Hey guys.. I'm thinking of getting a jl 10w3v3 subwoofer and a sufficient amp to power it.. The question is do I put it in a ported box in the trunk or do I fabricate a sealed box into the rear deck and replace the stock woofer...
Which setup will give me more umph... And I only want one sub...

 

Avoid the rear deck. Its a rattle trap

 

Even with sound deadening?

 

that depends.

and you should really research on what each kind of box does.
a ported box will give you more umph but at a cost.
a sealed box can sound just like a ported box

and i would also avoid the rear deck area, you wont be able to seal it correctly

 

I have been debating whether or not it can be.... There's enough holes in it to access just about everywhere but it's still difficult to work with. I would say it could be done with enough thought, deadening and reinforcement, but it may get frustrating trying to work with. I made some quasi enclosures out of it for the rear speakers with just deadening but probably wouldn't be sufficient for the pressure of a subwoofer a box in the trunk would be way easier. I may give it a try sometime. Would be easier to warm up the subs' surround in frigid temperatures. The easier thing is to put a box in the trunk.

 

the third gen tl also is really good at infinite baffle set ups

 

Yeah, if I don't connect the sub to the rear deck, then I'm going to go ported for the umph... I didn't know if making a sealed box connected to the rear deck would give me more umph since the sub would be directly in the cabin..
I read in another post about somebody putting a custom fabricated box connected to the rear deck with a jl 10w3v3 but I never saw how he did it...
I just want to know which will give me more umph
But...I might lean towards a ported box to avoid too much rattle..

 

I want to know which sounds better.. As in, i like to feel bass.. And I don't just want loudness... As a newcomer to subwoofers, I'm not sure what "good bass" sounds like.. So that's why I'm asking you guys!

.. And I just made my decision while writing this reply... I'm probably going to just get a nice 12in ported sub and put it in the trunk.. Lol

 

I think that is a good choice. I have a 10" in a sealed box in the back corner on drivers' side and I am happy with bass and feel. I like bass too.

I am planning though to convert to an infinite baffle setup in the near future. As justinspace mentioned, lots of people like this car with an infinite baffle sub system. Nothing wrong with my sealed box but an infinite baffle setup will allow for much higher (i.e. crazy) output capabilities using larger woofers and less power (for the same output) while also saving space.

Oh yeah, make sure to add some deadener to the rear shelf to stop rattles, one of the worst spots is between the rear window and the rear deck cover panel. Simply adding a bit of foam or something soft will get rid of it. I just have a tiny piece of black weather stripping right in the middle (cannot be seen from the outside).

In case you are curious, I was considering two of the JBL GTO1514d. Any questions about infinite baffle and "I hate cars" knows lots about it and also likes to discuss/help.

 

Just curious but have you thought about the mounting location for your amp? I ask because Ive never found a good spot in these cars without building an amp rack. Usually clients just have me mount it to the sub box.

 

There is a reason the Acura engineers choose to not allow the rear seat to fold down.
Infinite Baffle

 

The rear deck has never had a successful rattle free install. I wouldn't even consider it unless you're going for stock-ish output.

I will never use a box in a car that allows infinite baffle use. Infinite baffle gives a considerable efficiency advantage over sealed at low frequencies. It will play lower with more authority and less power. It will usually give a flatter response. It will sound "quicker", "tighter", less boomy, and it will dig deep effortlessly. The larger the box, the tighter and deeper the bass. It's contrary to what most people think and IB is a VERY large sealed box.

If I had to use a box, it would be ported or bandpass and sealed would only be used if I absolutely had no room for ported. Ported will give a minimum of a 3 db gain over sealed. 3db is the equivalent to doubling your power or adding another sub in a sealed setup. It's free output, I highly suggest taking advantage of it. Depending on the tuning frequency, box size, and a couple of minor factors, ported can give more than 3db, upwards of 6db gain. 6db is the equivalent of adding another sealed sub plus doubling the power. You can see where ported will actually save you money because you can go with fewer subs and/or a smaller amp.

Ported when designed properly and tuned low will have lower distortion than sealed. It will almost always sound better than sealed too. Excursion is reduced in a ported setup near tuning frequency. Less excursion means less distortion. Plus, while ported is more efficient than sealed, you can usually feed a ported setup more power. Where sealed might hit it's mechanical limits before it's thermal limits, due to the reduction of excursion near tuning frequency, you can push the sub to it's thermal limits without worrying about mechanically damaging it from over excursion.

