2 ported or 4 sealed? in a car

[Ground Zero]

Hi

For the bass i advice you the one sub with a ported box because the kicker l7 15" as a little Xmax 16.3 for a sealded box

And a L7 15" is good enough for bass and quality sound but the ported box must have good construction

So the 4.5cu/feet in the manual seems to be a good compromise, but the better things is to simulate the speaker with the sotware Leap LinearX or Winisd pro...that can be help you to have and idea of the sound résult,
but kicker have not all Thiele-small parameters

Or you can also use a passive membrane to replace the air port of the box but Kicker don't have it

recess the problem in a car is the parasite noise, vibration so the best thing to do at start is the complete Insulation of the car's with a good wiring
After that you found enough one Subwoofer

[amc32]

A few points I hope can be cleared up

1: Not all ported enclosures are un-musical, yes sealed enclosures have less phase shift but that doesnt make them superior to ported enclosures.Sealed enclosures require higher x-max in order to acheive low fq and by default mecanical distortion. The fidielity of a woofer can not be measured with instruments....

2: Most music today that is cranked is "one note". Recording studios are not mastering and/or tweeking the recordings, because they know the end user is just going to rip it,i-pod it,burn it,and share it with a friend. As for the kickers thats were they excell. They have decent SQ but only in HUGE sealed cabniets and their x-max is limited so there goes the power handling before the spider rips off the VC,trust me I've seen TONS of them.A L7 ported is what kicker reccomends because they know this is the best alignment for their woofers. Power handling is linear all the way to Fb and excursion is reduced.

3: Anyone forget that this was his work truck and not his personal car. It seem we have because we kept referring to it as a car. It his work truck 10batteries,3 alternators,portable mig,tig welders,power invertors. Seems like some of us that were posting comments were never installlers If we were we would are know in our minds what this truck looks like. What a pain the *** it would be to completly disassemble just to add damping material. For what! The steel on this truck should be thicker than any car, He never said he owned the work truck so whats the use of putting several hundred of dollars in sound damping in a truck you don't own or worse one day may no longer with.

Take the BROC LESNAR approach. Find subwoofers that will give you the most output vs cubic space.Take some of that spare power you have under the hood. Then beat your competion into submission!

[Les Hudson]

What kind of car is this and what is your total box volume ? I have a 300zx that hits 153.0 db and it only has 1 -12" woofer but the box is 4.1 cubic ft.
Les Hudson

[scampo77]

thanks for the info it really did clear a bunch up i have gone to great lengths to sound deaden this thing i have doubled up every where in the cab with that tar on one side aluminim on the side roofing stuff. it is a cab over truck which means that the entire cabs tips on a big hinge and the engine sits underneath where the seats are. i even welded in plates of steel under the floor to keep engine noise and engine heat out.

this is my truck and i plan on having it for a long time and using it everyday. i see a lot of people put crazy modifications into cars that never get used. this is very much the opposite. the alternators that i have now dont effect my fuel milage in any way and i hardly notice them and i have room for a bunch more if need be. i have found old amps and subs on ebay and this DIY community has helped me fix them (thanks everyone). this work truck of mine seemed to have all of the expensive parts already so making the leap to jamming it full of speakers and amps was easy.

it looks like i will be moving ahead with the install of the 2 kicker 12 L7s in ported boxes that are each 6.2 cubic feet , DIY member "GM" helped come up with these specs using winISD. here is the link to his math

building my 1st ported box,kicker L7

i plan to figure out these programs and do some experimenting with some virtual boxes before i commit to these specs

thanks everyone for helping me and commenting on my threads with real words and real solutions. please keep it coming i am learning a lot and so far im the coolest guy at the truck stop

if anyone would like to google a picture of the truck it is a GMC T7500

[Ground Zero]

Ok if you are not sure with yout Kiker L7

Take a subwoofer Ground Zero GZUP15XQ "sound quality" i have one in my car

:: Ground Zero :: Subwoofer / GZPW 15XQ

There is just an error the xmax is 75mm not 50mm

The result is a deep bass and accurate but you can do show car with it if you want and the quality is here

[scampo77]

how much are speakers like that worth?

[Ground Zero]

how much are speakers like that worth?

This GZ sub cost me 900 euros because the dealer give me a price but généraly the price is 1000 euros

I have also an other subs Ground Zero, The GzuW12X and it also hit hard with sound quality i pay it 400 euros

[Fuzzymuff]

Realm of Excursion

[BP1Fanatic]

Originally Posted by Ground Zero

Hi
For the bass i advice you the one sub with a ported box because the kicker l7 15" as a little Xmax 16.3 for a sealded box

And a L7 15" is good enough for bass and quality sound but the ported box must have good construction

So the 4.5cu/feet in the manual seems to be a good compromise, but the better things is to simulate the speaker with the sotware Leap LinearX or Winisd pro...that can be help you to have and idea of the sound résult,
but kicker have not all Thiele-small parameters

http://kicker.com/sites/default/files/L7_0.pdf
Telstra BigBlog -

[jol50]

I would run two ported. Why? Because if you tune them somewhat low say to hit 30Hz hard, it will carry a lot more distance than 50-60Hx does. It may sound better as the small sealed tend to hump up in response and the low ported will not. I would not know without modeling them of course, but in general I've had better luck with SQ and low bass output doing that with average subs.