altoncustomtech

I do agree. A pair of 10" D4 DCON's in a new and good ported enclosure and you'd be doing really well.

Your thinking is common with a flawed misconception. The enclosure the sub is in determines the response of the sub, period. An 8" sub can play as low as an 18" and that 18" can play as tight and fast as the 8". The common misconception that larger subs play lower, or are "boomier" is just wrong. You're not going to get satisfactory results stuffing a 12 into the air space the 10 is currently utilizing either. If you want your current subs to play lower then you just need to build another enclosure. Done correctly they'll sound just as tight and accurate as they do now but will be able to play lower frequencies better. That will likely require going to a ported enclosure to achieve with notable results. If you're looking primarily for more output then you should upgrade to larger subs such as a pair of 12's. The extra cone area can yield more output than the 10's and in the proper enclosure can play much deeper than the 10's currently are now whilst having good reponse throughout the range of your LPF and just as accurate too.

to the forum! Yep, this is the place to be for audio information, especially for the correct information. As to the rest of your questions, ask away...

Cutting port length in half because you have two ports is NOT the proper way to figure port length for multiple ports. When you do a calculation for port length for multiple ports the length the calculation provides is the length required for all the ports to be at that tuning frequency. If your calculations said that two 2" ports need to be 12 inches long that means both of them need to be 12", not 12" total for both (i.e. 6" each like you figured). Such is the dilemma behind calculating ported enclosures for small spaces. You also have to add the air the ports will displace to the total internal volume of the enclosure. How small of an area are you trying to stuff this into? I think you're going to have to be willing to lose a little cargo space to the enclosure if you want to use it in a ported enclosure.

Mike is right, if a ported enclosure at the minimum specified by the manufacturer is still too large then why not try it sealed, or sell the 12 and buy a 10 but for god's sake don't go and recone a brand spanking new sub it just doesn't make any sense to do so. What are your measurements? You may be able to squeeze it in there if you used an aero port instead of a slot and got the shape right. If not then that 12 should sell fairly easily and just buy a 10. You may take a slight loss on the sale but that would be cheaper and better than shelling out $85 + shipping on a 10" recone and frame and tearing into a perfectly new sub. Hell the recone cover's 58% of the cost of a new 10" sub by itself. Get us some measurements and pictures of your trunk, we may be able to help you fit a ported in there for the 12 and still have room to carry stuff and access to the spare.

The word that goes with that time period on the site, "ESTIMATED" needs to be stressed here. There's way too few people working there for them to be able to guarantee any sort of build time nor does it say anywhere on the site that there is any sort of guarantee for that time period. They build them as fast as they can and ship them out as they're completed. Would you rather them use run of the mill standard parts or mass produced drivers which would make them no different and no more special than the majority of the products available on the market? Or would you rather exercise patience and allow them to take the time necessary to build you a truly custom driver from scratch in the sequence that your order was received?

I guess I usually figure that people need to figure out the spacing on their own since there's always a possibility that measurements aren't quite perfect or something like that. I don't have any problem posting up the spacing measurements I used based on the specs posted on Obsidians website. I'd be sure to make certain that the spacing works before making cuts though. That's a LOT of wood to scrap if it's not right.

Awesome, well here's the finished product. I took the liberty of giving it a finished look just to make it look good. While the top and bottom of the enclosure are cutout to the same dimensions you'll just need to cut a third panel to those dimensions to put on the top for the double baffle, nothing difficult. Here's the cutsheet Here's the enclosure with the top off and all the dimensions on each panel for clarity. Here's a couple of pictures of it with a finished look. 7.5cuft NET tuned to ~30hz with 110sqin of port area, 40" W x 32" D x 18" H

to the forum.

to the forum!

