Podcast Ep. 51 Choosing the right subwoofer for your ride

Crutchfield_S4E3.mp3 Transcript 00:00:06 J.R. Hello and welcome to Crutchfield, the podcast. We are back episode number three of our four part series on how to get the perfect car stereo for you and your car and your music. I am joined in studio once again by our co-host Eric. How? 00:00:24 Eric You doing today? Terrific. Oh, that's a different answer. Yeah, absolutely change that. I'm. I'm trying. I want to forget what I said in the 1st. 00:00:28 J.R. OK. Yeah. 00:00:31 Eric One, but yeah, terrific. 00:00:32 J.R. I am doing terrific. That's nice. Yeah. We are here today to talk about Subs episode #3. We've already talked about putting new radios in your car. We've talked about replacing the speakers in your car. 00:00:44 J.R. And in this episode, we're going to talk about subwoofers. And I know a lot of people think I'm not a subwoofer person. 00:00:54 J.R. They think they don't need one. Yeah. And you know, when you change your mind, you change the world. You know, I'm telling you that I've had people I know of. A guy I'm thinking of a specific person here. He's a retired cop. He saw some action. Yeah, he had some PTSD. He told me. 00:01:05 Eric Mm-hmm. 00:01:08 Eric OK, OK. 00:01:12 Eric Hmm yeah. 00:01:14 J.R. I'm never going to put a subwoofer in my vehicle that is not for me. It will trigger me and about three months later he had a subwoofer in his. 00:01:16 Right. 00:01:19 Mm-hmm. 00:01:23 J.R. Vehicle and he. 00:01:23 Eric Yeah. 00:01:23 J.R. Loves it and his wife loves it and they love it together as they're driving around listening to music cause he does like. 00:01:29 Eric Music. Yeah. Yeah. So if you, if you're picturing a car subwoofer and the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, sitting at a stoplight and hearing some bass and kind of looking around trying to figure out which car that's coming out of. Yeah. You know, that's not for everyone. Right. But it is for some. But that does. That's not the only, you know. 00:01:49 Eric Customer that gets subwoofers forms. 00:01:51 J.R. No, that's not. And we can do that. We can absolutely hook those dudes up with whatever level of base they want, however annoying they want to be to everybody we. We support that. So. So you should Full disclosure, we're in favor of that whenever. 00:01:52 Eric Yeah, yeah. 00:01:53 Eric Love that. 00:01:55 Yeah. 00:01:56 Yeah. 00:01:58 Yeah. 00:02:00 Sure. 00:02:02 Eric Yes, absolutely. 00:02:06 Yeah. 00:02:06 J.R. You want it? We love it. We can get it done with you. And that's awesome. Yeah, but that doesn't mean those are the only people that subwoofers are for, right. Think about music and the music. You listen to. It would be hard to find music of any genre that just doesn't have bass. 00:02:06 Yeah. 00:02:22 Eric Yeah, whether not you listen to classical or jazz, certainly hip hop and you know, country. 00:02:27 Eric You know good old rock'n'roll. I mean, there's bass in. 00:02:29 Eric All of that. 00:02:30 Eric Polka. Sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Bluegrass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you going for the popular ones now? So yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:02:32 J.R. Right. 00:02:37 J.R. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Think about stringed bass instruments, electric or acoustic kick drum on the drum set. There's electronic bass. You're gonna have. That's where you get your lowest bass frequencies by. 00:02:41 Eric Yeah, absolutely. 00:02:48 Sure. 00:02:48 J.R. Way the piano has a ton of bass, cellos, oboes, timpanis. Right, there's music has bass. Music has bags. 00:02:54 Eric So you're. 00:02:56 Eric Yeah. Does your car have bass? Well, that might depend on whether or. 00:02:57 That's me. 00:02:59 J.R. Not you have a subwoofer. There you go. You might even think, oh, I only know this in the podcast, so I don't know about you, but I. 00:03:04 J.R. Listen to podcast some of. 00:03:05 J.R. Them have music in them. Yeah, absolutely, even. 00:03:08 Eric Vocals, you know, a male vocal quite often will have some mid bass or or even you know, a little bit lower than that frequencies represented and you might not. You might not get the sound spectrum, you might not be getting all the frequencies that should be there, which when you're missing that. 00:03:26 Eric Sometimes you don't know you're missing it until you until you've improved it, but if you're missing that like you're just not getting what the. 00:03:32 J.R. Artists intended. Yeah, yeah. You might get into somebody else's car. They have low end support. Meaning a bigger speaker with some power called a subwoofer. And you're thinking, wow, this music sounds pretty darn good. That's probably a big factor into. 00:03:46 Eric Why, you know? 00:03:47 Eric I'll give an example of a demo I used to love to do back when I used to work retail and you know I would be talking to some folks be playing some music for them and they wouldn't know that I had a subwoofer as part of the system. 