2 Alpine 12's in a sealed box, Hifonics amp = Sounds like ass

[Jkm3141]

I am completely stumped on this one. To start off, I feel I have a decent understanding of ported enclosures and basically every ported box I have built on my own has sounded good. However, Whenever I build a sealed box for a friend, I am NEVER satisfied with the sound quality.

Here's a little back story on what I am doing. A good friend of mine has two RF Punch 12's (I would hope P2's, but considering he paid about 400 for the whole system (box, amp and two speakers) new at best buy they are probably P1's. He has been wanting more bass for the longest time, however could not justify buying my old Audiopipe 15's when I was selling them. Another friend of mine had two older Alpine Type-R 12's he used to use. AFAIK they are in perfect working order, minus a small hole in the dust cup on one of the alpines (has been repaired decently, I do not see that affecting SQ at all).

The logical thought for me was to get the two Alpine 12's, build a nice ported box for my friend and find him a deal on a legit 1000W amp somewhere. That should give him a huge improvement over his sealed Punch's. Yesterday I picked up the Alpines from my friend, I pulled them out of the sealed box they were in, double checked the wiring, as I had no clue how this box was internally wired three years ago. Now I assume, and this is confirmed by everything I read, that Alpine Type R's are Dual 4 ohm coils.

Tonight I went to a parking lot (damned neighbors hate me), and with the 12's sealed box sitting in my backseat (as the trunk is full of a LOT of BTL box and I cant really remove that by myself) I wired them to my Hifonics 2000W amp at 1 ohm, and proceeded to tune a system like I normally would (set the gain at zero and adjust up...). I wanted to test the speakers, and have heard two sealed Type-R's before and they can get quite loud in a sealed enclosure. However, no matter what I set the gain at, the SQ is just terrible, and I get very little beat out of the setup. Unless I somehow had it wired at 8 ohm instead of 1 I do not see how it could sound so bad. I wired each speaker down to 2 ohm (Pos to Pos, Neg to Neg) and then connected the Pos and Neg coming off the two speakers in parallel to the amp + and -. I also re wired it to the way Hifonics recommends you wire two 2 ohm speakers to the amp (4 terminals, kinda hard to explain at 3AM).

I guess what I am asking is, How critical in the car is the placement of a sealed enclosure? I have a station wagon, so the airspace of the car is obviously very well connected, and I assume that having the subs in the back seat wont affect it nearly as much as I am seeing.

Tomorrow I will get together with the friend with the car these will be installed in when I get all issues worked out. I will throw them in his trunk and wire it to his current amp, and if these arnt at least as good as his Punch's, I will really be confused.

God I feel like a moron, I cant wire in the most common simple setup of two sealed cheap 12's, but I have no problem dealing with my BTL... ???? :01nocomment8so: Ported FTMFW

- John

[Tek]

when I move around MY sealed box it makes a pretty big difference actually. Of course mine isn't in the backseat though.

[BanginOnABudget]

type r? sealed box? hifonics amp? which one of these things dosent belong! time for ported. your box is most likely too small.

yeah i skim read, i dont have a very tight attention span.

[chewie]

if you have a mulit meter check the final ohm load.. you might have switched the positive and negative around on one of the woofers.

rewire it.. take all positives to the postiive on the amp and all negatives to the negative on the amp.

[chewie]

do they share a common chamber?

[Cr@sh]

Yea, Im not reading all that either, sealed on type r's yuck and in the backseat facing you is even worse. The amp has nothing to do with why it sounds bad.

[98crewcab]

Maybe I mis understood this part, but I think you mentioned ALL type r's are dual 4ohm? Mine are actually dual 2 ohm. they have both......and I think it may be the same as said above. too small an enclosure maybe? Size of sealed enclosure? cant say I ever had a good experience with a SEALED type r. tried a couple times with wifes car and type r's, eventually went with ported. sounded better ported with 1 sub than 2 sealed.

Edited September 24, 2009 by 98crewcab

[Sanitarium]

Get a long piece of speaker wire and set the box in someone else's trunk and see what it sounds like then.

[aznboi3644]

usually throwing subs on the backseat makes for an ass like sound

[VistaV6]

My 200 dollar walmart set up was/is louder (or just about damn equal) than my 1300 dollar jl audio/alpine set up...

2 10's PORTED boxes tuned at 57 hertz on 500 class Z watts

vs

2 12's W3s in SEALED box on 1k MRPM1000 class D watts.

Edited September 25, 2009 by VistaV6