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Not impressed with these sundown's, opinions on build


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I got three 8 inch SD-2 subs. They are generally recommended for sealed and Sundown recommends them in .25ft3 to .50ft3 enclosures.

So I put them each in .50 ft3 sealed and powered with 1000 watts and proper gain...etc tuning. Most of the music I listen to is Rock/Metal which of course doesn't have a lot of bass and while this setup sounds accurate enough, it just doesn't have that authoritative punch I'm looking for. Now for Rap it puts out quite a bit of bass but with Rock I can barely feel it really, I have to really crank it up and even then it's a bit lame. Basically I would like to get them to hit harder.

So I have considered trying a ported box. Sundown shows a ported recommend of .50ft3 but nothing else implying these subs will be worth a crap in ported or not and even though I could plan and build a box and tune it to 32hz or something, I'm really concerned about how these subs will sound and if I'll stand to really gain anything worthy. I don't want the bass to muddy or peak too high.

I understand that ported is a lot tricker to get the exact sound one is looking for and this is really something I want to get right the first time. I just need the bass in Rock/Metal to have a bit more impact or to say hit harder....Can I do that with Rock music?

So should I go with some type of ported or go with a smaller .25ft3 enclosure? As it stands in a .50ft3 enclosure I'm very disappointed considering it's 3 subs with 1000 watts.

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I was impressed by the 8's in a sealed enclosure. For a shallow 8" I have never heard anything els in that price range with the same or better output and sound quality. I'm guessing your not sending enough power to the sub's. What amp are you using and what ohm rating is the woofers wired? They are probably only getting 100 watts a piece, with 80db sensitivity, its gonna need some power to pack a punch from a shallow 8.

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I agree with ToNasty they would probably fair better tuned a little higher.

Those subs are best run in a sealed enclosure. I'm sure you can port them, but don't expect big things.

Thanks alaskanzx5 I might just do that
I can recone a sub myself. About a year ago I took 2 12" power acoustic mofos and made one sub. I took the magnet and the motor off of one and j b welded it to the other motor and magnet. I had to wind my own voice coil so it would work. After I was done hooked up to 2 boss 5000w amps. And shattered my back and all my side windows

came to this thread to recommend soundqubed and ct sounds. OP goes with soundstream.

oh lawd.

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Vehicle is a Honda Fit (hatchback) they are placed facing rear but either/or yielded no perceivable difference.

I was impressed by the 8's in a sealed enclosure. For a shallow 8" I have never heard anything els in that price range with the same or better output and sound quality. I'm guessing your not sending enough power to the sub's. What amp are you using and what ohm rating is the woofers wired? They are probably only getting 100 watts a piece, with 80db sensitivity, its gonna need some power to pack a punch from a shallow 8.

I just said I'm powering all three with 1000 watts. The actual output at 14.4 volts is over 1200 watts. Using a mix of parallel, series to achieve 2.67 ohms which draws just over 1000 watts on the amp at 14.4 volts. I'm sure they can handle a lot more power but they still shouldn't be under powered if they are rated at 300 watts each.

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I agree with ToNasty they would probably fair better tuned a little higher.

Those subs are best run in a sealed enclosure. I'm sure you can port them, but don't expect big things.

Ok so do you guys think .25 ft3 would be better? I mean I understand they need some break in time and they are just 8 inch subs but I am running 3 of them with plenty of power and I would at least expect them to not be over powered by my front speakers. With this output I just want to crank up the gain but it's already at 51.7 volts and I see no point in going higher, the amp is under rated so I got a small bit of head room.

I have in the past ran one or sometimes two 12" mainstream brand subs and granted those far outdid these but I just assumed having three 8" subs would at least come close.

Just to re iterate what I said in my OP, these subs do fine with rap and if I listened to much rap I would be happy enough but since I listen to a lot of bands like Pantera/Tool/korn...etc. they tend to fall rather flat with little impact.

So if a ported will not serve me well, I would either like to try smaller or larger but just need some experience on what I can expect from different enclosures. I did put a little polyfill in them but not a lot...how much should I put in them?

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What kind of amp are we talking?

Music quality good?

What kind of deck? And have you paid attention to the tuning of that? (if possible)

My budget setup with 2 10s in a shallow box massively underpowered hits satisfactory on good quality music, but a couple songs (multiples or not) lack in bass. Hurts girls feelings when I say they can't play their music because my system will pick up on the quality too much lol.

Just an idea.

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Reason why the sealed box might sound good on rap but not on rock is because since the airspace is on the larger side, so the qtc(the figure that determines control and damping) is most likely below .707(figure for flattest response and output), if you shrunk your sealed enclosure a bit, it might sound better for rock.

2003 Kia Sorento

Team Subsonic Lows
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2016 Rebuild Under Construction

Best score: 150.2 at 40hz (3k, 2 Custom HDC3 15's) Usaci style(door open, in the kick)

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from my expierience go smaller with the box to get the drum beats to hit harder. not just a little ALOT smaller, i ran some pioneer 12's that wanted 1.5 cubed in a box that was about .75 cu..it didnt have much for anything lower than 50 htz but a good drum solo made all the difference

2 - everest soundlabs bt12

audiopipe d1500

pioneer gmd8601

audiopipe tsqr15

2 - optima yellowtop

pioneer deh 7300bt

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