" 2 ways to the front stage. I got some 1/2" mdf cut, laminated and formed boxes, took off the sun visors and bolted them to the top of the windshield body stifferer. That brought the front stage up outa the ankle area. I cross wired the speaker install to give both seats a mirrored sound image, but now need some way to balance the sound output cause they are overpowering the 5 1/2s [that are now mounted in 1/2 mdf spacer rings ] in the doors . Gota tweek the gains again cause the amp isn't susposed to be wired @ 2 ohms.

 

I found an older set of house speakers w/ tweeter control reostats[sp]and am about to wire them inline w/ the 4". Local shop sold me 200 mf caps to put inline to speakers. About how much power will they cut from the speakers? [img]graemlins/dunno.gif[/img] Any way to calculate that?