I have been trying to decide whether or not to go smaller with my box build. All of my buddies that are a little old school when it comes to spl say big boxes are the way to go... But when talking to people I compete with such as TJ in his Yugo doing 52's he says go smaller. My current box is 3.68 cubic feet after driver displacement, but not port displacement. 69 sq inches of port tuned to 42 hz. The woofers are two TC sounds OEM 10".

I am thinking of shrinking down to a triple front baffled, double walled 2.4 cubic feet gross, and using 2 4" aero-ports and slightly raising my tuning as the change in box orientation changed my resonant, and building the wall (in the trunk not removing any seats will raise my resonant as well). Is going smaller in this case going to help me? Or is this just another one of those try it and find out spl scenario's?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, the vehicle is a 98 Dodge neon, and current resonant is 51 hz before wall.

The basis for the two arguments:

Going Big - A more efficient enclosure; gain more output from excursion for a given input amount of power.

Going Small - Excursion is minimized, allowing potential damage from over-excursion to be minimized. Can usually pass a lot more current through the coil mechanically, though the thermal limits are slightly lower.

So if you're near your mechanical limits and have power on tap, you might want to go smaller. But if the opposite is the case, then going bigger can prove beneficial for you.

The basis for the two arguments:

Going Big - A more efficient enclosure; gain more output from excursion for a given input amount of power.

Going Small - Excursion is minimized, allowing potential damage from over-excursion to be minimized. Can usually pass a lot more current through the coil mechanically, though the thermal limits are slightly lower.

So if you're near your mechanical limits and have power on tap, you might want to go smaller. But if the opposite is the case, then going bigger can prove beneficial for you.

Thermally I am already getting there (when clipping slightly the vc glue smell is evident although no smoke), as far as mechanically I think there is still more to be had during a burp.. And this is off of one amplifier... Going to two and should be increasing power by ~133% of where I am at right now... So should I build this box and meter them both and see where I am at. I am already very much so over the maximum recommended ported size enclosure for my pair of subs by about 3x...