Can Anyone Please Help Me Design A Sub Box?

If staying sealed, 1.25 cubes, after displacement, would work well. It will give you maximally flat response and require little eq'ing once thrown in your car. Kicker has it's specs for the old school solo's (I had the 8, which sealed, provided surprisingly potent output down to about 35 hz in .25 cubes ) pretty right on. 1-1.25 is all you really need for the 12. Beautiful sounding subs back then, as well as now.


As you noted, watch out with that amp. I have it. It could obliterate the sub if setup incorrectly :blowup:


B)

 

I had the my Tantrum 1200.1 powering my 8" solo, which handles less power than the 12. You just need to set the gains accordingly. 1400-1500 wrms from that amp will surely kill that sub quick. Just scale back, considerably. If your HU has a sub out level control, scale that back, also. You can never have too much power available, you can only use too much power. The amp gains, and the HU sub output level, are your friend...don't forget to check for other bass affecting eq functions on your HU, too. Set all of them to flat before adjusting the gains and sub out level. You shouldn't need any type of boost


BTW, 1.25 cubic feet gives the sub system a Q of ~.7. If you make the box much smaller, you're going to give response an unnatural boost (in the upper bass region). This may or may not be desirable.

 

Box shape won't matter. You can make it octagonal, if you like :lol: In fact, if you make this box "look" better than you old one, but don't like the sound of the 1.25, just use some blocks of wood, books, etc...to decrease the volume until you achieve what you are looking for. You could even build the box a bit bigger (1.5-1.75 cu. ft. giving better low bass extension at the expense of lower power handling) and use the same method until you achieve the desired frequency response. If ya' use t-nuts, removing the sub every time you want to decrease internal volume will be a snap. Just a thought...

 

Driver Properties
Name: S-12-4a
Type: Standard one-way driver
Company: Kicker
Comment: Solo-Baric series
No. of Drivers = 1
Fs = 16.7 Hz
Qms = 7.49
Vas = 231.2 liters
Mms = 4.885 oz
Xmax = 8.51 mm
Sd = 79.21 sq.in
Qes = 0.327
Re = 3.38 ohms
Le = 0.589 mH
Z = 4 ohms
BL = 2.79 lb/A
Pe = 600 watts
Qts = 0.313
1-W SPL = 87.7 dB
-----------------------------------------
Box Properties
Name: HO
Type: Closed Box
Shape: Prism, square
Vb = 0.466 cu.ft
Qtc = 0.869
QL = 7
F3 = 57.57 Hz
Fill = heavy

----------------------------------------

Box Properties
Name: HO 2
Type: Closed Box
Shape: Prism, square
Vb = 0.466 cu.ft
Qtc = 1.117
QL = 7
F3 = 56.04 Hz
Fill = none
-----------------------------------------

Box Properties
Name: Sq1
Type: Closed Box
Shape: Prism, square (optimum)
Vb = 1.503 cu.ft
Qtc = 0.707
QL = 6.907
F3 = 43.38 Hz
Fill = none


-----------------------------------------


Box Properties
Name: Sq2
Type: Closed Box
Shape: Prism, square (optimum)
Vb = 1.172 cu.ft
Qtc = 0.707
QL = 6.957
F3 = 46.61 Hz
Fill = normal

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Top 2 are High out Put, one with Heavy Poly Fill and one with None

the Bottom 2 are Sound Quality Boxes (qtc of .707) on with Typical Fill and one with none

 

Well, two things that are worth noting, in terms of "what to look at when designing a box":

One hell of a low Qts.
One hell of a low Fs.

This is the essence of an isobaric pair.. er, I mean solobaric.

They doubled the motor strength (or increased it anyway) compared to a normal sub. When your motor strength increases, your Qts decreases... smaller Qts indicates higher motor strength.

They also doubled the moving mass of the sub (or increased it anyway) compared to a normal sub. When you increase your moving mass, you decrease efficiency - but of course, you've increased motor strength, which does compensate at least to some degree. When you increase moving mass, you drive down the resonant frequency. Hence, the very low Fs.

There are 2 trains of thought regarding "what do I look it, to determine if my sub is most suitable in sealed vs. ported?"

One train of thought is to look at Qts. A Qts around 0.45 or so is considered the middle-ground... the sub working equally well sealed or ported (or you might look at it as being slightly compromised in each ). A lower Qts would indicate best suitability in a ported box. A higher Qts would indicate best suitability in a sealed box.
By virtue of its Qts, you'd reach the conclusion that you should stick the sub in a ported box and nothing else.

Another calculated number is EBP (you might have seen it in WinISD?). It takes into account both Qts and Fs. Because the Fs is so low, it really compensates for the ultra-low Qts, as far as the EBP score goes. Where the Qts alone indicates "Don't even think about sealed!", the calculated EBP works out to 53, which actually is just about the exact middle-ground, indicating suitability in either ported or sealed.

Personally, with all that motor strength - I wouldn't seal it, either. I'd port it.
I think in this case, due to the extreme Qts and Fs values we are looking at here, the EBP might be a little optimistic of a calculation.

 

not according to Both winISD and BassBox Pro


Both recommend NO VENTED box

as Does Kicker, Kicker infact will not warranty the old Solo's that were places in Ported box;s if i recall correctly

 

Well, possibly their concern is something unrelated to T/S specs...
Perhaps the cone used on that generation of Solobaric could not withstand the additional forces inside the enclosure that a ported box presents... but honestly, that almost seems ludicrous - particularly with a cone that's got a higher mass to it - you'd think thicker cone = stronger cone. Likely that's true.

Perhaps it's related more to some aspect of it's motor geometry and excursion concerns... being at risk for overexcursion damage that can happen when you tune a box relatively highly and then play ultra-low frequencies... but then again, every sub suffers this.

Perhaps it's just a marketing concern...
When Kicker first came out with the Solobaric, it was marketed as using an uber-tiny enclosure, and for being a more SQ-oriented sub.
"Small box subs" were a new thing back then... the Solobaric wanted to prove that it was "like an isobaric, our enclosure is so small".
A ported box is larger than a sealed box... I didn't model it up, but possibly it's disproportionately larger than the sealed box Kicker recommends... which easily could be MUCH smaller than this sub's natural Qtc=0.707 enclosure - because the Fs is so low.

If this is true - I'd call or Email kicker's tech department (or possibly Polecat on CAF) to find out "Why?"
If it's something real - they should be able to tell you very easily and clearly.

 

you missed my Other Point, In Bassbox Pro, "Meter" in that meter is a Blue Line, on one side is says Vented, on the other it says Sealed,

when you slect the Solo12A the bar is ALL THE WAY to the sealed side, meaning the sub is not recommended, BASED ON TS, to use a ported box

What Calulation it used for this I dont know, but it is been very accurate for me...

 

No, that was not PoleCat


Pole Cat is Tracy (damnit I forgot how to spell his last name )


Anyway the Sub does not really displace enough to be a factor either way in sealed apps, a Change of 25% or more in oftened need to make a audible perforamce inpack