Diamond Audio........TDX
ALpine.................Type R or Type X
Kicker.................Solobaric

hands down IMO.

 

you ARE kiddin with that ALPINE reference right? They makes maybe good headunits... that's about it.

Kicker has declined in the recent years , their old stuff was good.. but no more.

Put it this way.. Kicker bought the truck that set the world DB drag record and put like 100 of their square subs in there and it hit like 10 db less than it did previously... plus they break.. ALOT..

If you want a good sub for sq and spl and don't wanna break the bank get a JL if you want the best you are gonna pay a price for it.. but it's again all abou the box.

Ryan

 

This is like Crutchfield's greatest hits...


I concur with vidoprof that Kicker's best days are behind them... but Alpine and Diamond Audio being considered the best subwoofers can only come from limited experience with any of the better brands.

 

elduderino what are your 3 top subs? you still havent mentioned them

 

First, vidoprof, my apologies, I missed your questions - sorry about that. I've been reading the forum at times on the screen of a 12" Powerbook running Gotomypc displaying my PC desktop, and it's a bit hard to navigate : )

I don't think those Dyne's are long-throw enough to be considered a "woofer" in the car audio sense, but I will be going into the store in a bit and I want to look up some specs on them and report back. I think that they are based on a home-speaker driver, and so are better suited for a midbass in a modern car system, if only because of the thigher volume outputs needed to overcome the LF road noise.

I suspect that running off of a DLS amp with the variable subsonic, you could keep them under control and sounding very good - just won't sound like a 12" : )

But I will get back to this.

As far as my personal three subs, I would have to say first that the criteria are crucial. The DLS Iridium and Ultimate subs are great, great woofers per their competition specs - but they are HUGE and they are EXPENSIVE to many people. I know a former IASCA expert competitor that swears by McCauley and TAD 15"s.

Car And Driver, when they do their comparo, they have a few parameters - cost ceiling, etc.

So if I were suggesting woofers for the DIY guy and the systems that a DIY guy is likely to get involved in?

Well, Kicker seems to have dropped off a bit, Rockford is falling off of the map, and none of the HU companies have progressed to that level, even though Alpine and Eclipse make some that don't suck. JL is the leader in user-friendliness (or hard-to-screwupness), DLS gets a nod from me due to their competition record in SQ. MTX is loud but not usually an SQ entry.

I haven't worked with eD, with Adire, with RE, with DD, with Treo, or with the larger Dynes, honestly - I'd like to do the 12"... I hear the SEAS Lotus is good too.

Speakers are a large world. You can buy a lot of different drivers and never go off the Best Buy/CC/Tweeter reservation. You can also buy a lot of different drivers without ever going mass market.

I've heard JL's sound like crap, and I've heard Blaupunkts (!) sound great. So I'm much more concerned with the implementation. I made two Yamaha 10"s that had horrid specs, quite honestly, sound VERY good in the Yamaha CES demo car 15 years ago (2 10",s Iso, 2 CF ported : ) so I'm convinced that it ain't the shoes.

 

Have you had experience with the Diamond TDX line? They are not in the same league as anything Alpine has. The TDX line will compete with any of the better brands and top most of them.

 

How would you determine that a box is good? How can u tell? what would be the diff in ported and non ported?

 

A woofer box is essentially a mechanical high-pass filter. WIth enough specifications (called "Thiele Small parameters" usually) you can model the performance of a woofer in various boxes. These SW programs usually can't model the in-car transfer function very accurately, and SQ is NOT just frequency response - it's also transient accuracy over time.

Most all car woofers today are intended to work in very small "acoustic suspension" boxes. With these boxes the trapped air acts as additional speaker suspension.

If the bos is so big that the air compression inside isn't enough to effectively change the operation of the woofer, it's called infinite baffle.
Acoustic suspension boxes roll off below a certain point, fairly slowly. Ported boxes roll off below a certain point, but at a much steeper rate.

Ported boxes are usually more efficient, since you are getting more dB for free. Many modern woofers can be put in small enough ported boxes to be practical. The toughest part is fitting the port in a small box. Longer throw woofers move more air and require larger port cross-sections, and larger cross sections require more length.

Misaligned ported boxes cause woofers to blow. Every ported box loses all excursion-related power handling at 1/2 octave below the porting frequency (it effectively becomes an infinite-baffle system). If it's tuned for 45, then 1/2 of 45 (one octave down) is 22, and 1/2 of that is 11, so 45 - 11 is 34, and at 34 Hz you would lose all your power handling. If you listen to a lot of music, that's not an issue. If you listen to a lot of modern rap, that could cause your woofer to travel too far.

Some SQ fans feel that the time distortion (variously called group delay, phase delay, etc.) is substantial enough with ported boxes that it's their fatal flaw. Since the sub in a car is not at an equal distance from the listener as the other speakers, it's not that big a deal, but they do sound different in terms of immediacy. Bass Mechanic is a big ported advocate. I'm not, I'm a bit more preferential to sealed, but I am not an SPL or bass-oriented guy.

 

subs i have heard/owned (pesonal fav but more SPL/SQL):
DD
RE
and ID

subs i haven't heard (but are supposed to be good for SQ):
Ascendant
Adire
Audiomobile
ED

that's more than 3, but i don't care...
and i agree that a good driver will only take you so far. if you compare all high quality subs next to eachother, i think the main difference between them would be the box they are in. meaning any one could sound better than another depending if the box is made right.

 

hah, sactown, dude i know EXACTLY what you mean

sucks always having to go on other people's opinions

 

yeah man, for real! at least if i were in the bay id be able to hear some high-end stuff. Here its mostly run-of-the-mill equipment.

 

Here's an interesting thread about W7 vs Eclipse ti woofers:

http://www.caraudio.com/vb/showthread.php?t=94002