oaken1
Stone Cold
So, I am currently in the design phase of building a subwoofer box for my Tahoe. I opted to go with 2 Pioneer 10 inch subs. As a crazy afterthought, I decided to put the 10's in a ported enclosure. Then, inside the box, I am adding an Alpine 8" sub in a sealed bazooka tube.
The 10's are 1200 watts peak. The 8 is 900 watts peak. The reason for the disparity is because my personal experience has shown me that 8's perform at their best when they are being pushed. Whereas 10's perform better when they are not driven as hard... so the theory is, while at a certain volume...the 10's may be performing at 40 percent capacity while the 8 is performing at 60 percent capacity. This should help the box hit a broader spectrum of deep notes throughout the musical range.
The conundrum however comes in designing the right sized box to get the most out of the system without getting distortion. Some like distorted bass..I am not such a person.
Fellas, I spent over 6 hours last night calculating square feet, square inches, tube displacement...port tuning.....
and every time I would get a calculation done I would have to go back and re do all the others.
Because the bazooka tube takes up more square inches on the outside than it has on the inside...and the tuning ports take up more space tuned to 40hz than they do when tuned to 35hz...
then when you think you are done you have to reduce airspace by the square inches of the support braces you put in to make the box strong...then reduce it again to make up for the sound dampening media you are adding to keep the vibrations from one speaker from affecting the others.
each time you have to reduce space for one of these add ons...you have to recalculate the box dimensions to get back to your required 1.25 cubic feet of airspace per subwoofer.
not to mention, the chassis of the speaker itself takes up space so you have to deduct that from the internal space of the box as well.
It was an adventure..and I have come to the conclusion that this attention to detail is why guys over 55 just dont build their own subwoofer boxes... when I was 25 I just built a box and slammed in some subs and called it done...if it didnt sound good I just blamed it on the cheap speakers, lol.
I bought Pioneer 10's and an Alpine R series 8..so if it sounds like crap it is all my fault, lol..no excuses this time around.
The 10's are 1200 watts peak. The 8 is 900 watts peak. The reason for the disparity is because my personal experience has shown me that 8's perform at their best when they are being pushed. Whereas 10's perform better when they are not driven as hard... so the theory is, while at a certain volume...the 10's may be performing at 40 percent capacity while the 8 is performing at 60 percent capacity. This should help the box hit a broader spectrum of deep notes throughout the musical range.
The conundrum however comes in designing the right sized box to get the most out of the system without getting distortion. Some like distorted bass..I am not such a person.
Fellas, I spent over 6 hours last night calculating square feet, square inches, tube displacement...port tuning.....
and every time I would get a calculation done I would have to go back and re do all the others.
Because the bazooka tube takes up more square inches on the outside than it has on the inside...and the tuning ports take up more space tuned to 40hz than they do when tuned to 35hz...
then when you think you are done you have to reduce airspace by the square inches of the support braces you put in to make the box strong...then reduce it again to make up for the sound dampening media you are adding to keep the vibrations from one speaker from affecting the others.
each time you have to reduce space for one of these add ons...you have to recalculate the box dimensions to get back to your required 1.25 cubic feet of airspace per subwoofer.
not to mention, the chassis of the speaker itself takes up space so you have to deduct that from the internal space of the box as well.
It was an adventure..and I have come to the conclusion that this attention to detail is why guys over 55 just dont build their own subwoofer boxes... when I was 25 I just built a box and slammed in some subs and called it done...if it didnt sound good I just blamed it on the cheap speakers, lol.
I bought Pioneer 10's and an Alpine R series 8..so if it sounds like crap it is all my fault, lol..no excuses this time around.
Stuffing the box can make up for some the lots volume too. Just stuff it with a good poly-fill. There's actually walmart bed pillows that work well for it and they're cheap.
