rmksledhead

I wish I could give a sample of how the car sounds now.. NOT a friendly interior to work with when it comes to a flat response. If my head is where it is during my typical driving I have very little bass above 45hz and almost nothing above 60hz, like NONE... move my head 8" any direction and its perfectly acceptable. Coming from my s10 I don't understand it at all. That thing is loud everywhere. If there wasn't a dead spot in the passat where my ears usually are I would be worried about the overbearing upper bass that winisd is showing, but until I try the 6th order I won't know for sure. I buy all my mdf from the seconds bin at menards so its super cheap and I enjoy building this stuff. If it works, great. If not, oh well, It cost me $20 and now I know from experience. Here's the 6th order. Slightly different than what is modeled above but pretty much the same curve. I didn't want to sacrafice much more trunk space than the box I have already does so its only a half inch taller to get the BL to fit inside and 2.25" deeper than the vented box Also, Its my understanding that the closer the tuning frequency between the front and rear chamber, the worse the cancellation is... I've never seen or heard a 6th order in person so I'm just going off how the response curve changed in winisd when I was playing around with different volumes and tunings... Is that generally how it works or should I be looking into which direction to point the ports?

Well after a few months of owning my Bl 12 I've learned that I won't buy a mainstream sub for myself ever again! I also won't ever build a box that isn't as good or better than the one that I built for this beast either! Its only seen a 1200w rms hifonics amp the time that I've owned it and I feel it could handle 2000w with proper crossover tuning. I ended up building a box which after bracing was really close to 2.45ft^3 and tuned to 30hz give or take a hertz(not sure if the port is "exactly" 2.5x12" and "exactly" 31.25" long). It gets much lower than the system in my s10 that is for sure! Although I do love the way it sounds down low, I'm missing the volume i had in the upper frequencies(below 55hz). Its so much different that when I listen to rock I can hardly tell that I have a sub in the vehicle where in my s10 you feel every bass drum kick in your chest. I dont want to blame this on the sub since the enclosure is tuned so low and I still have the stock front stage and HU. I'm in the process of installing some kenwood components (xr1800p) in the doors and powering them with an old pioneer amp i had lying around(gm x524) and I'm replacing the head unit with a AVH2600bt pioneer touchscreen. I really hope that its the front stage making the biggest difference in the way the upper bass frequencies feel and that I'll love everything about the system in my passat better than the s10. I plan on updating this thread when Its all complete. I also finally found a method of inputting parameters into Win ISD that works! I won't say that I regret getting the BL but after seeing how it and the Q compare I would get the Q next time around. Here is a comparison of 5 12" subs around the price of the Bl all modeled in my system on an SPL graph.

Yes I totally agree with you... But I would need someone to want to trade me an ethos 12 to get the best of both worlds... and build a smaller box for the ethos. I think my best(cheapest) route is to try a 6th order, mostly for fun, but if it works out I'll just make that box look pretty. Here's the 6th order vs the vented i have and also the box I would build for the ethos

Figured I should start a build log since I've gone through so much trial and error in getting this stereo to sound good. I'm already done with most things but I did take pictures along the way so i'll get that all uploaded when i get photobucket or imgur figured out. I bought my passat almost a year ago, the weekend after black Friday to be exact, and knew immediately that it needed some love in the bass department. I had a rockford p-300-12 powered enclosure lying around that i once had mounted in a big self-propelled sprayer that i basically lived in for 3 summers, threw that in along with a rockford loc, rockford rca's, and some ebay 4ga cca to get it powered. That sounded awesome for the average non-basshead and would suffice until i found a real solution.... Did some searching and found this great place! After searching and reading here for hours I decided on a Fi BL 12 for a sub and a BRZ1200.1 hifonics amp to power it since i'm a poor college student and can't afford a bc, aq or saz lol I built a vented box for the BL that was 2.68ft^3 tuned to 28.5hz After I finished the box I had to stuff foam above the headliner near the upper brake light and under the rear deck to stop some rattling. Installed some dampener (dynamat and ebay stuff) to the trunk lid, under the trunk carpet on the floor, and rear deck from inside the trunk. dampener helped a ton. After the substage I realized that the stock front stage was not going to cut it... I knew that I wanted to fill some of the lacking upper bass frequencies with some volume so I was looking for the biggest components I could get for a decent price. Ended up getting the xr1800p components from Kenwood. They've got a big 7" woofer and an oversized 1 3/16" tweeter with external crossovers. currently the set is being powered by a dusty old pioneer 4-channel amp GM-x524. I'm not perfectly satisfied with the front stage for now since the amp likes to protect at high volumes and I've got some fuzzy distortion from the tweeters in certain frequencies. once i change the amp to the GM-d8604 class d 4-channel from pioneer I think it will get much better as I have the older GM-d9500f version in my s10 that never protects and has no distortion until extreme volume. also ran another 4ga run of cca to the trunk and a distribution block when I added the second amp. Also changed out the stock HU for a Pioneer Avh2600bt touchscreen unit which is fantastic for the money. I decided that the box was tuned too low so I chopped 10.5" off the port giving me a 2.88ft^3 net volume tuned to 32.2hz and was much happier! Now for the real reason I'm starting this build log.. I'm going to try a 6th order bandpass to keep this 'new to me' low end rumble and get back the awesome upper frequency volume from my mtx square sub in my s10 for when i want to blast the 50hz Flux Pavilion bass cannon! Much more to follow, including pics for the above^ stuff!

