Throwing Money Away

[FRANK121]

I am so gosh dam stupid Sorry for the following long post but I don't know where or what to do next?

Starting off back in the late 80's I had a show car for a local big chain stereo store. It spoiled Me and I'll never forget the clarity, the take your breath away chest pounding sound it had. I have always thought the next nice car I get I will try to get close to that sound again? So in My Camaro I had a homemade square box with a 1 cu.ft. volume. It had a Boston Acoustic G212 in it powered with an old Rockford Fosgate T5002 amp.
It sounded ok but didn't have that chest pounding bass that I crave again. The speaker specs where 2-4ohm voice coils wired to 2 ohm, 300rms and 600 watt max. The old amp specs for a 2 ohm bridged load was 500 watts x 1.

Now this is where I start throwing money away ....

I decided to order the dual subwoofer box from ********. I figured I needed to move more air? While I was in the ordering mode I went ahead and ordered a New set of Boston Acoustic G212's to put in the new box. I then thought that My old amp wasn't enough so I ordered a New Rockford Fosgate P700 mono amp. It will power 2-2ohm speakers at 1 ohm @ 700 watts.
Got everything installed and it sounds like more base but doesn't hit as hard as the original 1 speaker? It also has too much rumble? I have everything turned down and it's ok but I was expecting more

So now I'm thinking maybe its the speakers..... So I ordered a New set of Rockford Fosgate P3's and then I thought they need more power so I ordered the Rockford Fosgate P1000 mono amp too. They are on there way!

Now I'm sitting here thinking ... what a dumbass

My original set-up had 1-12" woofer at 500 watts. My new set-up will have 2-12" woofers at 500 watts. Then I notice the RMS rating for the P3's are 600 and I'm only going to be able to give them roughly 500 watts? I have wasted so much money lately trying to cover up my stupidity I don't know which way is up

Can somebody give me an idea of what works and what they would suggest with all the parts I now have?

[lscamaro]

I agree that you're basically just throwing money at the problem without pinpointing the problem first. If I understand correctly, you want the boomy type of bass that hits you in the chest? If so, then going the ******** route was probably the wrong idea. The ******** boxes are sealed so they don't give out the boomy bass you want. You'd need a ported box for that. Also, do you remember the system the shop put in that you liked before? If they were using some type of tuning equipment, that could be it.

[FRANK121]

The system I had before was 2-15" subs behind the rear seat in a sealed enclosure. 2-8" and 2-6" speakers in the rear deck. 2-6" and 2-tweeters in the doors and 2-tweeters on the backside of the rear view mirror. 17 total and all hidden! I wish I still had it!
I went with the sealed enclosure because I want that tight base. But it needs to hit you in the chest not rumble the whole car necessarily? Right now I got that low rumble sound with everything turned down. If you crank the volume up and will hit ok but it still sounds like too much rumble? If I try to turn the gains up it just over powers it all and sounds bad?
I talked to Rockford Fosgate and they said the new P1000 amp on its way should work great with the P3's but if it's not to My liking I probably need a different box. But which box? I want shotgun blasts not thunder
I am looking at replacing the stock speakers and amp also in the near future, but want to wait and get inputs on what actually works well.

[lscamaro]

In my personal opinion, it's the 15" subs that gave you the sound you wanted. And since you had 2, it's going to be a huge difference going down to 12" subs. That and the fact that the old sealed box for the 15s was probably specifically built to specifications to get that in your chest feeling.

Your old system sounds insane!

[BreakingBad]

nah, sub size has nothing to do with the 'chest pounding' feeling. you can create that with 10's. you can just youtube it, tons of people with like 20 or 30 10"s that completely destroy people. given you can get that feeling with a smaller amount of larger subs, but still, size isn't everything

airspace, power and tuning is what gives you the end result.

the prefabbed ******** boxes are just that, prefabbed. they are built to fit camaro trunks and aren't necessarily tuned to meet the requirements of the speaker.

i had an 18" RE XXX on 3,000 watts...sealed enclosure. i didn't necessarily have the 'omg my chest' feeling, but the sound quality was amazing and it got VERY low and 'rumbled' more than it 'pounded', for lack of better terms.

You can easily make 2 12's ground pound. look into RE XXX series or Fi BTL series. fully power both. to avoid requiring a h/o alternator, you may want to grab a Deka G31 and a better under the hood battery as well to avoid power issues.

i personally am debating on putting a system in mine, due to the fact that I want to replace everything including the front/rear stage but i may wait until i jump up to the SS to do that.

[Steve@Subthump]

The type of sub has a lot to do with that too. Someone that wants rumble would be happy with a JL sub for instance, where if you want chest thumping bass then a different sub would be in order. The kicker's for instance are great for that. Also, how you match the sub to the box specs is important. And lastly direction. You might be better suited going with a front fire box. They typically are less rumbly and sound a little cleaner (with less rattles) than a rear fire type of box. So a little bit of all these put together may make a big difference in the end.

