Why i am not getting chest kick? from a 1000w subwoofer (car audio)

I know that midbass is the hardest thing to fix in car audio , but even outside or in house my subs didnt hit, they where just loud af.
i had only 12" subs. Rockford t2 and alpine type x. The t2 was so nice in a small box
Why a 1k sub can't hit you in the chest and a crappy 15" 100w pa driver can?

is Sd my problem? Or is the vas and cms, mms. bl

Now i have an eclipse sw8122, 12" 140gr mms, high cms with 90L vas! 21bl, 500w rms on paper but can do a little more.
Is the same, so is not that. This eclipse is a very efficient sub, qts is 0.3 so the box recommendation is small. Is a nice sq sub

Or is just my taste in old school subs?



(I am buying old subs (only in good shape) because they are cheap, and i can sell them for the same price or more. New subs can be expensive, i am from europe, we dont have cheap good subs brands like in usa)
 
Possibly a gross difference in driver sensitivity and enclosure tuning. An example would be a car subwoofer having a sensitivity of 81dB @ 2.83V in free space at 50Hz (87 on infinite baffle), and a PA speaker being 90dB under the same free space conditions. I’m assuming the amplifier and settings haven’t been changed.
 
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A "crappy" PA driver can easily be 10dB louder/more efficient than a truly CRAPPY Car Audio type subwoofer.
Besides, I can trust a 100W RMS rating.
1000 (mystery) Watts? ... not that much.
There's your difference.

Real example: a Bass player customer asked me to help him with his car setup.
Not interested, not my area, but he INSISTED . He was also a repeat customer, he had bought tons of equipment for his multiple rehearsal studios, so I obliged ... once

I built a 600W RMS amplifier driving 2 x EVM15L Woofers in tuned cabinets, a 2 x 150W RMS EVM12L mids in closed cabs, passive crossed over to a pair Selenium bullet tweeters.
Felt triamping would be overkill

The system smashed all others at that competition and won.

Mind you, IF they had played a continuous 30Hz sinewave only and nothing else, they would have won, but for any kind of music program there was no comparison possible.

EV speakers are 96 to 101dB sensitivity, those clumsy Car Subwoofers are 82dB class.

Another difference is that I was not passing >100-120A currents (@12V) all the way from engine compartment to amp mounted in the trunk, some 6 Meter long wires since of course they can not go in a straight line, but mounted the 12V to +/-65V rails Inverter just by the battery.
12V run was two 10-15 cm or so thick wires; Inverter to amp "high voltage" run used normal 8mm cables, no need for arm thick ones.
Got pestered to build more for about a year 😄
 
Transfer function is killing the mid-bass in his car.
That's why SQ guys have sealed enclosures with a f3 of 40-50hz. TF brings up the 20-40hz to the natural box tuning levels.
1 of the great things about BP enclosures, you can add a hump to that 60-100hz rage so the sub sounds more "musical."
The Devastator line of enclosures on avsforum.com do that exact thing.

My personal car sub is an old school Coustic Power Logic HT-612 in a BP4 enclosure...interesting that is has HT in the model number. I run low pass filter at 120hz for more mid-bass. The 1st time my wife heard the system, she said couldn't believe how tight the bass is. It's the mid-bass level that is giving her that impression. I'm still running the factory 6x8 front door and rear deck speakers on an old school Hifonics 4 channel amp.

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Why a 1k sub can't hit you in the chest and a crappy 15" 100w pa driver can?
Chest/Thump = ~20-35 Hz
Boom/Punch = ~100-180 Hz
Whack = ~ 800-1500 Hz

PA drivers typically are very efficient and rolled off below 40-50 Hz and emphasize ('flat') the telephone BWs (250-2500 Hz analog, 300-3000 Hz digital), so at the very least, need to do a cab alignment/EQ your vehicle's sub to suit and long term increase the main channel's mid-bass output out to at least 500 Hz for kick drums.
 
As was said, the efficiency of the majority of those massive subwoofers with the ultra high power ratings is like 82Db/1 watt. That means it takes 10 times the power to get as loud as a woofer that is 92Db efficient. That means that the subwoofer at 1000 watts will only be as loud as the woofer that is 92Db on 100 watts! The pro sound woofer being more efficient will not go as low as the sub but if properly designed it can be amazing. The EV 15s that were mentioned are even more efficient and can shake the car apart! Find a person that knows what he is doing not just selling you expensive stuff because it’s cool or what everyone is using. Remember, most people have no idea what they are doing!
 
I know that midbass is the hardest thing to fix in car audio , but even outside or in house my subs didnt hit, they where just loud af.
i had only 12" subs. Rockford t2 and alpine type x. The t2 was so nice in a small box
Why a 1k sub can't hit you in the chest and a crappy 15" 100w pa driver can?

A crappy PA driver doesn't produce ANY sub bass... but it's a wonderful mid-bass instrument.
Kick is around 80-150hz... what drivers do you have covering that range in your car.. a pair of 80db 5.5" drivers?
 
JMFahey would you post the schema of your car amp with External inverter?
Oh, it was built over 10 years ago.
But nothing special, I am quite functionalist/minimalist so power amps were very standard/generic amps, nothing to write home about .
Build one of DIYA Apex Audio amps who has a similar design Philosophy and you´ll be close enough.
Guess the 500Watt one will be about same thing, use more or less output pairs as needed.

Only "special" feature was that I originally had used TL494??(quoting from memory) and it couldn´t drive properly the bunch of ST or Fairchild MTP3055 MosFets (I had a Ton of them for my 60W "Callejero"/"Street Guy" busker amplifiers) used as 12V switchers (1 every 8A primary current) , probably too much gate capacitance/gate charge in parallel ,so as a kludge I made a classic bipolar transistor multivibrator with buffered outputs to drive them, it worked flawlessly.

I did not need PWM because rail voltage was not regulated, which simplified everything.

The main feature of this system was not any special Electronics but using all high sensitivity high output PA rated speakers.

I look inside any modern Car Amp and see an overstuffed maze chock full of components, you look at mine and it looks "empty" 😉

Not even needing a Ton of 12V side capacitors, since actual Battery was 15 cm away.

In a nutshell, a very simple setup which did its job well.

Only concession to Car Audio customs was painting the DIY aluminum cabinet/chassis fiery "plane black box"/rescue orange and silk-screening a large Alligator image on it, also calling it Saurus or Saurion. 😉

Again: you can duplicate it with very little effort.