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#1
Posted to rec.audio.car
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two 8 in subs or one 12
I am planning on building a subwoofer enclosure in my car, I was
wondering what would be better(louder, smaller, or using less watts to run), 2 8in subs or one 12 the subs I was thinking of were the polk MM2124 (12 ) or the polk db804dvc (8). Could anyone inform me? |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.car
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two 8 in subs or one 12
Two can 8s give you a lot more flexibility in box size/shape and location. I would reccomend looking into the 8" tang at 'www.partsexpress.com' (http://www.partsexpress.com). -- mastarecoil |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.car
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two 8 in subs or one 12
i'd take the 12. -- KU40 |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.car
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two 8 in subs or one 12
KU40 wrote: i'd take the 12. Me too.. |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.car
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two 8 in subs or one 12
On Dec 7, 5:28 pm, wrote:
I am planning on building a subwoofer enclosure in my car, I was wondering what would be better(louder, smaller, or using less watts to run), 2 8in subs or one 12 the subs I was thinking of were the polk MM2124 (12 ) or the polk db804dvc (8). Could anyone inform me? It's kind of a loaded question with no real easy answer based upon the amount of information you have supplied here. You really need to consider how much space you're willing to dedicate to your subwoofer enclosure...as a rule of thumb, the bigger the box is, the more efficient it will be as a system and thus will produce a higher SPL than will a smaller enclusure, given the same amount of power applied to both. It's a fundamental law of engineering--you don't get something for nothing; if you want a tiny box and lots of output and good LF extension, you're necessarily going to be dealing with an inefficient driver. The only real way to quantitatively compare two systems (and by "system" I mean loudspeaker(s) + enclosure) is to model it on a computer (or go hard-core and do all the math on paper if you like that kind of stuff). Some things to consider: SPL is directly proportional to the amount of air a speaker can move...the more air a driver can displace, the louder it is going to be (if you don't believe me, try watching what happens to your speakers when you turn up the volume on your head unit :-). Using 8th grade geometry, we know that an 8" circle has an area of about 50 sq.in. A 12" circle has an area of about 113 sq.in.--a little more than double. So, if *everything* else about the two drivers were the same (linear Xmax, enclosure type, system efficiency, frequency response, group delay response, etc., etc., etc.), the single 12" would be slightly louder simply because it can move (a little) more air than the dual 8" setup. But things aren't that cut-and-dried in the real world. You're typically not going to get the same kind of low-frequency extension from your 8" drivers as you would from a comparable 12" driver in the same enclosure type--but that's a whole physics lesson I'll not go into. Does that mean that you can't get an 8" driver to play as low or even lower than a 12" driver? No, but doing so requires making smart design tradeoffs with your enclosure. Going with a single 12" driver is also probably going to be a little cheaper than going with a pair of *comparable* 8" drivers. On the other hand, going with a pair of smaller drivers also have the potential to last longer since the power is distributed between two physical drivers. Assuming that your two drivers each get half the power of your single driver, that means less wear-and-tear on your subs' suspension and also less distortion caused by driver non-linearities (like when you push windings out of the magnetic gap when driving the sub too hard). There's something to be said for having a lot of drivers doing a little work vs. a couple drivers being overworked. :-) So, it all falls back to the basic rule of audio system design--trust your ears. There are too many points of trade-off, and since we don't know what's really *really* important to you and what's going to make you happy with the system, you have to do your own footwork...er....earwork. After all, nobody on this newsgroup is going to listen to your system as much as you, and none of us are going to have to deal with a bad decision in terms of the disappointment and loss of money it will cause. Go to your local stereo shop and see if you can hear the subs you're looking for in enclosures that'll fit in your vehicle. If you can get them to take the box out to your car so you can "test drive" (in the parking lot, of course) the subs yourself, that'd be icing on the cake. -dan |
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