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4.75 cubes tuned to 34hz with kerf port.

The FR88 can easily have a nice top end, but you have nothing in your system to tame any anomalies that exist. Perhaps this is why you stated strained, not at all what I'd describe it as and the raggedness is not so difficult to deal with. In fact I'd guarantee that dash reflections and your environment are a lot harsher than the natural frequency response of the driver in that range. Had you said it was muted perhaps I'd agree with adding something on top, but until you solve the woes that its current aiming/processing is guaranteeing you'll have it is hard to make that comment. Obviously a tweeter, including the DC28 won't have those concerns to eq out and will be easier to deal with for that matter. It may roll off harder to, but of course our ears are so insensitive to that it may not matter. The distortion on the DC28 is significantly worse than the Fountek as well. To my ears it would be a step down and you'd forego midbass by getting a driver that can play high enough to marry with it. If you truly want to do a 3 way, then you should start planning your mounting locations and processing before buying any drivers. If you haven't opened the DC28's I might send them back without even listening to them. PE probably would take them back even if opened, but you don't stand to gain anything...unless you are never buying a processor in which case a simple tweeter and paper coned mid would be your best choice.

5x7's what are they for? The SLS and FR88 is ALL you should be running that is not your sub. Midbasses will be confusing to listen to on their own, but you cannot make decisions on their capabilities by muddying them up with any other drivers. I will add it is very hard to do this by getting out of the car, making a change and then listening again. The phase change on the FR's should have made a significant difference. You are just changing one and not the other right? The Dayton 28 is an okay tweeter, but it is only a $10 tweeter. I personally prefer to spend a bit more on mine. It also won't play nice with either the FR88 as ultra top end is not its thing and it won't play low enough to mix with the Peerless. The $5 ND20 would work better for your application....assuming you are using this for a 3 way since you cannot use it for a 2 way. I'll also add that for a 3way you will NEED processing outside of the amplifiers. It helps a crap ton with the 2 way even. I would find it very weird to listen to a stage that was centered in my position in a car. The combination or aural and spatial cues wouldn't make me happy. That being said I don't want it centered in car either. Somewhere in between is my preference. You can have yours, but right in front of you will be most easily achieved if you move the right drivers a bit closer... Otherwise you are going to have too much processing to fix the stage which will then detract from the FR of the stereo.

The BTL is more efficient, it WILL be more loud than any other woofer from Fi. They don't have a "prime" wattage rating either, the ratings are the maximum recommended power applied given the thermal and mechanical handling built into the woofer. I know that. Given the proper wattage and set up the BTL WILL be louder. Which is what I stated above. You need more power to move the assembly of the BTL as compared to the smaller and softer spider pack of the Q. Well maybe not softer but less spiders means less mass in the assembly. I have both. I compare both... in my setup.. which is not ideal but given the same wattage the Q moves more. A decibel or 2 is negligible therefore its redundant to say (A) is louder than (B). Not my opinion.. just fact. I need a 3500 and then i'll give you an honest review as how loud the BTL will get.Prime may not be the correct word. Ideal is. It has to be ideal in the situation and set up of the system. FI is conservative in their ratings due to additional options available. What they put on their site is ideal. It can handle more or less. Again... system and set up dependent. NO. In an optimal box with ANY amount of power, the BTL will ALWAYS be louder than the Q. You DO NOT NEED "proper wattage". That is asinine. Your ideal comment is a joke as well. What is even funnier here is that I am NOT recommending that the OP buy a BTL, I am just making sure that the misinformation that is being puked in this thread is refuted. So 0-55 isn't fun in a Ferrari? You always drive all your cars only in one specific way? You have a particular vehicle for when you want to go fast, one for off road, and one for 55mph use? Is it more expensive to have three cars or to compromise and pick the one that fills the BIGGEST need you have first. Your analogy isn't helping you. If the Q is perfect,the BTL would still be louder. If the goal is louder how "perfect" is the Q when it isn't as loud. WHO cares about living up to 'its' potential. To use your dumb analogy that would be like buying a Ferrari and only driving around at over 150mph because anything less isn't near its potential. You also don't understand how drivers are engineered. There is NO prime "wattage range" that subs are designed to perform in, if they are it is a pretty shitty sub as most are designed to be mostly linear no matter what power. Otherwise when you have a quiet note in music compared to a loud note it would sound like shit since it wasn't designed to do that. Conveniently in speaker topologies that in particular would be hard to do and hard to screw up. So no, there is absolutely no prime wattage anything is designed for. Neither of you obviously understand driver basics and you really shouldn't go on misleading posters. The OP here is probably really confused here now and understandably so; however, that too would be easy to solve. A quick read through the noob posting guidelines would allow the thread to actually move towards what he needs. As a quick review, removing the terms SPL and SQ would REALLY help us understand if they were expressed in a method that wasn't based on subjective interpretation of terms.

