I need help building a subwoofer

joethemole said:

when you guys find "boxes"/encloseurs for your subs, do you use specific ones, or do you just find a box that looks nice and put it in? cause are you considering the resonant lengths and all the other physics crap?

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If you want your new subwoofer to sound like complete garbage, you could skip "all the other physics crap". I wouldn't recommend it however, as the enclosure design/build is THE most important part of a setup/build.

I can't vouch for everyone, but that's my opinion. So yes, I personally calculate the correct volumes, port lengths, and other variables when building an enclosure.

Welcome to the forums by the way

mr.c is right. my friend has the same sub i have because he liked it so much when he heard it in my car (memphis PR 250w), he got a 1cuft tube enclosure for it and it wasn't loud at all, didn't even make the seats shake much. so he ported it, it sounded like crap. Now for the physics stuff. since the box was small and was ported with a short port, the sub was basicly experiance freeair, although giving it the rated power, the sub coil was not properly coiling itself at this point and within a few min. of horrible sounds, it overheated and the coil melted. now i personlly put 400w on this sub and it worked fine.. just goes to show a sub can make a good sub sound bad and die, and a good box can make a cheap sub sound great.

spookeboom said:

i sugest that you put a capasitor inline of your amp to save your power supply
with a 1000w sub and under powering it,
will put a lot of strain on the amp
i recommend using at least a 1/2 farad
prob 1 farad capasitor will be best though

good work on the sub box
(sugestion use 3/4 or 1in MDF when building a sub box no matter what
wattage the sub is )

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both the sub and amp are underrated. the amp is what provides the power and the sub has no affect on that. Adding a cap will do little to nothing in this situation and in many cases little to car audio as well. You should always put ur money into upgrading the actual power source and battery before adding caps.

Wow, haven't been on in a while.

First off, yes I am in the market for a 5.1 amp, as in 6 channels. I don't really plan to have a high powered amp for the sub, a 5.1 amp that outputs 200w-250w rms on the .1 channel will suffice, seeing as the Kenwood sub is actually rated at 250w rms.

Also, When i had the Kenwood driver within 2 feet of my monitor, it caused distortion. But no matter, as it is 5 feet away from the screen in the corner of the room, 7 feet away from my tower.

And last, I built my subwoofer enclosure using precise measurements for internal volume and external dimensions, which i calculated using online formulas. (Just do a Google).
My enlosure is within a 3% error field for internal volume, whereas up to 20% would be acceptable (Although not desireable).