00:04:00 Eric And then, you know, maybe they would say, OK, well, can I hear it with the sub now I'm like actually you were hearing it with the sub. Let me remove the sub. 00:04:10 Eric And then it feels like I've sucked the air out of the room. Even if you're not playing something with super Deep Bass notes, right? It's just it feels like all the warmth went away. So, you know, those bass notes are are for more than just, you know, being heard. Three, stop, you know, three cars away at a. 00:04:25 Eric Stop light, right? 00:04:25 J.R. Yeah. No, there's a subwoofer for everybody. For every different musical taste. 00:04:28 Yeah. 00:04:31 J.R. And do you need one? Not necessarily. But will it make your music listening more fun, more thoughtful, more impactful, like Jinx? Buy me a coke. Yes, it definitely will. And there is a subwoofer for everybody. They don't have to be large, expensive things that take up the entire trunk. 00:04:40 Eric Yeah. There we go. Yeah. 00:04:51 J.R. And make enough boom to annoy the neighborhood. They can be very small, very compact. They can disappear into your car once they're installed. You don't even have to see them. But having that additional low end support you're gonna want it once you know about it. 00:05:06 J.R. You're gonna want it. So let's talk about where could you put Subs, where do Subs go in cars? Typical locations. Certainly the trunk. Pretty popular. 00:05:14 Eric Yeah. Yeah. So, and and all these locations kind of create their own challenges, opportunities, you know the pros and cons. I think in the last episode I said pros and negatives, but you know there's so there's considerations. You know the pass was always the trunk. That's where we were putting the subwoofer. You know, base does this interesting thing. 00:05:15 J.R. Spot. 00:05:35 Eric You know, unlike the high frequencies where bass isn't really directional, so you know, as long as it's in the vehicle, the subwoofer, you can get good bass and you don't necessarily. 00:05:46 Eric Hear it as if it's coming from the trunk, right? It doesn't sound like it's coming from behind you. Just filling in the space. So because of that, you've got some flexibility with, you know, where you where you end up putting it. So in the past when we were all driving sedans, you know, in the back of the trunk, that was the the primary location, but. 00:06:05 Eric Now and then, people aren't driving just sedans these days, right? 00:06:08 J.R. No. We could put Subs in the cargo area in the back of an SUV or a station wagon or a hatchback, right? This is a popular location, especially if you're you do want a larger sub to make a lot more based. You're gonna need something bigger. You're probably going to want to take up some chunk space for it. 00:06:12 Eric Yeah. 00:06:13 Right. 00:06:19 Eric Yep. 00:06:22 Eric Yeah, one of those rules of thumb, you know, if you give me more space, I'll give you more bass. You know, there's there's ways to work around that. But you know, that's that's one way to kind of think about it. That's the reason we have big subwoofer box. 00:06:35 Eric It's not because people want to give you all that space and not have a trunk. It's because, well, that's how you get that, that thunderous super. 00:06:41 J.R. Impactful base. There's no replacement for displacement. 00:06:43 Eric There you go like that. You just put that. 00:06:44 J.R. Right, yeah. 00:06:46 J.R. On a T-shirt? That's something like that. Yeah, that's actually a shout out to a real call I just heard recently on one of our calls, Roger, one of our sales advisors talking to a customer who said that and yeah, makes a lot of sense, absolutely no replacement for displacement. So big Subs gonna take up some space. Probably gonna give up some cargo area for it if you're willing to do that to get the. 00:06:52 Yeah. 00:07:05 J.R. No. 00:07:05 J.R. Problem not everybody's willing to do that. Are there other places we can put Subs that are not going to be as obvious? 