I agree 100% 100 times over. If you're going to spend the money on some top quality subs then why the hell cheap out anywhere else? I'm not saying you need to go buy something like an MTX TE4001D, but you can find something of reputable quality that will fit about any budget, and if it doesn't fit your budget save up and expand the budget. I'm married with four kids aged 14, 12, 10 and 9. It's not EASY to save money for stuff like this but it's doable, it just takes lots of patience. Assuming you have D1 coils for a series/parallel final load of 1 ohm, there's a host of amps that will fit the bill for about the same price as that POS Power Acraptastik. (Google showed it starting from $230 and up to over $300) If used isn't a problem these are a couple of good deals: Rockford T1500-1BDCP $290 Audison SR 1DK $240 (if I was in the market I'd be all over this one myself) If it has to be new then I wouldn't be afraid of these: Audiopipe APSM2000 $175 (I've not had enough experience with them to form my own opinion but many people seem to like them) Massive Audio D3600 $300 (no personal experience but they seem to review well) MTX TH1200.1D $300 Sundown SAZ1000D $300 The fact is you don't need the full total RMS to get them loud. Concentrating your efforts on making sure the enclosure is perfect will yield you better results than buying the cheapest thing you can that's rated for power it will never produce.

It will be considerably louder than just doubling power. Here's a couple of screen shots I did for a very similar discussion awhile back. The first demonstrates the difference between the relationship of cone area and applied power. It shows two of the same series of speaker, rated for the same amount of power, the top one (yellow) is a 10" and the bottom one (red) is an 18". The graph shows the 10" with 1500 watts and the 18" with it's rated 250 watts of power applied. Notice it took 6X the power for the 10" to achieve about 3dB of gain. That's an EXTREMELY inefficient way to make a noticeable difference in output. Now notice the second picture here and how much louder the 18 is over the 10 at the same power level. There are WAY more variables in this discussion than can be easily covered and definitely more than can be shown in a couple of quick examples but I think this will help visualize the point. More power is the least efficient and most expensive way to get more output, period. Sure, it might. The bold, italicized and underlined words are the key and by the rudimentary nature of the questions at hand and the information we're being given by the OP I really do not think he fits in that category of people. As a matter of fact I would imagine that there is a relatively small percentage of people who honestly do fit in that category and I know for certain I am definitely not one of them myself. Not to mention the fact that whether or not it's possible is not going to help the OP in any way. He wants to be louder and the BEST way to do that is increase his cone area and even better double everything as has been suggested already.

That's very true that it's very short on port area, but since it's only for the temporary I wouldn't think it's going to matter much.

I ran through the numbers and got 5.15 cuft NET and 10.375" per port to achieve 32hz tuning with those dimensions. That's assuming those are definitely internal dimensions, sub and port displacements, and no bracing or anything else of the sort. Don't mean to step on toes but if my math is wrong it would be good to know so I can correct it.

Dan sent me a pm and asked for some help with this enclosure since he'd seen where I've helped a few others out. He offered to send me $10 for my trouble, however I declined since I won' take any money for this. I'm only doing this for the fun of the hobby and for the experience calculating the enclosure specs and drawing in Sketchup, not to make any money or to try to make a business for myself nor take any business away from anyone else. I told him that if he used what I drew up and felt so compelled that he had to pay something for it then to send the $10 to the Leg Fund so at least it went to a good cause. I drew up an enclosure for him 7.5cuft NET tuned to ~30hz with 110sqin of port area, double baffle with no flush mount per his request. It measures 40" W x 32" D x 18" H, the port is 7" x 15.75" and these are just the preliminary drawings. Dan, let me know how close this is to what you're looking for and what changes you want to make to it.

It's not that it will only cover that range of frequencies, but that each band will be able to adjust the frequency it's set to. The big difference between this and most other EQ's is that any one band (1 thru 5) can be set to any one of the listed frequencies. For example as I was playing around with it I was able to set band 1 to 1.6khz, band 2 to 4khz, band 3 to through, band 4 to 25hz and band 3 to 6.3khz. Not that particular arrangement would be useful, but its just not possible with most any other EQ. Which as mentioned just makes it very versatile. I'm getting real excited to get to trying it out in the Jimmy.

Yeah that would have been sweet. I think it's amazing though how it lets you set any band to any frequency in that range, same with the crossovers. Makes it extremely versatile.

to the forum!!

to the forum! Sounds like a great plan and you're gonna love that DCON, especially in the ported enclosure. What are you doing to do for HU, processing, front stage, amplification, etc.?