My favorite setup that I've personally used in my TL with the same subs, same amp, etc, other than IB was bandpass. I had it ported though the armrest so rattles from the trunk and deck were a thing of the past. It had a ton of gain, it was amazingly efficient. I could look into the port while it was cranked up very loud and the subs would only have a few mm of excursion. It was very musical, sounded very good. However, this is the hardest semi-commonly used in car audio enclosure to get right. It requires modeling and and accurately built enclosure.

If you must go sealed, go larger than recommended. It will give you all of the gains of IB, just not as much of the gains.

IB acts like a large sealed setup so if you have two identical subs, one sealed and one IB, the output potential is the same. However, IB will require less power to get to it's potential because there's no air spring to kill efficiency. The air spring of a sealed box also reduces damping or cone control which is opposite of what most think and that's why IB gives that tight, quick sounding bass and goes low enough that I can't hear it but it rattles the dishes inside the house and you can feel the energy around you. I've got a pair of 15s with huge cone area and huge excursion potential and this is the first system where I can play 20hz with full power and not come close to hurting the subs. Since there's no box, my pair of 15s takes up little more space than a single 10" ported sub does and due to the displacement, efficiency rivals or surpasses a 10" ported setup while going much deeper and with a flatter response and much, much louder. Think of IB as the ultimate sealed setup. It's sealed as in it relies on displacement for output but it has none of the drawbacks of sealed because you're able to use a pair of large subs where most stay away from a setup that will use the entire trunk.

If you do ported, tune it around 30-32hz. It will be quick and tight and dig deep while getting plenty loud. A higher tune will get you more output at the same power but it will sound more sloppy and not want to dig as deep. Also, if you like the JL W3 series, why not go with the 12" or 13.5"? It's more efficient so it will require less power for the same output and it has more favorable T/S parameters to get low and loud while not losing anything in the upper bass range. When it comes to subs, bigger is better. With all else being equal, bigger will give less distortion at the same output and will usually have a lower Fs and dig deeper with less power and with less excursion required. It's free additional output except for the initial purchase. If you're worried about a larger sub sounding "slow", that's a myth. Size has absolutely no effect on how quick or slow it sounds and enclosure has everything to do with it. You should hear how quick and precise my pair of 15" (they're actually 16") subs sound because they're not in an enclosure other than the trunk itself.

Something to think about, the 13.5" version has almost exactly twice the cone area of the 10" version and almost 3db more efficiency meaning the 10" version will need almost twice the power for the same output of the 13.5". Another way to think about it is the 10" will need double the excursion for the same output so you can imagine what that does for distortion both from having twice as much excursion and twice as much power.

The 12" is still 2db more efficient which will require significantly less power than the 10" for the same output and it has 1.5x more cone area than the 10" so the advantages are very real and easily noticed.

The only reason I would go with a smaller sub is if I don't have the air space to let a larger sub breathe. That's why large subs have gotten the rep for being slower. People don't have the room to build an enclosure large enough for the sub so they put them in too small of an enclosure and they sound slow and boomy.

 

So, I thought I replied last friday..But, I guess not.
Thank you for giving me that info! I now want to do an ib setup! Now, I will probably install this myself. I've been trying to read up on how to do this and im confused on some things. When installing the baffle, does the front need to be completely sealed from the rest of the trunk?

How much power would I need to run two 15" subs? And how much are ae ib15?

 

I believe that if you are going to go with the JBL 15s then 500W would be sufficient for both from what I recall when I modeled them. I think the better you isolate the front from the back the better.

 

It depends really. If they are a pair of IB15s or SBP15s, literally 150w each will get loud.

Like Steve said, 500w on a pair of GTO15s should get the job done nicely. A 12w6 only needs 200w and that wil be close to bottoming it out. My IDMax15s which aren't as efficient as some but far from inefficient need about 750w total to get reasonably loud.

I believe in overkill because more power will give a more lifelike, dynamic sound. At the minimum I would want enough power to hit its full linear excursion. For my IDMaxes that means 1,000w each. It kind of sucks it takes that much power even with no box to hit xmax but to be fair their 28mm xmax rating is higher than the AEIB15 xmech rating. I'm 99% sure they will still fail thermally before they fail mechanically even IB. There's nearly 50mm one way travel before you mechanically damage one of these subs and I don't see the voice coil being able to take the power required to push them that hard.

When I say "power to hit xmax" I'm always talking about hitting xmax at 20hz which is the lowest frequency you're going to see on 99% of the music out there. At 50hz pretty much any sub is going to hit its thermal limits before its mechanical limits. Excursion doubles with each 1 octave drop in frequency for the same output. For example, 20hz requires double the excursion than 40hz for the same output.

