Originally Posted by Sikk Nation

Considering for street use most subs don't come near their Xmax for most frequencies covered in the music spectrum. For SPL purposes, the port can be bigger than the cone area and thus becomes the more important factor. at 50hz Port tuning for example. the cone of the sibwoofer would have far less excursion playing a 50hz note than would the same sub in a sealed box. Since pressure/resistance from the ported enclosure becomes much higher near port tuning, excursion actually lessens. Now with this fact at 50hz even in a sealed box getting a but with 1.25" xmax takes alot of power. Now cut cone excursion down drastically and it takes gobs and gobs of power. Which is why in many SPL setups people can run over 5Kw to a single woofer without damaging it's suspension. (that's 6.7 horsepower). So to answer your thread title. Get the sub with the strongest motor, and lightest stiffest cone with the most voice coil cooling technology.

To answer your real question. 1 sub with twice the travel still just has 1 motor. 2 subs with half the travel have 2 motors. as the theory goes, doubling cone area given the same power is an automatic 3dB gain. Doubling Xmax just gives more potential per each driver. But tat those power levels heat and pwoer compression become issues really quickly. Doubling the power under normal theory gains you 3dB's. Once you get past a certain point and heat and the enclosures tunings etc.etc. become factors, sometimes doubling power can only gain you a 1/2dB.

In short, more subs=louder with less power.

Originally Posted by N130Gv2

lol, still .... aside from spelling everything else makes perfect sense.