Best Shallow Sub

This is my fist experience with DDaudio and I am happy. Have had it running about a year now and no issues. Personally I think it sounds awesome for shallow subs

 

Sort of the reverse of this, I've been debating installing the ESP underseat storage to have accessible spots to install my amp(s) rather than on the rear wall, also that way could have more space for sub(s) back there.

 

I thaught about that also before doing this but wasn't sure how much the seat would muffle the subs or not and now I'm trying to keep myself from going deeper down the rabbit hole and move my amps and get a box for behind the seat and adding 2 more subs for a total of 4 but that turns into bigger/another sub amp, upgrading electrical and so on.... maybe one day. Good luck with your build. I can honestly say if you have room for the DD shallows they are worth it in my opinion. Rated 600rms and 1800 peak. Mine are in a sealed box with about 2 cubes of air space.

 

I'm doing under seat upfire with the amps amp under the JBL sub cover. I want a stealth install so its unsuspecting but the amps are still easily accessible and have some air flow

 

what did that box cost to make ?

 

I don't remember for the box but to get the box built, install the sub amp, subs and tweeters and tune everything it was a little over $1,000. The box is wood with a fiberglass bottom to save space and has 2 tweeters in the front of the box. Overkill customs in Murfreesboro TN built and installed it

 

Sound like fun, would like to see the finished product. What brand/size subs you going with?

 

Rockville dual 10 box
2 Hertz MPS 250 subs
Audiocontrol epic1500 amp
Lc2i pro, epicenter, t@cotunes harnesses

Box is ugly, but idc.

 

It's not the looks that matter, it's wether or not you like how it sounds plus you said it will be under the seat so it will be out of sight out of mind. I've looked at the epicenter before but never heard one on a system. Do they make enough of a difference to justify the cost for a non-compition system?

 

They just add bass to songs without/with weak bass. You don't need/want it if you listen to stuff that already has it. They are by no means a "competition only" item...more of a solution for lacking bass with certain music types.

 

Ok, thanks

 

Another fan of DD shallow subs. I run a single SL612 in a 1.7 cubic foot ported box behind my seat. With 800w on it, is more than I can handle at full tilt. Can’t imagine what yours might do with a pair of them!

 

Now you've got me intrigued, your running 800 rms to 1 sub? I've been looking at different amps as min are under powered with an older kenwood amp I had laying around pushing around 425 per sub theoretically as it is 850 rms 1700 peak and the subs are rated 600rms and 1800peak. You feel comfortable and confident pushing that much to it and how long have you been running it? I may look for an amp pushing aroud that myself then. Was looking for around 600 a piece but if your confident with your setup i may look a little higher. Do you have any pictures of your box?

 

Sub is 1-ohm fed from a Kicker CXA-800.1. I’m not trying to kill myself with it, but it goes hard.



I do have Gately seat brackets, which made box construction a cinch.





I am overpowering it a bit with the 800W, but I haven’t noticed any issues. I’m definitely more for the SQ than SPL, but I’m not afraid to let it eat when the mood strikes. Zero problems so far. Definitely recommend using the correct equipment when dialing in your amplifiers to ensure you’re not clipping.

We put the same amplifier in my daughter’s new hybrid Corolla on a pair of D2 8” Comp RT subs, so 2-ohm load to the amplifier. That’s supposed to be 600W, and it does pretty good. Not even in the same world as mine, but not bad.

 

That's a nice looking box, sorry to keep bothering you with questions but do you remember the outside dimensions? I'm contemplating building a box behind the seat and gettin2 more just for the fun of it depending on tax season. I'm running my setup at 2 ohm in a sealed box. I may look at the kicker 1200 or 1800 amp.

 

I don’t have dimensions written down, but you’ll need the Gately brackets if you want this kind of space. I think the bottom is 9” deep on mine, and you can see that we didn’t need to do any notching in the baffle for seat clearance. Had we gone full width, we could have been in the 3 cubic foot range.

If I already had a pair of good subwoofers and wanted more, I’d be pretty hard pressed to look at adding a pair of the VO W712 woofers with that CXA-1800.1 you’ve mentioned…. Hoooo boy!!!

https://ddaudio.com/vo-series/woofers/vo-w712/

 

Do remember about how tall the back of the box and the top depth

 

I don’t, but you can figure it out pretty fast by noting a couple landmarks that are in the photos.

In the first photo, you can see that the driver side of the box is maybe 1/2” outboard of the seat mount on the floor. It’s in line with the plastic back wall trim piece. It’s an easy and obvious landmark to push the box up against.
In the second photo, you can see that we built the box just up to the edge of the back wall bracket near the speaker wire inlet.
Top of box is 1” or so below the window rubber.
Bottom of the box is (I’m pretty sure) 9” deep, outside dimension. We did a double baffle and all material is 3/4” MDF.