The typical rule in IB is half the power is required over sealed and that's a good guideline but sometimes it's 1/3 the power and in the case of my Max15s, you can still run them at their full thermal rating. Keeping an existing higher power amp and turning the gain down is a good idea.

 

Cool Beans!!! As I look at prices, I think I am going to buy things spaced apart. I will get one AE IB15 @4ohms (The SBP looks nice, but expensive [not as expensive as your lovely ID MAX {and you have two!}]). I saw that the peak wattage is 500w.... but I probably will buy an amp that is around 200w with a subsonic filter built in... right?

Then, I will probably get another AE IB15 sometime later (1 year)... I'll probably have to buy two AE 15's @ 8 ohms though, and get a 400w amp...

am I making good decisions?

-------------------------
After rereading your last post, I am now unsure if I should buy an amp that is 500w rms, and just turn the gain down.. or if I should get a lesser powered sub, so I don't blow out the sub.... I tried to research.. but everything started getting really confusing...

 

That sounds like a good plan. Here's something to think about when choosing a sub. Qts describes how much control the motor has over the moving assembly. It's the amount of damping the motor has over the moving mass just as a shock is a damper that damps suspension and body movement. A lower number means it's better damped. A higher number is less damped; the motor has less control over the moving mass (the cone, voice coil, former, etc).

A better damped sub will sound tighter, quicker, and more accurate. Less damping can give a boomy, sloppy sound. Less damping can make the sub more efficient at some frequencies. This happens because as the cone moves back and forth it "overshoots" a little. The motor has less control so the cone continues traveling a bit farther than it should before changing direction. Since how far the cone travels determines output, this overshoot is like free output.......or you could do call it distortion as well since it ps not following the signal faithfully.

Qts is the expression of damping. Most shoot for .7 as the perfect compromise between damping and efficiency. I do not do this. .5 is my preference. It's critically damped. You don't trade much efficiency over .707 Q and you get a very, very nice sounding setup.

Qts is the sub's damping in free air. Qtc is what matters. This is the system Q as a whole. This is the sub once placed in s box in a car. A sealed box raises the Qtc of the system. That .5 Qts sub may give a .9 Qtc in a small sealed box. That overshoot I was talking about where the cone continues moving after the signal stops is made worse by a box. The air in the box causes more overshoot in both directions. It also reduces efficiency because the cone has to compress and rarify the air in the box. You can see how people get confused and think a box helps with cone control but in reality it hurts cone control. This is proven by Qtc being greater than Qts and Qtc rises the smaller the box.

So back to infinite baffle... Car IB is usually not true IB. The trunk still has some effect on the movement of the cone the same as a sealed box will, just a much smaller effect. The Q of the IB15 will rise more than the SBP15 once it's placed in the trunk because the SBP has a stronger motor. I had issues unknown to me for a long time with the pair of IB15s in our sized trunk. The Q was getting pushed up too high for my tastes with the pair of subs.

I would personally go with a single IB15 or a pair of SBP15s. The SBPs will retain a lower Q (Qtc specifically) when used in pairs.

I should have mentioned Vas. I won't go into detail here because I've already written too much but the higher the Vas, the more effect the trunk is going to have on Qtc. With two subs you've doubled Vas and that's why Qtc goes up more with the pair than with a single.

You're still way better than a sealed box, so a pair of IB15 is still going to sound better than just about any sealed setup. Many people don't realize that by using the manufacturers recommended box size the Q is .8 and sometimes up to 1 or higher which is going to sound pretty bad. JL is notorious for recommending too small boxes. Their subs are truly amazing yet sound fairly average in the recommended box size. When I took my 12W6s out of the sealed box and went IB, it was probably the best sounding sub setup I've ever heard.

Last, my subs are fairly expensive but the AE subs you're looking at are better in most ways. They really are a bargain for what you're getting.

One other alternative, take a look at the AE AV15. I believe if you buy now they're around $450. It's a lot but they have every advantage of the IB and SBP15s plus a lot more. They have a lot more excursion, better suspension which is where the other two lack, a very strong motor with tons of technology, and they require very little power. I know it's expensive but a single AV15 will have almost as much output as a pair of IB or SBP15s and should sound a little better. It's cheaper in the long run since you can easily get away with just one.