[FRANK121]

Steve , I do have the front firing box from you with the 2 New 12" BA G212's in now. It has so much bass I have to turn everything down and it still rumbles more than it hits?

I have 2 Fosgate P3's on the way with a bigger amp but don't know if that is going to solve my problem or not?

The part that doesn't make sense to me is before I had a homemade box that was approx 1 cu.ft. with 1 Old BA G212 powered by an Old Fosgate 2 channel amp that was putting around 500 watts to the 1 woofer. It sounded pretty good and had tight bass, but I wanted something that you feel more and wanted the front firing system that you could see and feel with the seat down.

I will try and take pictures of what I had previously in the trunk of My Camaro that sounded better than what I have now?

I thought about trying polyfill in the current box but was told that will fool the speaker into thinking it has more cubic space?

[Steve@Subthump]

Polyfil would def. make it worse. There are a lot different variables here, but it is possible that the box you had before was smaller than you thought. I know a lot of BA subs were made more for smaller sealed enclosures. So putting one in a larger enclosure would explain a lot. Perhaps the RF's will suit you better once you get them installed.

[drpotter]

There are several factors that could be effecting the performance of your system:
-Try switching the RCA Plugs
-Size of the box you are using (most likely)
-Gauge of the power and ground wire to your amp
-Settings on your amp. Does it have any filters/crossovers. It is best to work on this with a friend so you can sit in the front while they tweak it
-The sound you get from a Sub also has to do with trunk space. The trunk serves as a second enclosure and how the sound bounces off the back/top has a huge impact on sound. I have to adjust settings on my amp for every car I put my sub in because the sound is so different. Subs in different models of cars will always sound different. You have to find the right fit for yours.

Personally I have always preferred the sound/feeling of a sealed box over ported. I purchased a sealed stealth box for a C5 convertible vett from ******** about 8-9 years ago and it is still going strong. Since purchasing I have customized to fit a 2010 CTS 3.6DI and am now working on integrating this same box into my new 2012 convertible SS Camaro. I did have to tweak the box to get the JLw6v2 to fit, as the magnet was too deep. Here is a pic of the beginning stages of this system that is nearly 10 years old! ******** IS AMAZING! You can't beat the quality and price
If your old system was done by a professional, it is going to be hard to re-create that same quality. Installing and tuning audio systems is an art which takes patience, skill, good friends........and a few beers

[Steve@Subthump]

You math is off a little bit. The cube box you had per your measurements is 1.22 cu.ft and our box has exactly what we say it has at 1.109194155 cu.ft. per chamber. There are too many differences here to be blaming this on .1 cu.ft box volume difference. This is like comparing apples and oranges. You are in a different car, with different subs and a different amp. You are not going to achieve exactly the same sound as you had before ever, so I suspect it is something else. How are you getting signal? That can make a difference. Could be a power issue. I know that sending half the power to a sub as what is recommended will tend to create low rumbly bass instead of the hard hitting kind. You almost need to over power within reason to get that harder hitting bass. Half won't cut it. So you may want to experiment on powering just one sub with the full wattage from the amp and note the difference. I have a 900w amp running a single sub if that tells you anything.

[FRANK121]

Added polyfill tonight just to see and it made a difference. About the same punch but tamed the rumble alot! Then the UPS truck showed up with the Fosgate P3's

The P3's sound great and I can't wait until Friday when the new amp should be here. I think they will sound awesome with a little more power

Plus my Daughter is going to be surprised for christmas with the new stuff I didn't use

2 Boston Acoustic G212 Subs.
Rockford Fosgate P700-1 Amp.
Sound Authority Ported Box.

[Shu71]

I am going to throw this outr there from my own experince.
I have an Orion 500W mono amp and Orion 12" sub originally ran off one of the channels on the ******** harness. It had that rumbling bass. I added polyfil to the sub box and it tightened the bass up some but it still rumbled omre than I would prefer. I had a Rockford P1 and a Boss Audio amp in it previous to this and it hit pretty solid and tight but was still looser sounding than when I had it in my previous truck all ran through a Kenwood Excelon head unit. Recently I went with the full amp replacement. I used a JL Audio XD400/4 that Steve and so many on her recommend. I then ran my sub channel through the JL amp on the pass through. All four channels are routed through the ******** harness to the JL and the sub is just pass through. The sound of the sub it amazingly tight now on all music that it should be like 80's rock, hair bands, metal, country and yet can still give you that boomy rumble on rap. I was not aware the JL amp on passthrough to the sub amp would clean up the sound like this. I am very pleased now.

[FRANK121]

I plan on replacing my factory amp this weekend with a Kenwood amp I have. It has a pass thru on it (named line out) and hopefully it clears mine up too, if not I'll be looking for another amp?