I suspect this is part of the reason I was so used to great upper bass volume and never had any low end extension in my s10! The cyan line is the box before cutting the port, the yellow is after and the white is the box my mtx square is in in my s10. Yes, I realize that the spl graph isn't what it will actually be like in a vehicle but it does give you an idea of how different speakers and alignments will sound comparatively. Also, I decided to try a 6th order box instead of adding the type r to the system.

Here's a good view of the vibration isolated amp rack with some holes for cooling

Here's the box and the BL 12 in all its glory

Here's a pic of the HU installed with the Metra dash kit. These are of the tweeter cover and the mdf piece i had to build to get the tweeter to fit into the stock location without having to chop up the stock tweeter cover Here are the door woofer pics along with the mdf ring i had to make to get the stock speaker pods to accept the woofer. It turned out really nice but was kinda a pain to sand, attempt fit, sand more, attempt fit, sand more.....

I forgot to update this thread after taking a couple different steps... First I remeasured the box and found my true volume after displacement was actually bigger than I first thought and the only thing I can think of is I must have doubled the displacement of the driver. Also the port is 2 5/8" across instead of 2.5". After plugging the new numbers into torres I got a tune of 28.5hz and internal volume of 2.68cu ft. So after the xr1800p components and that old dust amp were installed, along with another run of knu konceptz 4ga cca power from the battery, rca's, etc, The sound did get better. The 7" woofers sound great and dish out a good amount of bass down to 50hz and some of the kick was back when I listened to rock. Still, after the components i wasn't as happy with the 40hz+ output of the bl as I wanted to be. Finally (2 days ago) I figured it was time to chop the port length down. Went to menards to pick up a multi-purpose cutting bit for the dremel and hacked 10.5" off the port. Back to torres I get a box volume of 2.88 and a tuning frequency of 32.2hz. My suspicion that the tuning was low was confirmed by running the numbers again and also by how much better the sub sounds on a wider variety of music. (can't listen to decaf forever) Overall I think I'm still going to throw the type r 10 I've got in a sealed box to compliment the bl. I just miss the overall volume I had with the Mtx square 12 ported-type r 10 sealed combo in my s10.

I've just got the pictures on the hard drive on my computer not imgur or picasa. For example this picture of my sled uploaded fine but the new pictures of my sub setup arent uploading well. Should i just look into getting one of the two sites mentioned working for me as an online gallery?

My pictures will only upload as thumbnails.... I've got a few that uploaded in the past but I can't seem to get them to upload correctly any more. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I've got some pictures of my Fi BL 12 and enclosure that I recently got put together that I'd like to show the masses!

Sounds like some boost is in your future!! I know for a fact that turbos can stay quiet too

So I guess this isn't really Fi specific but I've got this box modeled up in sketchup and I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to add an angled piece to each corner and to cut an angle into the inside turn of the port at the corner or if leaving it the way it is would be fine. I haven't ever heard a back to back comparison with two similar boxes, one with the angled corners and one without so any input would be great!

Alright thanks, I'll keep this in mind. I'll have less than $20 into my enclosure before carpet, if you dont count the power tools that I've had for years that is. Screws, liquid nails, and 3/4 mdf from the seconds/edge damaged section at menards. The mdf only cost me $12 and I'll have extra left over!

Hey everyone, new member but I've been lurking for awhile searching for a solution to my bass needs but figured it would be smarter just to tell everyone my situation and get some personal opinions. SO, I'm looking for a single or dual sub/amp setup for my passat and i want to spend no more than $600 on it. What I'm used to: In my s-10 extended cab i have a 10" type r (swr 1042) powered by a 400w rms pioneer and a 12" MTX square (ts85) powered by a 975w rms kenwood amp. The type r is in a .5^3 sealed box and the mtx is in a 1.6^3 vented box tuned to 35hz or so. I enjoy what i have in the s10, works well for dubstep and all flavors of rock which is mostly what i listen to but will also do rap pretty well. I want more volume than i have in the s-10 and i want to hit the really low stuff better. I don't have too many REALLY low notes to hit with most songs i listen to, maybe a handfull of songs, but its frustrating not to be able to get the volume at really low frequencies. I have plenty of space in the trunk but only 'want' to sacrifice up to 5^3ft I've been looking hard at the bl and q but not sure if 2 ssd's would better suit my goals Also, the alt is stock 145, battery is stock, no big 3 yet. Thanks for the help!

Small world right? I've been looking into some small hid's like the ones you've got as well! On another note, I'm having trouble getting winisd to accept the parameters on the Bl, gets angry about everything and NEVER matches even half the specs from FI when i let it calculate stuff based on minimal input.... not really "on track" with the thread but anyone else have this issue?

^As am I! I've always liked the look of these things. I'm in West central mn, fm area. I've still got to get lights on mine...its got a mod hood for the twin race pipes it had but that vp c12 is expensive fuel!

This is my 08 800 rmk. That was an awesome sled to ride! This is my current one. Its a custom half RMK half IQR. Haven't ridden it as much as I'd like but its another fun one thats for sure!