hey...everyone..im new to subwoofer design ...need your expert advice on how to build a ported enclosure for an ALPINE SWR1222D 500W RMS sub. Thanx ramone.
We have to know what kind of car it will go in and what are your max measurements for the box. hopefully either Azn, G3, Ranger or Electro can help you out. electro hasn't been online in a while though.
thanx 4 ur replies.... i can go bigger..i think max is 2CuFt...can i just increase the dimensions of the same box to get 2CuFt..will affect the tuning frequency??
I think that 2.0 cu ft would be a good size for a single 12-inch woofer. Tuning will change a little bit. So here is what I would recommend, at 2 cu ft, we should use a 4-inch port around 12-inches long. Alpine recommends a tuning of around 30 to 32 Hz. For the larger box I'm gonna up that to around 36 HZ. Now if you want it even louder tune it around 38 to 40 Hz My 10-cents worth
spot on ranger. i built a 4.5cuft box tuned at 40hz for a friend with two alpine 12" type-e woofers and they got damn loud.
what exactly do u mean by loud??Is it quantity or quality?? I went through some of the posts here and came across words like LOUD, TIGHT BASS, SICK BASS, SQL, SPL..never quite got the meaning of these.Highly appreciate if u cud explain. for tuning..my buddy who designed the box told me "the lower the freq the better bass u get"..is that right??
What does he mean by "better bass"? If he means that by tuning it lower it will hit lower, then he has no clue and we can stop here. If he means that by tuning it lower the response is smoother, then O.K. Now if really wanted Sound Quality, then we would all have sealed boxes. They have a smooth response and a good transient response. They are excellent Sound Q boxes. Now lets get real, we want more bass. So lets re-tune our box a little. Lets shoot for a little gain at the frequency that we want. As long as we don't get carried away the bass will sound great. Now two things effect tuning, box size (the most important parameter in my opinion) and tuning. Now we wanna hit lower, build a bigger box. Want to impress the guy next to you at the stop light, tune higher. Now as long as we don't get carried away, we will have a good accurate bass. Loud and SPL are basically the same thing. Boxes tuned for competition are usually very large and tuned high. They sound terrible but they win competitions. Tight and SQ, typically mean the the bass is being accurately reproduced. Hope this helps. But seriously, try my size and tuning recommendations. Now if you wanna really impress the guy next to you at the stop light, Increase box size to 2.5 cu ft and use on 6-inch round port around 12-inches long. This box is not too big and the tuning is still within reason. It will still have a really good sound. Read the last post in this thread, hopefully it will explain the relation between size and tuning http://www.caraudiotalk.com/audio-forum/showthread.php?t=3467&page=2 (the 37 should read 27 in the first column)
thanks a lots for the info...appreciate it...decided to make it according to ur specs...2Cuft tuned to 36 Hz with a 4-inch port and 12 inches long.. Is the box volume inclusive of the port volume and device air displacement????
That would probably be OK, but any time we can increase size we should. My Mercury has a 1.85 Cu Ft box tuned to 40Hz (single 12-inch Polk) and it sounds good, but if I had had more room the box would have been bigger. As a box gets smaller the woofer roll off gets higher and higher. At 1.9 Cu Ft for a 12 we are still OK but we are getting close to getting it to small Anyway, if you use a 4-inch diameter port it will need to be around 10-inches long.
I found this link that explains all about speaker break in. http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction
dont worry about speaker break in.. i bang mine right out of the box and havent blown any subs yet. if your box is good and your gains are set right, you will be fine.