hatrix

Ok thanks for the info. I just assumed upgrading to a Fi BL would be an ideal choice. seeing how my current sub is only rated at 800 rms and is seeing more power than is necessary. I know it's not hurting it if my gains are set right, but I figured I'd get audibly more output with a BL.

My SSD is only rated at 800 rms, not the 1200+ my SAX-1200D is throwing out. Older model, bought it like 4 years ago with copper coil option.

I would think that wouldn't be true though.... If I was switching from an SSD 18" to a BTL 18", even on the same power it should be louder. Why? What in particular makes you say that? Better power handling.

I would think that wouldn't be true though.... If I was switching from an SSD 18" to a BTL 18", even on the same power it should be louder. Correct, but not much. Well this will basically be an almost free upgrade. So I might as well get the loudest subwoofer for my money, and if need be push more power to it in the future. I also have a box tuned to 9cuft available, but is probably out of recommended specs for some of the subs.

This is all work in progress of course. I'm in no rush with my fronts. It seems a subwoofer upgrade might be in the works right now.

Currently I have the Alpine Type R SPR-135 5.25" component set, the older model. They are on my Rockford P500-2. They keep up fine with my 18" on most songs, but do fall behind on bass crazy songs. So I was thinking of upgrading to better speakers, as I want more SQ, but still need to be able to keep up with my single SSD 18" on a SAX-1200D SPL wise. I was looking at some pro audio speakers on parts express. I notice there's a lot of setups were people run the 6" selenium woofers along with the ST350 super tweeter. Are these a better setup for SQ than what I have or are they purely SPL speakers ? If I went with those as my mains it would require some fabrication. I don't have place for the giant tweeter and my door only holds a 5.25" speaker so I would have to cut a bigger hole in my door. If this isn't really going to do what I want SQ wise, can someone make some good recommendations on better SQ speakers than what I have ? Or are what I have decent ? Mind you, I only paid like $120 for them.

I would think that wouldn't be true though.... If I was switching from an SSD 18" to a BTL 18", even on the same power it should be louder.

Yea.... It's around 6-7cuft. I don't know exactly, I got it from a trade my friend made. It's not a prefab though. I believe it's tuned to 33hz. Also has a zig zag slot port.

If they sound great, why change them? I don't get what you are trying to accomplish. If you only know by your midrange size then pretend to not know what you think you know. Absolutely terrible way to determine you are lacking in something. Stop using other people's perceptions and use YOUR ears. I am trying to use my ears. I've listened to a lot of tracks where the bass drum is up in the high end of the bass frequencies and is barely audible with my system, such as blessthefall. I just don't know how to improve it. Bigger speakers would seem like an obvious option to improve midbass.

So let run through a few things here. Fill in the blanks Speaker location? Tweeter location? On axis or off axis? Active or Passive? Processing? Maybe altering your current setup will yield better results than just trying to throw a bunch of budget products in its place. A good deal of response change will come from deadeding, if your going to throw another setup together with out making any other changes you can end up with another horrible sounding setup or something that is not up to par. Alot will come from the qauility of install and if Sq is a priority maybe you may benifit from kickpods or moving the location of your current drivers. If you are hell bent on changing your setup you will need to set a budget, and answer alot more questions. Hope that helps. Ok, I appreciate the honestly. My setup is passive running through the stock supplied crossover for the component set to my rockford amp, also stock location for the 5.25" woofers in my doors, while the tweeters are mounted on my apillars aiming at the passenger from the left and driver from the right. I don't have stock tweeter locations in my jeep, it's an old car and making pods for the apillers isn't going to happen as there isn't enough space between the pillers and the windshield to do so. Processsing wise, I'm using my headunits graphic equalizer to lower the upper range and make it not sound so harsh at high volumes. So 8 kilohertz is at -2, 2.5 at -2, 1 at -1, then everything else flat. I think they sound great for how they are setup. With the EQing there is no harshness in the tweeters and the midrange keeps up with the sub quite well in most of the music I listen to. I do KNOW however because of my midrange size that I'm missing a good group of midbass frequencies. There's not much I can do other than customize my stock speaker locations to fit 6.25" drivers and so on or make but the drivers in the kick. What I listen to: mostly metalcore/heavy metal such at memphis may fire and outline in color, along with a lot of electronic music/dubstep such as seven lions, skrillex, xilent, minnesota, etc. I do listen to rap to and always have, but my tastes have changed lately to mostly electronic music (which I also attempt to produce myself) and metalcore/hardcore bands such as sleeping with sirens, outline in color, memphis may fire, blessthefall, of mice and men. So lots of bass drops, tons of drums, lots of high frequency synths and such along with loud bass lines for the electronic music. I listen to dubstep/drum n bass/electro house just about anything besides straight house music, To note, I'm NOT hellbent on changing my current setup, I'm all about running what I got till it dies as long as it does it's job well.