The BTL is more efficient, it WILL be more loud than any other woofer from Fi. They don't have a "prime" wattage rating either, the ratings are the maximum recommended power applied given the thermal and mechanical handling built into the woofer.

Active isnt just throwing speakers in a car and picking a crossover point for them, you can do that but you wont be maximizing performance in output and quality. You will probably never reach the quality that the passive crossovers will provide those components if you go active, especially not on the first/second/third time. You need to understand crossover slopes, frequencies and power plus speaker specs. I wouldnt risk damaging those speakers on trial and error if that was me, I would buy some cheap speakers and learn how crossover slopes/power levels/frequencies all correlate with one another. A year and a half later I finally have active down in the simplest terms and now im moving on to understanding the technical side now, after lots of critical time with no subwoofer I learned going active by gaining experience. It can sound good and just get better with more tuning. I dont want to sway you on going active, I just want you to hear both sides of going active (the good and the bad). But considering the price you paid for those components I would go with the passive crossovers that come with that component set. This will also allow you to have one amplifier like you want and give you the option of more power for your midbass. Just do some more research on going active and sleep on it some. Here is a thread I made a while ago that may help you some:

this might be also a dumb question. but is the high qts option able to be used in a ported box? or is this a no no? like the guy previous said there reall isn't any info on this. thx What Is High Qts

Pretty simple actually, if your goal was truly loudness and to buy Fi that would be your loudest choice off 1000w that they make. Do you run at full volume all day all the time? 2/3, 1/2? Get my point. Who cares how much power you put on a driver if it does what you want it to. If for what you have it is the best driver from the manufacturer how could it be wrong? *again with the goal of loud You'd be surprised. Could go either way, will ALL depend on the install.

I would personally do Leviathon if you want one amp and just run Bravox components on first two channels using the passive components that came with it. Will probably sound better than you running them active unless your willing to spend countless hours playing, tuning, testing and doing it all over again. Then use the last four channels for you mids since it seems like your going to be running 8 ohm drivers, this way you can run a mid to 2 channels bridged. Thats just me, hope that helps or gives you some direction. You could always try to find some 4 ohm 8" midbass drivers as well that way they can get more power if you do decide to only run your midbass on your last two channels and bravox components active on first 4 channels.