00:07:13 Eric Sure. Yeah. So depending on the vehicle and there's a big caveat there, you know, under the seat, it's becoming more and more popular because of the way the new subwoofers are being designed. They have. We have them now. 00:07:26 Eric That are in a much smaller form factor than what would be available to us in the past. 00:07:29 Eric And you know, under a seat is a wonderful place as long as you have the. 00:07:33 Eric Room, you know. 00:07:34 Eric I would encourage you before you go buy one that's take a look at that space, make sure there's not, you know, any kind of heaters or vents that get in the way. But if you've got a little bit of space on there, it's good possibility we can we can wedge a subwoofer in there for you and what's neat. 00:07:50 Eric About that. 00:07:51 Eric What I really like about that is because it it's sharing that same space that's even closer to the driver. You don't necessarily need as large of a sub because it's in that same airspace with you, if you will, so you know. 00:08:06 Eric And and maybe get a little bit of a, you know, **** massage at the same time when the bass hits. I don't know. You ever experienced that jar? 00:08:13 J.R. So yeah, Subs can go in trunks, under seats. There's also custom sub enclosures that could end up going anywhere, right? Companies like JL Audio and MTX making stealth boxes and Thunder forms, right? They might. They might not be obvious once they're installed, they might go in a center console. They might take up a like a corner of your trunk rather than a bunch of. 00:08:19 Eric Oh yeah, absolutely. 00:08:33 J.R. There goes space. Really nice custom sub enclosures out there, so lots of different places Subs can go just about anywhere. If you get the right sub for the right car so so so location, location, location really it's all about that absolutely. So once you've decided on the location for your sub, there's some things to consider like what type of music. 00:08:38 Right. 00:08:41 Eric Absolutely. 00:08:53 J.R. How loud do you want it? What are you doing with the rest of your system? Right. Right. That all needs to be factored in. We have Subs. That would be a just a nice addition to a factory radio without making any other changes. 00:09:05 J.R. We have other Subs that it wouldn't make any sense if you weren't also replacing your radio, replacing the speakers, adding amplifiers, and building a big system and everything in between. So that should be a big part of the consideration. What are you doing with the rest of your system? 00:09:21 Eric Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if you're trying to build that system over time. 00:09:25 Eric Or, you know, you're trying to win a contest and and have a ton of base. Then you know that compact SUV underneath the seat. That's not going to be the right. 00:09:33 Eric Option for you and. 00:09:36 Eric So just kind of have your eye. 00:09:37 J.R. On the prize. So the things that affect all of that that you need to consider with the sub are there's three big ones. The size of the driver, the woofer itself, the speaker, right, right, common sub sizes are 12 are probably the most common 10 inch and 12 inch are the most common sub sizes. 00:09:54 J.R. But we have them in 8 so we have them in smaller than that even 6 and a halves, things like that. You can also go up to 15. We don't sell anything larger than that but. 00:10:03 J.R. There are eighteens and 20 fours and things like that. Not super common, yeah, 10s and twelves. So size of the driver makes a big difference in how low it will play and how much impact there will be. Yeah, the enclosure, the box that the woofer is in, woofers need to be in an enclosure. 00:10:23 J.R. Most of. 00:10:24 J.R. Of the time. And so that's a box and is that box a large box? A small box? Is it sealed? Is it ported? Sealed box is generally make a sub sound a little bit tighter, a little bit more accurate, but it also makes them need more power. 00:10:36 Eric Right. 00:10:39 Eric Yeah, where as imported is going to be a little bit more efficient, meaning it's going to be able to play louder. 00:10:44 Eric With the same amount of power, but it's typically tuned at A at a certain frequency, right? Like it's going to be really good at hitting a certain low note. And you know folks for competitions they they love that. 00:10:58 J.R. And for the base. 00:11:00 J.R. It just to make your average Joe happy, someone that's not looking for, you know, competition base and 8A10, even some of the powered Subs had even smaller Subs than. 00:11:05 Eric Hmm. 00:11:09 Eric That, yeah. For me, I I-10. It's always been kind of that sweet spot. Right. Like I still get those low frequencies. It hits low enough yet it's tends to be a little bit more accurate. Right. Because when. 00:11:19 Eric You get into those really large. 00:11:21 Eric Sizes. 