Well I've had this thing for a bit now, just now getting to checking it out closely. As you should be able to tell by the pictures the guy who sold it to me was definitely legit. Not ONE of the taped closed bags containing the HU's wires and accessories was opened, the faceplate still has the protective films on it, and the screws that protect the CD mechanism during shipping were still in it. It was most definitely never used and I doubt ever even opened. I'm ordering a wire harness and dash kit just for this HU. The reason I'm doing that is so I can pretty much plug and play it into the Jimmy, then whichever HU I decide to keep in it can plug back in and the other will be ready to plug and play into the Blazer Project when it begins. I hooked it up on the bench to play with some of the settings and such to get an initial feel for it and when the harness adapter and dash kit come in I'll swap it into the Jimmy. So far I've found that any of the five bands of the EQ can be set to a host of a range of frequencies, I'll list them all below. It also has a 3 slot memory function so you can store and recall up to three different sets of EQ, T/A, Crossover settings and recall each at a flash with just a few of button presses which can be real handy for comparison purposes. I gotta say I do like the color cycles and choices, it looks real good doing that. Here's a few pics. Frequencies for the EQ settings are 20, 25, 31.5, 40, 50, 63, 80, 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 315, 400, 500, 630, 800, 1k, 1.25k, 1.6k, 2k, 2.5k, 3.15k, 4k, 5k, 6.3k, 8k, 10k, 12.5k, 16k, 20k

I personally love seeing budget builds. They're not easy, I know from experience, lol. I think it's definitely coming along though. I've used those Lanzar subs before, albeit years ago, but they can do surprisingly well for their price. They do a pretty good job of playing low. Probably the only thing I can really fault them for is that they're not the toughest subs but at their price point that's going to be an issue no matter what brand or model. It would be kewl to see some installation pics on your components and such as well. Keep up the good work.

That's how it is almost everywhere with almost every shop. Around my area here it's a lot of Planet Audio, Polk Audio, and an array of the cheaper brands. People's choices are only as good as their best educated guess it seems and in most cases that education isn't much more than what the salesman said or because that person knows somebody's buddy who's using that sub or speaker. I've actually had guys demo their setup for me, telling me just how awesome it is as we walk out to it. Just to have a look of bewilderment on their face when I explain in as much detail as I can what I personally didn't like about it when I heard it and what I would've done differently. Then come back two weeks later asking how to make it better. I think they do it because after I attempt to educate them they start to REALLY listen to it and realize that something isn't right. I am still working on learning how to read T/S params and tech specs and know how good that driver really is and what it's optimal use would be. Still learning how placement, axis orientation, and other installation issues affect the given response. Still learning what the good and bad compromises are for different goals. There's such an incredible amount to learn its really almost overwhelming. I would love to learn it all someday though realistically I know I'll only ever scratch the surface. There's a wealth of information available on here and some guys on here with just as impressive backgrounds and knowledge in this hobby/field. Even with all that it still comes down to two things in my opinion. First is the most important thing, that only you know what sounds good to you. Second is that it all comes down to the installation. The cheapest speakers in an ideal installation have the potential to outperform in every way the most expensive speakers in the least ideal installation.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the DCON is an amazing sub. I bought one for my sister for her birthday/christmas present a couple of years ago. It's in a 2.25cuft ported enclosure tuned to 31hz that fits like a glove in the back of her Durango. It sounds absolutely amazing on everything that I've ever thrown at it and everyone she shows it off to can't believe it's just a single 12. That's an amazing feat for it's modest price. Port that baby and go, you'll love it!

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still think the enclosure I designed and showed you in our PM's would work great, just put the port cutout on the rear of the enclosure, buy a schedule 20 (I believe) 90 to turn it in the enclosure, and make the overall port length 2.5" shorter to keep the tuning the same. I know I've not answered anything in the PM's since the 11th, but I figured if you were gonna believe me you were going to have to bring it to the rest of the forum. You were DEAD set on the 2.25cuft volume and size of the dimensions at that point. To answer your last questions adding another inch to the depth would still not be enough to utilize a correctly sized slot port and even if it did it would be a tight fit to get the 8's on the top face of the enclosure with the port walls inside. There could also be loading issues due to how close one or two of the subs would be to the internal port opening. On another note it would only add .5" to the depth to get to the full 2.25cuft you were wanting. Of course if you sell them it's a mute point anyway, but if you decided to keep and use them it should be a fine box. 2.15cuft NET tuned to 32hz with 4" x 12.25" Aero. 28" W x 13" H x 17" D