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#1
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MTX 502 & Infinity Perfect 12.1 Need Help
Hi,
I'm quite misearable tonight. I had a great sounding Titanic 1200 sub and 3 cu. ft box that sounded great. I unfortunately had no room in my Pathfinder so I upgraded to a 12.1 Infinity in a 1 cu. ft. box. The box is braced, has a double walled baffle and is sealed tight. When I push on the cone it doesn't want to go in to easy. Anyway, I've tried every setting combination on my MTX amp and the BASS is simply muddy and boomy compared to my old Titanic setup. I'm wondering if my amp is too weak. I have to EQ the BASS boost on the amp so that it's audible and I believe this may be causing the boomy, muddy bass. If I EQ the BASS boost down the amp becomes inaudible. I tried turing down my door speaker amp and I the sub is louder but not any cleaner. I'm thinking of buying a more powerful amp (the thunder is rated at 500 watts at 14.4v and 360 watts at 12v). It should be plenty powerful. My Titanic was much cleaner and hit harder. Any advice? I played with placement too. The curious thing is that the Infinity subs have gotten excellent reviews. I'm just wondering if this is par for the course with small enclosures? |
#2
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Hi,
I'm quite misearable tonight. I had a great sounding Titanic 1200 sub and 3 cu. ft box that sounded great. I unfortunately had no room in my Pathfinder so I upgraded to a 12.1 Infinity in a 1 cu. ft. box. The box is braced, has a double walled baffle and is sealed tight. When I push on the cone it doesn't want to go in to easy. Anyway, I've tried every setting combination on my MTX amp and the BASS is simply muddy and boomy compared to my old Titanic setup. I'm wondering if my amp is too weak. I have to EQ the BASS boost on the amp so that it's audible and I believe this may be causing the boomy, muddy bass. If I EQ the BASS boost down the amp becomes inaudible. I tried turing down my door speaker amp and I the sub is louder but not any cleaner. I'm thinking of buying a more powerful amp (the thunder is rated at 500 watts at 14.4v and 360 watts at 12v). It should be plenty powerful. My Titanic was much cleaner and hit harder. Any advice? I played with placement too. The curious thing is that the Infinity subs have gotten excellent reviews. I'm just wondering if this is par for the course with small enclosures? Well, the sub and box are probably less sensitive than the old setup. A larger amp may be helpful, but then again it may just be a gain issue. Does it sound to you like the amp is distorting when you've got the EQ up? |
#3
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When I turn the EQ up, on the amp, the sub gets boomy. If I turn it
down the sub can't really be heard. MTX has a built in bass boost of 18db. I've never been a fan of bass boost because of the distortion it adds. You're right how the sensitivity with this new driver. I also took the sub into my house. I have a 15" passive subwoofer, in my home, powered by a 200 watt B&K amp. Its one of the cleanest sounding subs I've heard and it is power hungry too. I built it to look like furniture and went to great pains to double wall the everything, brace it, etc. The driver, a hand made Lambda is rated at 88 dbs at 2.83. The Infinity is rated at 96dbs. Ha! On to my test. I turned off my speaker amp so I could hear the subs. I had to turn the voume up considerable to hear the Infinity sub when I switched the speak wires over from my home sub. The Infinity driver sounded tight and defined and not muddy like my Pathfinder. Two things bother me here; why are the sensitivity rating of the Infinity driver so inflated. And why does my home amp rated at 200 watts play the sub louder then a 500 watt bridged MTX amp. My choices are to buy a New Titanic sub driver that is made for a 1 cu. ft enclosure or updgrade my amp to 900 watts. I still have one issue. I've read over 50 reviews on this sub and I don't recall anyone complaining that the sub needed so much juice. |
#4
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When I turn the EQ up, on the amp, the sub gets boomy. If I turn it