Speaking of just one, a single IB15 might be all you want. It's still a 15 with 18mm linear excursion. Just one will get loud. I do have to throw out that most subs sound very good IB and with the right specs a 10" or 12" will work fine if needed. The IB15s are an excellent choice and one of the best but there are tons of subs that will work if you happen to find a deal. The AV15 will probably be my next choice if I get bored with my current setup.

 

Hmmm. I will give some thought to the av15. What about the amp? Do I go big and get a 500w or is that overkill?

 

It really depends on what sub you get. I always get considerably more power than what I need just because it sounds more realistic and dynamic.


Math is not my strong point but after seeing someone do the math on how much average power vs how much peak power you need to accurately reproduce well recorded dynamic material it made me understand why some of the top sound quality cars were using as much power as some of the SPL people.


It went something basically like this... We use way less average power than most people think. I believe mine was pulling only 90w average for a moderately loud volume level. But when you factor in a 10+db dynamic range, you may need upwards of 1,000w just on the fronts to accurately reproduce the signal without clipping. That's why I have 1,200w on the fronts. I usually don't listen to it that loud but it stays extremely clear and crisp and has great sound quality as the volume is turned up. It's just more realistic sounding with lots of power and especially with large speakers.


Sorry for going a bit off topic. What I would do is buy the biggest amp you can afford. On an efficient set of subs such as the IB or AV15s, you can get away with 150w each and it will sound pretty good and get pretty loud. Personally I would use at least 500w for both of them (250w each) if you can swing it and absolutely no less than 300w for a pair. This will push the IB and SBP15s a little past xmax at 20hz which is what you want. I added more and more power as I went on and they sounded better each time I added more. But again, because the efficiency is so high and they're going to be IB, you can get away with lower power if needed.


Since the AV15 is as efficient or maybe slightly more efficient than the IB and SBP15s, you can get away with just as low power. However, I have a rule and that's any sub I use must be capable of at least hitting xmax (the linear excursion limit) which in the case of the AV15 is 23mm vs 18mm for the IB and SBP15s. In other words, the AV will get just as loud watt for watt but it can handle more power because it has more excursion. They also have 32mm xmech (excursion before damaging the sub) which is an important spec for IB use. 500w on a single AV15 should get the job done. I know this is not cheap but going this route would probably be cheaper in the long run since you will more than likely be happy with the output of just one AV15. Even though it's expensive, it's cheap as hell for what you're getting. Inductance is extremely low, very light moving mass, very efficient, low Fs, will play almost flat from 20hz to 100hz in the car without EQ, requires very little power for the output it's capable of, strong motor with a low Qts, a much better suspension than the IB and SBP 15s, etc, etc. It's a world class sub with lower distortion than any car audio subwoofer for under $500.


I love my ID Max15 subs. I believe they're just about the ultimate IB sub even though they're not specifically designed for IB use. 28mm xmax, 50mm one way xmech, 935cm^2 of cone area, and they sound great. I can throw all 1,600w to them and never come close to bottoming them out even at 16hz. But the AV subs are in a different league. They're literally one of the best subs money can buy including the $1,500+ subs. I want a pair so bad but my Max 15s are practically new and I don't have the money to buy the AVs without selling the Maxes right now. I'm in a bad dilemma because the subs I have are awesome and offer more displacement than any other 15" sub that I can think of while sounding fantastic. Thinking logically it makes no sense to get the AV subs but I really want them for so many reasons.


Whatever amp you choose, especially for the subwoofer, make sure it's a class D as it will pull less power from your charging system for the same output and they usually run cooler.


I do tend to get carried away and your original plan of doing a single IB15 with 300w-500w and adding another later is a perfectly good idea. I just wanted to throw other options out there.

 

I think I want to save up for the av15... And the buy a 500w amp with a subsonic filter... I'm actually pretty happy that you have those suggestions.. I would have never thought of ib or what subs go well with an ib setup! You should have ae sponsor you! I'm not sure how to get sponsors.. But i think u could.

 

OP did you ever pull the trigger on the setup? I'm curious on what your thoughts are since I'm looking into doing an IB setup myself

 

I am definitely going to do a IB setup... I haven't done anything yet though... life kinda happened lol... but maybe this summer I'll be able to start this project...

I hope that you post up your project, so I can follow it!!! I think I'm leaning toward getting one 15" AE sub

 

Alright... my friend gave me 2 12" and a 750w RMS amp... Does anybody know what I need to look at to see if these subs can handle IB???

 

I have a foggy idea and no experience but am good at learning theory. I need to know the models/specs