Car sub for home use

[Sunil Banga]

Hi.
I'm completely new to this whole diy scene and I may get laughed at but here goes!!
I am wanting to know whether or not it would be possible to use a car subwoofer for a home subwoofer (mainly music orientated). The sub I have in mind is the JBL W15 GTI the specs of which are below.

• Die-cast vented basket

• Kevlar®-impregnated paper woofer cone

• Nitrile-butylene surround

• Power handling RMS: 800 watts

• Power handling Peak: 5,000 watts

• Mounting depth: 10-1/4"

• Cut-out diameter: 13-7/8"

• Dual 6-ohm voice coils

• Sensitivity: 92dB

Where can I find the enclosure diameters for these specifications and what kind of amplifier should I be looking to use, bearing in mind this subs capabilities.

Thank you in advance for your responses.
Sunil

[richie00boy]

Hi fellow UK DIYer

Unfortunately those parameters are meaningless and just sales nonsense. You need to know the Thiele-Small parameters. See if you can find those out, JBL are usually quite good at listing those kind of things.

I will say that you can have great success with car subs in the home.

[Dave Jones]

Google.

http://international.jbl.com/car/GTi...nguage=ENGLISH

[Sunil Banga]

Cheers Dave. Anyone know how to work with these parameters?

[simon5]

You can enter them in WinISD Pro or use online calculators like ISD-online.

http://www.linearteam.dk/default.aspx?pageid=winisdpro

http://www.linearteam.dk/default.aspx?pageid=newdriver

[richie00boy]

WinISD from http://www.linearteam.dk is the standard recommended package. If thats too scary for you, you could try my spreadsheet

Bear in mind that for a high excursion 12 inch driver you should be looking at a 100mm diameter round vent, tuned lower than 30Hz or wind noise will be high. You run the risk of unloading the cone with higher tuning. Lower tuning and watch out for how massive the vent length gets!

[Sunil Banga]

I feel confused!! I got WinISD to work but I'm not sure how to get the optimum curve. I'm not sure about the differences between a sealed and ported box. I'm looking to tune the sub to try and preserve as much output as possible when droppin down to and past 20hz. However I also want to avoid any slowness so the sub can keep up to any music I throw at it.
Sorry for my general lack of knowledge but I'm a quick learner!!

[simon5]

"Slowness" is usually associated with big group delay with a subwoofer tuned too high, to avoid that, I recommend tuning at or under 20 Hz.

But then, some people find "tightness" is achieved with a big bump in the FR response with a high Qtc box to have too much midbass and less real bass.

If you want to preserve as much output down to 20 Hz, then you should go vented. If you tune at 20 Hz or lower, you will not have group delay problems.

You must include room gain into your calculations, or your subwoofer will be too much powerful down low.

Here's a room gain curve that I like to use to know how much output I can afford to lose in WinISD that this curve will compensate for.

It's at the page 5 of this document :
http://www.acoustic-visions.com/~aco...entedshiva.pdf

Good luck!

[syncmasterdiy]

yeah even i wanted to know that ....

I want to use pioneer car subs for home purpose...what i am worried about is that can car subs be used for home purpose?

[simon5]

It depends on the car subwoofer.

If it's built in a box specifically for a car, probably it will not sound good in a house.

But, you can make another box suited for home use, then most car subwoofers can be used, if they aren't too cheap.