Got a good bit done this weekend! Not as much as I wanted to, but a pretty good start. I have all the sides, front, back all glued together, and I have cut all the port and bracing. Now I need to glue it all together and put the 3 top baffles on. Here are some pics. First got to keep this handy to keep the ghetto work area clean. Also helps to hide these from the kids. Cant have them thinking Daddy is lush. lol Okay, so here is the work area. I know ghetto as hell, but you run what you brung. Life happens and the need for 5 bedrooms was stronger then my having a garage. The wife made a deal with me tho, she gets hardwood floors and I get to build a shop. Really, it just takes a lot longer and you have to work smarter, but where there is a will - there is a way! For anyone scared about making straight cuts with a skill saw, here is your friend. Clamp or screw a guide to the piece you are cutting and BAM nice straight cuts every time. Not pictured are the ghetto saw horses. I have not figured out how to cut directly on cement, YET. lol So here is the carnage: tripple top baffles and the bottom are cut, but I didn't glue them together just yet, will do this when I put them on the box, one at a time. The front, sides, and back all doubled up and glued together. This is going to be heavy! Starting to cut the bracing, yes I am old school and use a jig saw. Maybe one day I will get a router, but I do pretty good with this if i must say so myself. High speed, coarse blade, and go SLOW = Nice results. All the port and bracing cut ! And after all that, I just had to mock it up to see what it do ! Everything fits together nice, but it wont stand up! My wife doesn't love you guys as much as I do and couldn't talk her into holding it up while I took a pic. I may have to trade her in for a newer model if she don't start being a team player. lol So now comes the fun part and putting all this together. Going to have to get some more hands over here for this one, it is massive and I am too old to try and do it alone. lol Hopefully this time next week, I will be putting this into the Yukon and tearing shit up. Oh and I got an email today from tejcurrent and my dual bracket and alternator should be done here pretty soon. Got to keep your amps happy!

I like peanut butter and jelly. But I don't have money for both.....should I buy just peanut butter or just jelly? Well, that depends on several different factors. For example, in the morning I'd rather have the grape jelly on some toast, if it's later in the day then a nice peanut butter sandwich would be nice.

Yes you would have 2ohm left and 2 ohm right. Do not use a DMM to set gains, especially on your highs. Use your ears. Slowly turn up the gain until it sounds like shit then turn it down until it doesn't. Simple.

well here's the deal. I've been into music production and recording engineering for a few years now. I've just recently got the idea to incorporate these skills into my car audio hobby. I'm posting a song below which I produced myself that peaks around 43-48 hz. I know it's not quite as low as most of you like to pound to, but hey it's my first attempt at making one of these. I'd like to get some feedback from you guys as to what you think I should do as far as going about making these tracks. I'd love to continue making them for the fellow members to use in their demo's/videos. If you guys could check out the song, download it and try it out and leave some feedback and/or videos, I'd GREATLY appreciate it. I really wanna get into this and incorporating my music skills with this field of interest. Thanks guys!! Here's the link. EDIT: CDP stands for Cellar Door Productions, my little production company. And yes, those are my vocals.

Quick thought on your amp shutting off... Are you sure it is because of overcurrent? I only ask because the PAC LOCs can be a pain in the ass as far as the remotr turn on voltage. They have a really bad sensing circuit. When the voltage to them drops more than a volt or so (I mean the 12V feed) they shut off the remote turn on output for a second or so, causing most amps to shut off for a moment... Causing you to think it is an overcurrent issue with the amp. The last 3 systems I have installed with PAC LOCs have done this. I have ended up bypassing the remote turn on function. An easy way to check is to monitor the remote turn on voltage when the amp shuts down, if it drops, the PAC is to blame... They make a good output conveter section, but the remote power section is absolute crap... I have spoke with thier engineers and they (hestitantly) admit this issue...

Cool, we are getting somewhere. What do you need to compensate? If you have anomalies, then lets get them! The pxe can correct for time alignment and phase, but I have never heard it work in a way that I find beneficial. Depending on your skill and ears though it could be better than you'd do on your own. I am curious as to the high noise floor comments. Not only curious but surprised. What are you hearing? Is it a hum, buzz, white noise, pink noise.... Either way the PXE couldn't do anything for that at all, but I am not sure it exists but instead might be caused by something else you are doing in your install. My wives Audi was really pretty tight in that regards and every S4 I've been in hasn't had any noise issues. I'll give you one hint. If the noise wasn't there in the stock setup then it isn't caused by the headunit. Yes the MS8 is better, but not sure you need that. Could you use it? Sure, everyone could, but I am a big proponent of only spending money when you need to for an actual improvement. It is a lot of dough to just get an EQ.

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