I'm just more so asking what new component sets have matured and shown higher performance compared to what I currently have. As in, are my component set's inferior to an equal value set.

lol I'm plenty aware of your replies. I've been on this site long enough. A general consensus in THIS case would be good, as my car is old and acoustics are going to be a fixed variable I'm looking for the best sound for the money component set that is going around at this time. I plan to dampen my back lift gate soon as that is the main source of my rattles and noise when playing at loud volumes. Eventually my whole car will have some form of dampening on it, but it's going to take a long time.

Ok, will do. Appreciate the reply. I was looking for more like a general consensus on what's a great set of components current going aro

I do realize that they will need their own crossovers, etc. Now that I got your input that they're worse, what would be a good component set to UPGRADE TOO. Also, is it even necessary for me to upgrade my component set ? I want to more sound quality. i run Mackie MR5mkII monitors for my studio (in home). They have no sub. i know what sound SHOULD sound like. As in flat for the monitors, but it's a different story in my car. What are some reasonable upgrades ?

So I used to run my Fi SSD 18 in a 9cuft box tuned to 32hz (or close, it was my first box build and I had some hard times with it). I liked how it sounded, though it was on the high end as far as box recommendations go for an SSD 18. The thing with the box was that it suffered slight water damage and aesthetically wasn't as pleasing as I preferred. I was looking to either paint it or put some sort of vinyl or something over it to improve its looks, but never got around to it. Another thing that was annoying about the box was how LARGE it was lol. It was initially designed for my room, but was moved out to my Jeep Cherokee. I wanted to keep the back seats up, so the only way to position the box was sub up and port up. So the box was very close to the ceiling of my car and made it impossible to see out my back window. I got used to it but I still didn't like how it looked. Picture of the box below in spoiler. Port was very large. I really liked how loud the lows were with the box, but upper range was lacking. So a friend of mine who also does system builds came across someone selling his box that he build for a Sundown SA-18. He traded the guy something for the box and then ended up giving me the box, as it was a MUCH more visually pleasing box, and fit in my car almost perfectly level with my box seats. I also loved the flush mount, and it even has the sundown audio logo on the front side of the box in the carpet. I've been running this box ever since. Not to sure of the specs, I really can't remember. Judging by size I'd say anywhere from 6-7cuft. But the build quality seems good and once I got used to the sound of it, I liked it a lot better than my old box. It has a better overall frequency response, much more responsive on the higher notes, with a little loss in the really low frequencies. I'm curious what it's tuned to.... because it actually has a zig zag type of port inside with flared edges and also angled peices of MDF at the corners to help with air flow. I'm afraid the box might be to small though for my sub. Opinions ? Picture in spoiler. I'm warried that because of the zig zag port design it's actually more around 5.5-6cuft. I don't know. Obviously you can't see the insides and I don't have a picture with the sub out to show. I was considering building a completely new box. I recently upgraded my amps and went from only giving my SSD 200 watts to 1200 watts, I switched to an SAX-1200D. My sub is MUCH louder now that it has good power going to it. It does have high excursion though. Gains are set properly, yadda yadda. Nothing is distorting and it doesn't have any clipping, none that's doing any damage at least as far as I know. Now that it's seeing proper power I really want to build the perfect box for it, one that has a lower profile like my current box, and not like my old box where it almost touches the ceiling. I want it to be just about level with my back seat just as this box, but you can see from the picture theres a lot more room left to play with on the sides of the box. Is it worth building a new box ? I don't like not knowing my boxes specs. It's not a prefab but I didn't do the trade for it and forgot the info on it. I know this question might be hard to answer.

