Car Audio Central - Ultimate Car Audio Forum and Community

short answer: you need to match the number of coils and their impedance (ohms) to the number of subs, and the amplifier(s) you choose.

pick the subs, and how many you want to use
pick the amp you want to use
that will tell you which coil setup to get with the subs.

You want to just get loud right?

If so, then go the ported route. It will be louder than sealed.

As for your Ohm question, there is no difference in how the sub performs. Companies offer different voice coil configurations for more wiring options.

Example, a 4 ohm dual voice coil sub will yield either a 2 or 8 ohm load depending how it is wired.

So, once you figure out what subs you want, figure out the final impedance when wired together and choose an amp that will work.

TEDD

Well what kind of box do i want and where do i get it?
and i dont understand what ohm to get what i was reading just said it was how you hooked it up. is there any performance differnce?

short answer, yes.
only about 5% of the power put out by the amplifier is returned as "sound" from the speaker.
a lot of power initially drawn from the alternator is lost to wire resistance, amplifier inefficiency, and losses through the transducers. Also you lose energy due to enclosure flex, wave cancellation, resonance in the vehicle, etc..
lots of ways energy is lost in a car.

A speaker needs a certain amount of power to be efficient and do the most work for you. It pretty much allows the sub to exurt more, easier. The cone only moves as fast as the frequency played. Hertz is cycles per second, 20 Hz is the cone moving 20 times in one second; Power doesn't matter here.

is power used in anything besides moving the cone faster? Theres alot i dont understand

a lot of things end up factoring in to "making bass."
cabin efficiency and sympathetic frequency, power, enclosure type and construction, cabin gain and enclosure gain, speaker displacement (cone area and excursion) and more.

a larger box will extend low frequency response, but it's not going to add much to SPL. At most you're looking at a difference or 1 to 2dB. Also keep in mind "larger and smaller" enclosures are within limits. this is why there are recommended volume ranges for enclosures. Going beyond those recommendations will yield poor results.

if you have a 15" sub, stick to 2.5cu ft sealed, 3cu ft ported. that's a really good starting point. I wouldn't go more than half a cubic foot beyond those volumes either direction at most for best results.

I thought power wasnt exactly what made bass, it was just the movement of the woofer, so with a bigger box you need less power, if ur low on cash why not make a 3 cube box and use like 200 watts for somthing instead of 600 or 800. I plan on makin around 3 cube, if thats what chad suggests for my 15 inch atlas subs when i get em

this hobby isn't cheap.
a lot of people want a system with thousands of watts, until they find out what it costs to power that system, too.
On the other hand, while I did have a HO alternator in my old Festiva, I also ran 14 speakers using two amplifiers that delivered a total combined power of 820 watts RMS and that system could easily get louder than you'd want to be inside the car with, and sound very clean and tight while doing it. More power isn't always the answer. You need to choose wisely and get good equipment once, and you can build a very respectable system with moderately low power and without loading the entire car with speakers.
My current setup uses 8 speakers total and 3 amps (3 speakers in each door, two subs)

this was what I ran with 820 watts total;

•Pioneer Premier DEX-M88 CD Player (replaced Alpine 7905)
•Pioneer Premier CDX-M33 CD Changer
•Alpine 3401 Parametric Equalizer (replaced Audiocontrol EQL)
•Alpine 3339 Graphic Equalizer
•Orion 300-PRQ pre-amp
•Orion 200-CRX electronic crossover
•Orion 2125SX Digital Reference amplifier (mids/highs) @ 2-16 ohms stereo
•Orion 280GX amplifier (subs) @ 2 ohms stereo
•(4) Orion hard-dome tweeters 15KHz+
•(4) Orion soft-dome tweeters 5KHz-15KHz
•(4) Orion 5" midrange 100Hz-5KHz
•(2) Cerwin-Vega LE-12D 12" DVC subs <60Hz
•Interconnects - Phoenix Gold
•Lestek 150-amp alternator with external Lestek regulator set to 14.4VDC
•Sears DieHard Gold 1200CCA battery

[url]http://www.wickedcases.com/festiva/[/url]

this sux i just want a freakin huge system but watever ill just look smaller