As most of you know, I'm going to be revamping my subs this spring and am starting to shop around. A few threads back I remember Jim talking about using Dayton subs to match his kicks at some point in the future in one of his cars. His comment is that the subs are excellent for the money and sound pretty good too. I know that Dayton is a highly regarded company when it comes to DIY home audio but how will their subs fair in a car? Does anyone have any input on this? I'm considering either the MK3 or their reference sub. Anyone have any listening experience with either woofer? I'm probably going to end up with either two Daytons, two 13ov.2s (elemental designs - going out on a limb and trying something that's been extremely well reviewed), or two IDQ 12's.

I have heard some great reviews of the daytons. I have an IDQ. here is a good forum to go ask this question. there is a few that use them.

Elitecaraudio.com

awesome speakers. if you aren't a member at caraudio.com's forums, sign up there. or someplace like decware or diyaudio.com/forums/ will have a lot more technical information. if i was going to put some of their subs in my car, i'd probably go for the mkiii titanic 15's.

The HO reference series subs were designed specifically with the automotive environment in mind. They have a higher mass cone and a 4 layer voice coil so that they will work in smaller enclosures and have higher power handling over the HF reference series subs. However, the HFs will go a little deeper, albiet with a somewhat larger enclosure, which is why I'll probably go with those.

The Titanic subs are also very good subs with a very high quality motor. The Titanics will probably go deeper yet, but again, will need a bigger box.

are the reference series dvc?

No.

Interesting first post They do have a DVC series, I just didn't mention them because they probably wouldn't fair too well in a car.

http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage....WebPage_ID=114 <-- fairly complete list of things you might consider installing in a car.

I did some more thinking about the Daytona woofers. I would really prefer to run the MK3 for the potential to have higher output. Sure, I won't always play it loud but it's nice to have the ability to blast it there if I want it. Box volume wise I'm not going to be able to build a big enough box to house the two 12's that I want to end up running. From what I gather each woofer should have 2-3 cubes. Is this accurate?

Anyone feel like modeling a 12" MK3, a 10" MK3, a 10" Reference HO, and a 12" Reference HO to get a grasp on sealed box size?

I was poking around the parts express website and found this. It's a box design for a 12" MK3 running in a sealed box. It looks like you could pull it off in a small box but it wouldn't be able to get that low. Getting low is a goal of the project, so it looks like the MK3 is defiantly out.

Any opinions on this?

If you want to get low, then consider using the 12" HF woofer instead of the HO. It requires a slightly larger enclosure, but can get a bit deeper. Also, keep in mind that when you add cabin gain into the equation, any of these will have strong output right down to 20hz, in fact, if you pick a setup that has an f3 higher than 40-50hz, you're going to get an eggagerated bottom end. If this is what you're looking for, you may also want to consider a ported alignment.

Below are 4 plots:

blue: 12" Titanic MkIII
green: 10" Titanic Mk III (the yellow and green traces are identical)
Yellow: 10" Reference Series HO
Orange: 12" Reference Series HO

I'll plot the HF woofers in the next reply.

I'm a retard and forgot to add the picture.

Here's the Dayton Reference family.

Blue: Dayton 10" HF sealed
Light blue: Dayton 10" HF ported
Red: Dayton 12" HF sealed
Pink: Dayton 12" HF ported

You can run the 10" HF in a sealed box down to .5 cubes without any major consequences, and you can run the 12" down to around 1 cube without any problems. You will lose a slight amound of low end, but still maintain an overall smooth response. If you go much smaller, the q gets high enough that you start getting a bump from 60-90hz.

Personally, I'm liking the 10" HF in a .7 cube sealed box. The f3 is 40hz, just like in the 1 cube box I modeled. The only difference is that the rolloff is a little steeper, but that should be offset well enough by cabin gain that it won't be an issue for anything except 20hz test tones.

I know I'm digging this up from the grave but I'm about to buy a Dayton sub for my hatchback teg and am trying to figure out these graphs. Is a lower or higher f3 desired? Currently the 12" and 10" HF reference subs are the same price and I am willing to make my box a little bigger for better performance.

Also, does it matter if I made my sealed box shallow and wide or does it have to generally be square or rectangular? I'm thinking of putting a 12" in place of the spare tire to keep it hidden and I figured that I could make a box 23x23x7 and subtracting the sub itself gives me .963 cu.f