Great, thanks for the info. I'll look into the CCF.

I already priced out some CLD tiles form SDS. They aren't too bad. I think 20 tiles was around $48. I'll probably only have like $150 max right now to spend on deadening the back. I totally understand what you're saying about wanting to always deaden more I know it'll be that way, but as of right now there are really no other rattles that are louder than my regular listening level except the back ones. I think I'm going to try out some CLD tiles on cieling and back llftgate. Not sure how many I should buy however. Then I want to get some sort of dampner to cover JUST the back liftgate in entirety right now. I'll progressivelly sound deaden most of the car as more money comes in. It'll be a long project haha. This car is going to by my main ride for a long while probably. Until it dies, I'm most likely going to be driving it. It may be an 89' but it's still got plenty of life left in it. I don't plan on selling it or anything, so I'm perfectly ok with sound deadening most of the car in time.

I hear you, I'll try and lift off the upholstry on the liftgate and see if any of the metal is rattling. It's pretty solid though and has holes throughout so I'm not to sure if that's it. I'll try to see what I can come up with though. Either way, I want to sound deaden mostly the back area where the sub is located. It's really where all the rattles I care about are.

Thanks, I figured it would be something along those lines. What products specifically from SDS should I be looking at ? Sorry for all the questions

Yea I know, I'm very aware they are coming from inside but when trying to go in the backseat and pinpoint them it's still to hard for me to tell... Mostly because I think it might be behind upholstry. I can't actually see anything rattling, just hear its general area. I don't believe it's my license plate, but I could be wrong. I want to get some deadening done, as I have a TON of ride noise. My jeeps old lol, it's not sealed or sound dampened in the slightest from the factory. With the stereo off, ambient ride noise is pretty high. Even the rattles and squeeks that come from my backseat and plastic are annoying when the stereo is off.

My favorite speaker company by far... I've had a Fi SSD 18" for over 2 years now. Fantastic quality subwoofer. Whoever told you that garbage needs to get their facts straight.

I have a 18" Fi SSD d2 running off of a Powerbass ASA 400.2. The sub is wired at 4 ohms right now and was actually only running on one channel of the amp and getting 100 watts. I just changed it to bridged because I just now realized it supports 4 ohms. It's rated at 400 watts when bridged. My gain when only running it on one channel had to be almost all the way up for the sub. Is this because it was only getting 100 watts ? I still wouldn't think it would have to be turned up so high. I was really worried about clipping but never had any burning smells when playing full blast for extended periods of time. The amp gets kinda hot but never overheats. When it is wired bridged I only need the gain a tad less than half way, maybe half way at the most. It still gets slightly hot but it doesn't seem as hot as before. So I changed it today and was trying to set the gain by ear for now. I had it around half way up and it was fine at a decently loud volume level. I turned my HU up from 48 to 52 and not even 2 seconds after being at 52 the sub just stopped. I checked the fuses and both of the 15A fuses were blown. I tried turning the gain down very slightly and was playing at the HU at 54 volume, even higher, to test and see if they would pop again. Everything was fine for about 20 minutes until I changed songs and they popped again after 15 seconds or so. Is it because the gain is set to high ? The sub is only seeing half of the power it wants, if that as I'm not sure what the amp truly puts out. My lights dim slightly when idling and playing it at max volume. If I'm driving there's practically zero dimming. I also have another amp hooked up for my mids and highs, a Hifonics HFi100.2 but it's not blowing any fuses.

Yep thanks guy. Must be because of a low pre out voltage of only 2.2V, regarding the gain being up. I'm planning on upgrading to a AQ750 when I can.

Thanks haha The game sounds awesome. Hope you have fun !

Figured as much. Leave it at zero ?