 

The rule of thumb is 20% more amplifier power than the sub is rated for. In general, the subs are usually in the low 80% efficiency range. So if it's a 400 watt sub - it should be very happy with a 500w (400 is 80% of 500). So when your sub is seeing 500w and it's 80% efficient, it is seeing a full usable 400w after burning off the top 100w to mechanical waste (heat). I'm putting 1000w to two 400w subs so the math would give me 500 per sub to keep with the rule of thumb. As long as you properly cross them over no higher than 55-60hz max <50hz ideally @24db slope you can crank em to the limit! I've never blown a sub and I do indeed crank it up!!

 

Ahh, thank you for that bit of info. This is the 1st real system I've spent real money on and I tend to be on the cautious side of things and am learning new stuff all the time. When I got these subs I had the understanding DD was a quality company but didn't see a whole lot of real world info on these shallow subs at the time so I knew I was under and was happy with the results but from what I've been learning recently I may bump up the power a bit and see what they can really do. Looking at a kicker amp or a DD amp. The dd amp should put them at about 700 a piece. Knowledge is power and thank you again for sharing yours!

 

Minor update on "The Best Shallow Sub". I was curious about what JL had to say after noticing that for 2007-2013 Tundra their Stealthbox offering was a single 13TW5, whereas the 2014-2021 offering is the dual 10TW3 offering. I'm not sure of the exact timelines, but I know the TW3 is the overall "newer" sub (although the 13TW5v2 might be the newest iteration now). JL's technical support responded and said that the reason for the two 10's vs the single 13 is that the two 10's offer more output which tracks, more cone area, more power handling etc. I also asked about the 12TW3 vs 13TW5 debate as I've read a ton of differing opinions/reviews online comparing the two. JL said that while the 12TW3 offers similar output to the 13TW5 (increased xmax of 12TW3), the 13TW5 is a bit more precise overall due to a more advanced motor and suspension.

I've seen a couple folks over on DIYMA touting the Illusion Audio C10/12 as the best SQ sub in existence and I was able to find them for sale online, but seeing as Illusion Audio is now out of business I'm a little leery of buying one only for it to be grey-market, albeit unlikely and is probably just dead stock.

The Wavtech Thinpro 12 still appears to have the best specs on paper but seeing as they're so new the reviews are few and far between.

 

MBEnclosues has had a couple videos out on the wavtech and built 1 box working on another recently and did some measurements with it. Seems impressive so far if it's in your budget.

 

Yeah I was just watching his videos. I'd anecdotally read that the owner/founder of Wavtech was a former Alpine employee and then when M.B. mentioned the Wavtech founder owns the patent on the surround it kind of clicked why it looked so familiar having had Type R's in the past. I'm curious how the Wavtech sounds musically but short of hearing one in person I doubt it'll be awhile until there are enough mixed reviews online highlighting its pros and cons.

 

Don’t take this as combative, but what efficiency are you referencing? Traditional magnet and cone transducers are sub-single-digit efficient at turning power in to work - the rest is turned in to heat.

In reference to blowing a sub, your strategy is good. Speaker drivers typically fail in one of two ways: mechanical failure from overexcursion, or thermal failure when the glue holding the voice coil windings comes undone from heat or you flat out burn up those wires. Depending on the manufacturer, RMS ratings are typically conservative since most people don’t listen to continuous sign wave music. Most people, anyways… Music is dynamic so the sub rarely sees sustained RMS power. Short term music or power is another rating offered by some MFG’s and is more a measure of robustness, and more accurate than peak power.

Add to that the phase angle and TS parameters of a sub+enclosure, and the sub is rarely seeing that full power but at a few points along the spectrum.

So in essence, most subs can handle a little extra juice - partly because they aren’t actually seeing that full power and partly because you aren’t feeding it sine waves.

 

As long as its Clean - Cleaner the Better!

 

Oh, for sure!

 

100% this. People seem to think that an amp will always put out it's rms rating and they will not want to go beyond speaker rms rating. I've always ran 25-50% more amp than sub rms and quality subs have thrived.

If you guys ever want to see how resistance changes in a sub as the cone moves, simply put an dmm on a sub, read resistance and push down on the cone. Youll see how it jumps all over the place...this impacts the load rating the amp sees, thus impacting output...usually lowering it by rasing impedance.

We haven't even touched on voltage input and how 1-2v input difference can impact output. You'll likely experience some voltage drop, also dropping your rms. Lol.

 

Trying to learn more about this stuff and you all blew my mind this morning with info overload! Thank you all for sharing you knowledge!!

 

better to learn now than staring at a smoking sub and trying to google what went wrong