00:11:22 Eric It takes so much power to keep that base driver accurate so that that base is hitting that frequency and then getting out, right. So it's it's just delivering what it was intended to be there in that music. And you know the idea of a 16 inch subwoofer that sounds kind of cool, but sometimes it's not the most accurate. Yep. 00:11:41 J.R. And then of course, you need to think about. 00:11:42 J.R. Hour. 00:11:44 J.R. You know, we talked about power a little bit in the last episode when it comes to speakers, it's kind of a big deal on Subs. Subs need power. The bigger the speaker, no matter what size it is, it's going to need more power than the rest of the speakers in your system, hundreds of watts, maybe thousands of watts, depending on how crazy you want to go with it. And it's very important to match up. 00:11:51 Eric Yeah. 00:12:05 J.R. The amount of power to the sub that you're going with, so your Subs going to have a range of power. And I just want to tell you here's here's a couple of rules of thumb. Couple sweet spots, 500 watts of power. 00:12:17 J.R. Is a very popular size of sub and amplifier combination. Yeah right because 500 watts on a 10 inch or two 10s or some twelves even. It's going to get you more base than most people need. 00:12:31 Eric Yeah. And when you're looking at the kind of the budget for a project like that, it seems like that 500. 00:12:35 Eric Watts is a sweet spot, right? 00:12:37 Eric Where there's a lot of good amplifiers, some solid amplifiers at decent prices. Yeah, without you. You when you start going higher than that, the prices tend to escalate kind of quickly. 00:12:48 J.R. But and you don't have to go that high, we've got 300 Watt Subs, 250 watts sub, we've got 1000 watts Subs. The important part is that that's the part of the equation when you're buying all the pieces separately, you need to match up the amp to the sub. More on that in a minute because I want to go down the the road. You should go down if you're thinking about buying a sub, maybe for the first time or if you're. 00:13:09 J.R. Hearing a whether a sub makes. 00:13:11 J.R. That's for you. I wouldn't actually recommend that you try to buy a separate woofer. A separate box, a separate amplifier, right? And then cause there's a lot of math to do. There's a lot of things to figure out and to get that right and to sound right and to fit in your car and all of that. 00:13:21 Eric Yeah. 00:13:26 Eric It's complicated. It is complicated and and along that path there's a lot of different areas where someone. 00:13:31 Eric Could make a mistake that will result in well. 00:13:35 Eric Something being broken, letting the magic smoke out of that speaker. 00:13:39 J.R. If only there was a way. If only there was a handful of products. Yeah, that were available that eliminated all of the calculations. You might have to do to put the right sub in your car. 00:13:51 Eric Only if that subwoofer would come with the right amp, like if it was combined. 00:13:55 J.R. That'd be cool if they would build the build the amp into the and maybe design a woofer. 00:13:55 Eric That right, just even in box all. 00:13:58 Eric All in one. 00:14:01 J.R. That is designed for the enclosure that it comes. 00:14:05 Eric In so it's all optimized from the. 00:14:06 J.R. Manufacturer and the amp in the enclosure. Wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah, they call it powered Subs and that's where you should start. It really is the simplest and easiest way to add base to your car. This is where you're going to find most of the Subs. That will indeed. 00:14:22 J.R. Fit under a seat in a car. Most of those are a woofer in a box with an amplifier built in. Yeah. So there's no math to do. You don't have to think about enclosure, compatibility, impedance, power handling. 00:14:35 J.R. Doing nothing. You just need to think about is the size of the woofer going to fit where you want it and make enough base to make. 00:14:41 Eric You happy? Yeah, I think for a lot of customers these days, you know, that gives them what they want, what they want, right? Yeah. Fill out that sound. Give them that warmth we talked about earlier. Improve the performance of the overall system. This probably isn't the direction I would go for the folks that are looking to be heard. 00:14:56 Eric You know, coming down the road, right, like that's usually not what we're talking that that's the type of system where we're building with an, you know, separate AMP, we're getting you the right speakers for. 00:15:05 Eric We're either getting your box or your building box. That's the more complex system, certainly. But you know these these systems from the manufacturer already put together, often in compact sizes. That's really the way to go. And really, for me, dollar for dollar, it is often the least expensive way to improve a factory system. 