Car subs normally have a sensitivity of around 85db. So, it would take 5-6 of them to equal a good 1x12 bass cabinet.
That's why nobody does this.
That's why nobody does this.
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Car Subwoofer for a Low-End Cab?
- Thread starter Ccarson26
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are you playing hip hop? or rap? if you put a limiter on them and only us it for a basic thump.. what can it hurt.. as long as it's parallel to the bass sound you should could be good.. but you may have a timing issue.. or phase issue.. it'd need it's own amp though.. and lots of power.. plus a crossover.. is it worth the hassel?
I'm sure I could build a pedal to emulate a license plate rattling on a 1995 Sukuzi Samurai. Probably for cheaper than a car sub
<edit> OP you probably don't deserve being poopie on as much are you are. It's an idea, and to be fair, for the inexperienced, not a bad one.
... but it won't work
<edit> OP you probably don't deserve being poopie on as much are you are. It's an idea, and to be fair, for the inexperienced, not a bad one.
... but it won't work
I would like for you to try it. I thought about this same exact thing today. I wanted a 10" powered subwoofer in its box that's designed for it. I thought I would run the XLR direct out of my TC head into the powered sub. My idea is to NOT crank it up so as to sound like that obligatory crappy car next to you but rather to just maybe make me 'feel' something at a fair6low volume. I dont see how me playing my bass at home is gonna smoke that sub and have it meltdown in my music room. It would be hanging off my amp head at line level while my new Hartke 2x10 takes care of business, at low volumes as well. People have subs at home for watching movies. The soundtrack to the movies has a bass guitar or synth bass in it. What's the difference if I watch a movie through it or play my bass thru it, at line level low volumes. The XLR coming out of my amp head has the EQ'd high pass filter already applied to it. Let us know how/if it worked out for you. If I buy it for like $150.00 and think it sounds like mudd, I will just give it to my girlfriend to use when she watches the weather report on Telemundo.
Don’t waste your money. It’ll sound just awful.
I’ve had a couple amps someone had swapped in a car sub, because decent car audio subs are cheaper than low end bass speakers and some pawn shops can’t tell.
But car subs are low efficiency and won’t ever sound good. They’re designed for pre-produced music and similar sized speakers running at much lower wattage. They’re designed to pair with mod and high frequency drivers that are designed to fill the inside of a small enclosed space. It’ll sound very cheap and plasticy. Unless the other “high frequency” speakers on your bass rig are getting less than 1/10th the wattage they’ll overwhelm the sub also but probably not enough to hide how awful it sounds.
For example a car sub rated at 200 watts won’t sound good with a mid/high driver using over about 15 watts max. If you pair it with a 200 watt bass speaker the sub performance will be laughable at best.
If you really want a subwoofer for the bass cabs you pictured, get a high powered PA sub. The bass will be probably be overpowering mud, but you’ll have plenty of lows.
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I have an old Kicker 10" truckbox in a standard cab truck. The box looks pretty much like the image below, except I bought one with the upgraded silver CVR driver that has a duel voice coil run in parallel for 2 ohms. I am driving it with a Kicker KX700.5 which is a five channel amp that puts out 400W at 2 ohms on the sub channel, and 80Wx4 for the front and rear channels.
This little sub is plenty loud and sounds nice and balanced in my little truck. Of course it won't produce hip hop levels of bass. But what do you expect from a single 10".
Before I had the sub installed in my truck, I hooked it up in my house and it sounded pathetic and weak. The difference between the sound in my truck and in my living room was drastic, if not shocking.
Here are response plots for various size ported cabs:
Not too impressive.
Here is the sealed response plots for two different size cabs:
Also not too impressive.
The response is not flat, the SPL is not loud, and the cabs do not play very deep. But put them in a little truck and apply a bit of corrective EQ, and the system sounds way nicer than it does without a sub.
You would need a bunch of these and a lot of power to make any noticeable difference with your Ampeg rig, and they would sound awful.
This little sub is plenty loud and sounds nice and balanced in my little truck. Of course it won't produce hip hop levels of bass. But what do you expect from a single 10".
Before I had the sub installed in my truck, I hooked it up in my house and it sounded pathetic and weak. The difference between the sound in my truck and in my living room was drastic, if not shocking.
Here are response plots for various size ported cabs:
Not too impressive.
Here is the sealed response plots for two different size cabs:
Also not too impressive.
The response is not flat, the SPL is not loud, and the cabs do not play very deep. But put them in a little truck and apply a bit of corrective EQ, and the system sounds way nicer than it does without a sub.
You would need a bunch of these and a lot of power to make any noticeable difference with your Ampeg rig, and they would sound awful.
You want to use a car sub to boost lows on your rig. (Which won’t work)
But then you want to limit the sub frequencies out of the sub?
Nope
.It would be fun if it worked but it doesn’t work.
Music production and reproduction are two totally different things. While some car subs will work well at high power, the signal from a bass guitar amplifier when slapping or picking/plucking aggressively can kill a speaker designed for reproduction. Look at the driver- the vast majority used for reproduction have a foam or rubber suspension where the cone attaches to the frame and instrument drivers have a pleated edge that makes the suspension stiffer, to resist the largest impulses.
Another thing that makes these different- the signal going to a car sub has been recorded, processed, mixed and the dynamics have been removed in the process, to allow the music to 'sound' loud and get peoples' attention. Unless you use a compressor and kill all dynamics, your bass will make a car sub very unhappy.
The tuning frequency of a car subwoofer is far lower than what is used for bass guitar- the low B string may be tuned to about 32Hz, but what we hear is mainly the first harmonic, at twice that frequency (unless picked or plucked at the string's midpoint).