down the sub can't really be heard. MTX has a built in bass boost of 18db. I've never been a fan of bass boost because of the distortion it adds. Most bass boosts these days don't generate distortion, actually. I usually don't use it because it sometimes adds unwanted peaks. But it should remain distortion free. In the meantime, if the signal level is your problem, you won't hurt anything by using it. You're right how the sensitivity with this new driver. I also took the sub into my house. I have a 15" passive subwoofer, in my home, powered by a 200 watt B&K amp. Its one of the cleanest sounding subs I've heard and it is power hungry too. I built it to look like furniture and went to great pains to double wall the everything, brace it, etc. The driver, a hand made Lambda is rated at 88 dbs at 2.83. The Infinity is rated at 96dbs. Ha! See? That was one of my points before. Infinity bases their sensitivity measurements for this driver *in the car*. By doing so, they artificially inflate the numbers, because most other manufacturers aren't doing this. In the end, sensitivity specs tend not to give us too much information because of the restricted values they use. On to my test. I turned off my speaker amp so I could hear the subs. I had to turn the voume up considerable to hear the Infinity sub when I switched the speak wires over from my home sub. The Infinity driver sounded tight and defined and not muddy like my Pathfinder. Two things bother me here; why are the sensitivity rating of the Infinity driver so inflated. And why does my home amp rated at 200 watts play the sub louder then a 500 watt bridged MTX amp. Different listening environment could be a factor. Also, it's quite possible that your home amp actually delivers more power than the MTX, despite the disparity in the ratings. Also, is the 200 watt rating measured into the same impedance? My choices are to buy a New Titanic sub driver that is made for a 1 cu. ft enclosure or updgrade my amp to 900 watts. I still have one issue. I've read over 50 reviews on this sub and I don't recall anyone complaining that the sub needed so much juice. Sub setups are often *very* enclosure-dependent. In other words, more often than not, the enclosure will make more of a difference on the sound than the sub itself. In fact, efficiency (not the same thing as sensitivity, but relevant nonetheless) is closely related to enclosure size. So it's not surprising that your old 3 cu ft sub played louder. The "muddy" part could be a number of different things. Oftentimes, a sub will sound "muddy" because the midbass drivers aren't keeping up their end of the bargain. But since you left that unchanged, it could just be that the freq response of the new sub/encl setup is not what it should be. Ways to fix this a 0) switch the phase of the sub! - it's common for the response to improve when the sub's phase is changed, even if it's "out of phase" with the rest of the system. 1) change the volume of the enclosure - since you can't make the enclosure bigger (unless you want to put that driver in your old 3 cu ft enclosure just to see what the difference is!), you can make it smaller by just filling it with lumber. Put a few pieces of spare MDF in there to take up some volume, and see what the difference is going with a smaller box. It won't play louder, but it should change the freq resp enough to help diagnose what the problem may be. 2) play with aiming some more - since you seemed to like how the Infinity sounded in the house, maybe moving the box around might help diagnose things. 3) still got that Titanic? try the mtx amp on it. 4) the gain setting still may be an issue. For whatever reason, you may not be reaching max output on the mtx amp if you can't get the signal level high enough. This is not uncommon, actually. Make sure that the processors in the head unit aren't screwy, or anything like that. I'm assuming, of course, that the sub's coils are wired appropriately - you know, if it's a DVC. |
#5
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In article .com,
"Sub_Lover" wrote: When I turn the EQ up, on the amp, the sub gets boomy. If I turn it down the sub can't really be heard. MTX has a built in bass boost of 18db. I've never been a fan of bass boost because of the distortion it adds. Thats pretty much what may happen. Cutting as opposed to boosting is usually a more efficient use of amplifier power. Unless of course one has measured the space and has access to parametric/paragraphic hardware. You're right how the sensitivity with this new driver. I also took the sub into my house. I have a 15" passive subwoofer, in my home, powered by a 200 watt B&K amp. Its one of the cleanest sounding subs I've heard and it is power hungry too. I built it to look like furniture and went to great pains to double wall the everything, brace it, etc. The driver, a hand made Lambda is rated at 88 dbs at 2.83. The Infinity is rated at 96dbs. Ha! On to my test. I turned off my speaker amp so I could hear the subs. I had to turn the voume up considerable to hear the Infinity sub when I switched the speak wires over from my home sub. Keep