00:15:26 Eric It's with the powered subwoofer. I mean, there's a ton of cars out there these days that we really can't do a lot with. You know, the the, the radio. 00:15:34 Eric But we can improve the sound of the whole system. And quite often that's what the power. 00:15:39 J.R. Itself, yeah. And replacing speakers and adding amps for speakers is a a much bigger endeavor. Simply adding a powered sub, like Eric said, we'll make your factory system sound significantly better. And if you want to go with something bigger than just an under seat. 00:15:55 J.R. Compact sub. There's powered Subs that have two 10s in them and fit in your trunk and look like a big massive subwoofer because they are and they're still a powered sub so you didn't have to do a lot of computations to make it. Sure it works. 00:16:08 J.R. For you, the next easiest way to add Subs to your car is to go with what we call and what you'll see on crutchfield.com in closed Subs. Yeah, this is when a manufacturer like Kicker or Rockford Fosgate or jail audio or many others. They've built a box and put in a sub or more than one sub. 00:16:28 J.R. Into that box, meaning the size of the box is perfect for the woofers they've put in the box. They know that because they built. 00:16:36 J.R. Them all. And you don't have to think about that matching up the size of the woofer to the box it's done. And so then what they don't have compared to powered Subs is a built-in amplifier, right? You still have to match it up to an amp, but even that's easy to do because those boxes, they simply tell you what. 00:16:56 J.R. Impedance it is. 00:16:57 Eric They're already wired. 00:16:58 J.R. And how much power it needs. 00:16:59 Eric Not only is it the right size box, but it's already wired if there's more than one base driver in there, then well, heck now. Now we know exactly what math we're dealing with, and just one less variable. 00:17:10 J.R. And when you go to match up any subwoofer to an amplifier, those are the two magic numbers you. 00:17:15 J.R. And what is the maximum RMS power handling of the subwoofer or subwoofers? And at what impedance? That's how you find an amplifier once if you know that for example, maybe you have an enclosure that has two 10s each one handles 250 watts and they're four ohms and you've wired them up in a way or the manufacturer wired them up in a way so that. 00:17:36 J.R. In the end, all you need to think about is I need to go find an amp that puts out 500 watts the total amount. 00:17:42 J.R. Of power for both wolfs. 00:17:44 J.R. Combined at 2 ohms, which is how you wire those two speakers together. Yeah, to so it's easy. We've got a bunch of amplifiers that put out 500 watts at 2 ohms. That's that sweet spot I was mentioning. 00:17:54 Yeah. 00:17:55 Eric Earlier, yeah. Anytime you're dealing with more than one subwoofer or more than one of those subwoofer enclosures, or or the the base drivers themselves. 00:18:04 Eric It changes that impedance, right? We don't need to get into like which way and the math involved. You know these systems they they figure that out for you. So you don't have to have to worry about. 00:18:14 J.R. No, but if you are ready to build a system that is totally custom to your specifications, you might need to buy your base system a la carte, meaning you're going to pick out the particular driver or woofer and how many of them. 00:18:34 J.R. You might want one or two or more than that. 00:18:38 J.R. And and then of course, you're either going to buy a box designed for those, or maybe even build a box of your own to put them in. So you've considered the Subs separately from the box. Once you know which Subs you are going to use, you can figure out which amplifier you're going to need to power them, which means we'll need to know their Max, RMS and their. 00:19:00 J.R. How we're going to wire them up to get them down to around 2 ohms of impl. 00:19:04 J.R. Guidance and then find an amplifier to power that right. You got to do all of this stuff separately that you might see along the way. There's single voice coil and dual voice coil speakers. That's something you'll have to consider. Yeah. Well, we could do an entire episode diving deep on single voice coil versus dual voice coil and selectable impedance and all of that. 00:19:24 Eric Yeah, and one's not better than the other. I'll, I'll. I'll sum up that episode super Fast. There one's not better than the other. It just gives wiring flexibility with that flexibility. It's just important to you. 00:19:36 Eric Buy those woofers from someone that's there to help you out, maybe with lifetime tech support. 