Edited to add-
It's great to have a rig that sounds like a good recording, but that only works for practice time, not a gig.
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My interpretation of the specs is once they start rolling off, the response drops like a brick. That also probably means the drivers unload and start jumping around without any sort of control. I would highly suggest that you run a HPF around 32hz or so to protect the drivers.
You're probably not going to make a lot of friends putting out such massive lows, but as long as your happy, right? You've been sort of warned of the likely consequences, but you are certainly free to learn from you own experiences, instead of the mistake of others
.
Good luck!
The response drops off at 12dB/octave unless the box is an iso-bandpass or, as you wrote, there's a HP filter ahead of the amp. There's no way to make a passive 'brick wall' filter that won't totally screw up the sound, waste power and potentially damage the amp.
Yeah- with serious low end, the sound guy is gonna be SOOOO happy.
The DI output should be full range, not high passed. Also, high passed signal is exactly the opposite of what you want to feed a subwoofer.
Home theater speakers (including subs, and car speakers as well) are generally not designed to respond the the transients, of live, uncompressed musical instruments. "Tearing to shreds" may be a bit dramatic, but these types or speakers are likely to fair quite poorly compared to speakers that were purpose designed to replay live music. Anyone who's mentioned the fact that these types of subs rely on being jammed into a tight corner for much of their bass reproduction would be spot on as well. The energy coming out of these small little speaker boxes would get swallowed whole sitting next to an ampeg 4x10 HLF, let alone that old school pro version.
If you are insisting on getting maximum sub bass out of something that isn't really purpose built for it, you should be looking at a studio sub, which will be louder, deeper, and meant to respond to uncompressed transients. My BIL has an ADAM sub that has a 21" woofer i think, in his studio. It was unbelievably expensive. But it is the most obscene bass you'll ever hear or feel in your life. The advertisement which he kept says something like "Rivaled only by mother nature" with a big picture of a lightning bolt. And that doesn't seem hyperbolic in the least. His room is also probably half the size necessary to really utilize a sub that big so it almost never gets turned on other than for you know what's and giggles.
There are many other, much more sensible studio subs that might work OK, but those will still cost you more than a thousand bucks easily.
I think this where your thinking goes awry. First of all, have you really looked at ALL PA subs? And have you listened to very many? There are some pretty good subs in the SR segment of the market, both powered and unpowered. Admittedly, the specs on home theater and car stereo claim better LF response, but you need to compare more than the dubious frequency response and power handling claims. Sensitivity, mechanical and thermal power-handling limits...there are so many reasons this doesn't work.
But backing up a step -- what deficiency is it about your bass rig that you are trying address? My perception is that you are seeking more low-frequency extension; IME, there is little in the octave between 20 - 40 Hz that's useful or desirable to amplify in a band setting. But if you are determined to go the route of using car stereo or home entertainment subs, I recommend getting about 10 or 12 for each of those bass cabs shown in your picture. In properly designed enclosures. And be sure to provide adequate power -- real power amps, not car stereo power. And a decent active crossover to band limit the subs to the intended range.
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- Feb 12, 2006
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The sub output should be both high passed and low passed.
Agreed, most real pro audio subs will destroy a car sub because they use real specs, real performance, and don’t rely on cabin gain for their successful application.
I am not replacing my bass cabs.. I want to add some bottom end that I am not getting with my Ampeg 1x15..
OP, car subs are optimized for sealed boxes and cabin gain inside the vehicle.
This means they are choosing Small+Low from the Small-Low-Loud parameters.
You can pick any two, but not all in the same box.
As shown above, many response curves are spiked... i.e. "one note wonders".
Trying to use a car sub higher than 100 Hz is fruitless.
The Eminence LAB12 subwoofer falls into this category, and I own several along with a number of car subs.
They are very useful below 100 Hz for a solo keyboard that produces a true C0 frequency.
For a bassist, this is a mud-maker in a live environment.
Biamping is mandatory.
This means they are choosing Small+Low from the Small-Low-Loud parameters.
You can pick any two, but not all in the same box.
As shown above, many response curves are spiked... i.e. "one note wonders".
Trying to use a car sub higher than 100 Hz is fruitless.
The Eminence LAB12 subwoofer falls into this category, and I own several along with a number of car subs.
They are very useful below 100 Hz for a solo keyboard that produces a true C0 frequency.
For a bassist, this is a mud-maker in a live environment.
Biamping is mandatory.
Doesn't the 'DI' ouput from an amp head contain the same processed signal as what is coming into the front ofthe amp as manipulated by whatever pedals you have inline between your bass guitar and the front amp input? I never used it before, never had a need. I specifically said hi-pass here so as to not feed the sub speaker anything lower than 31hz or whatever hz I dial it in at.
I have listened to many PA subs.. I have listened to every one possible in my area.. Local Guitar Center.. Local pro audio store (selling amps/speakers/mics/etc.) Local concerts.. DJ parties.. For many years.. and I have not found anything that delivers alot of clean powerful lows.. They sound thin on an open B-string for example.. And no, I am not intending to use car amplifiers.. I would use my Crown XLS 2500 as a starting point for power.. After speaking with many of the engineers of the car audio subs.. They are capable of handling much more power when used in a PA environment due to the voltage increase.. When using an amp running off 120 or even 240 volts, you can deliver much more stable power than a 12 volt system can provide.. Using a proper active crossover to achieve the freq range needed, and yes the enclosure needs to be custom built of course.. And yes many people laugh at this idea and say it will never work.. but technically speaking, I don't see why it won't work.. The enclosure is the most important piece to this puzzle IMO.. That and I may need a larger amp.. The QSC PLD 4.5 is at the top of the list..
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