in mind as well, your Lambda driver is bigger and therefore displaces more air. And as Mr. MZ has mentioned, more sensitive because of the larger box. Not to mention most likely being more sensitive overall in free air. The Infinity driver sounded tight and defined and not muddy like my Pathfinder. Two things bother me here; why are the sensitivity rating of the Infinity driver so inflated. Looks better on paper that way. And why does my home amp rated at 200 watts play the sub louder then a 500 watt bridged MTX amp. A couple of factors that come to mind: The wattage ratings game, and room/cabin gains/placement. There are for sure more factors. My choices are to buy a New Titanic sub driver that is made for a 1 cu. ft enclosure or updgrade my amp to 900 watts. My vote is for the cheapest option, but that's coming from a frugalphile's point of view. I still have one issue. I've read over 50 reviews on this sub and I don't recall anyone complaining that the sub needed so much juice. Exposure is one's limitation. Personally, its hard for me to trust random reviews based on the fact that nobody knows what the reviewer has experience with. Or if any at all. hth, -- Cyrus *coughcasaucedoprodigynetcough* |
#6
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Hi,
Thanks for all the ideas. Unfortuantely I sold the Titanic - it would have been fun to try that driver in these little boxes and to try the Infinity in the larger enclosure. There is one factor I forgot. With my old setup I had a 88 watt Kenwood amp which I upgrade to a Xenon 200 watt per channel amp when I changed to the Infinity sub. I tried turning the gain way down on my Xenon amp, that powers the door speakers, and removed all the bass boost from the MTX amp. This seems to have fixed the problem. My other amp was too powerful for the sub. Now the sub sounds good. But the EQ or bass boost was definitely making the sub sound boomy. It plays clean and hits hard now. Unfortuantely, my bass control stopped working on the MTX amp so I'll put a call into MTX on Monday. Lots of times there are settings that don't make it into the manual. I found this out fast on my Kenwood deck. There is no instructions for turning the sub on or off and for several other features. |
#7
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"Sub_Lover" wrote in message oups.com... When I turn the EQ up, on the amp, the sub gets boomy. If I turn it down the sub can't really be heard. MTX has a built in bass boost of 18db. I've never been a fan of bass boost because of the distortion it adds. You're right how the sensitivity with this new driver. I also took the sub into my house. I have a 15" passive subwoofer, in my home, powered by a 200 watt B&K amp. Its one of the cleanest sounding subs I've heard and it is power hungry too. I built it to look like furniture and went to great pains to double wall the everything, brace it, etc. The driver, a hand made Lambda is rated at 88 dbs at 2.83. The Infinity is rated at 96dbs. Ha! On to my test. I turned off my speaker amp so I could hear the subs. I had to turn the voume up considerable to hear the Infinity sub when I switched the speak wires over from my home sub. The Infinity driver sounded tight and defined and not muddy like my Pathfinder. Two things bother me here; why are the sensitivity rating of the Infinity driver so inflated. And why does my home amp rated at 200 watts play the sub louder then a 500 watt bridged MTX amp. My choices are to buy a New Titanic sub driver that is made for a 1 cu. ft enclosure or updgrade my amp to 900 watts. I still have one issue. I've read over 50 reviews on this sub and I don't recall anyone complaining that the sub needed so much juice. Smaller boxes have a higher resonant frequency, the sub SYSTEM will be more efficient here and above. Try lowering your crossover frequency and bumping up the amplifier gain to get rid of this resonance instead of invoking a bass boost. Depending on the Q of the bass boost circuitry you may be exciting the driver with the boost where you don't want to. I have found this typical of smallish boxes. You may need more power. Below the resonance of a closed box in free air the response rolls off predictably at 12dB an octave. Transfer function will make up for this but it will also amplify the frequencies where the SYSTEM is more efficient, the degree depends on the internal volume of your vehicle. I have found that in most cases tinkering with the crossover freq can smooth things out well. Unfortunately going from a big box to a small is far from plug-n-play. The system will have to be re-tuned. Good luck!!! Chad |
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