00:19:41 J.R. Yeah. No, in all seriousness, that is absolutely a thing. If you need help figuring that out, talk to one of our advisors, go to our website. We have subwoofer wiring diagrams, there's articles about it, right? It's not hard to figure that out. We're not going to dive deep and try to come up with all of the different permutations. 00:19:56 J.R. Here on this episode, right, that would be really boring. Podcast audio. Yeah, would be. And is this not necessary? If you need help figuring it out, give Crutchfield a call. 00:20:06 J.R. There you. 00:20:07 J.R. Go and and then lastly, of course there's wiring to figure out you know you gonna need some speaker wire. 00:20:13 There there's a. 00:20:14 J.R. Lot more to figure out when you do it a la carte, right and. 00:20:17 Eric So. 00:20:18 Eric Like those powered solutions, it's got that all figured out for you. And now if you want to be heard coming down the road or you want something that fits custom and it's made specifically for your vehicle, then there's there are some really compelling reasons to go away from those powered Subs, but you know. 00:20:33 Eric A lot of folks, that's where it's. 00:20:34 J.R. And if you want to show it off, if you want to make it a centerpiece, a showpiece, something you want people to not only hear and like, but also to look at and be impressed, right? Yeah, you might put lights. You might design that box to fit seamlessly into the your into your trunk or your cargo space. You can do that sort of thing when you're buying it all a la carte, right? When you buy a powered. 00:20:40 Eric Maybe some lights? 00:20:55 J.R. Subwoofer solution. You're buying a predetermined thing that just you just need to deal with that and you know that's what I mean when I say there's a a subwoofer for everybody, right? So my my friend, who was a retired cop who didn't think he was going to want a sub. He ended up with a small under seat powered. 00:21:13 J.R. Sub because he listens to classic rock and he likes it and now he can turn it up louder than he ever did before. Right? The bass that comes from his sub isn't triggering to him like he thought it might be. Yeah, it just filled out the low end of his music and he's very, very happy. Way happier than he thought he ever would be. 00:21:33 J.R. He didn't think he was. 00:21:34 Eric A sub guy. He has a better commute now because he has a subway. 00:21:38 J.R. Yeah. And we believe wholeheartedly that everybody could use. 00:21:41 Eric This up, yeah. 00:21:43 J.R. And we're here to help you with that if you want some help picking out the right sub for your specific situation, your car, your music at your volumes to make your commute happier, just go to crutchfield.com call one of our advisors, chat with them online. They can help you get exactly the right thing. 00:22:00 J.R. For you. Hopefully this provided some guidance to at least get you to the point where maybe you can just figure it out on crutchfield.com without even needing an advisor. You might be able to do it because it's really not that hard, especially if you go down the easy. 00:22:12 Eric Road of a powered zone. There you go. 00:22:15 J.R. We got one more of these episodes, Eric. We're going to come back in our next episode and talk about. 00:22:20 Eric Amplifier so amped up for that. That's awesome. 00:22:23 J.R. And we've we've talked about amplifiers in every episode so far, right? When you buy a radio, you need to get one that has preamp outputs. If you're planning to add an amp right when you buy new speakers, you need to think about whether you're going to power them with the factory radio and aftermarket radio or. 00:22:28 Eric Absolutely. 00:22:39 J.R. An amplifier, right? Subwoofer. 00:22:41 J.R. Every subwoofer needs an amplifier, whether it's built in or something you purchase separately. You still need one, right? So we're gonna do a whole episode all about amplifiers and you things you need to think about when you're buying an amplifier that's on the next episode. If you have questions that you would like us to answer on a future. 00:22:44 Eric Yes. 00:23:03 J.R. Episode please drop us a line podcast at crutchfield.com if you have a more urgent need than that. If you need to fix your car stereo situation or anything else, go to crutchfield.com or call one of our advisors. We can hook you up right now. Thank you so much for listening. Eric, you want to say goodbye? 00:23:20 J.R. This time. 00:23:22 Eric Now I want you to do for me, on behalf of Eric. I'm Jr. thank. 00:23:24 J.R. You so much for listening.