It has been a long time since I put in a pair of new subs. I have a set of orion xtr 12's that have been sitting new in their boxes since 2000. I have them in a sealed box that is slightly under spec (by about .1 cubic foot). I have them wired correctly to a orion 900 amp that is giving 450 per sub. These things are barely moving and don't sound all that impressive. Granted there is some tweaking I need to do as far as the gains and eq go but these should be flying around. Have any of you experienced a break in period with new subs. Do they need to loosen up? Any input is welcome. I can guarantee you that the wiring is correct.

 

subs do have a break-in period of i believe about 20 hrs. you will notice a difference, i dont know if is as drastic as you are hoping. what are the ohm ratings of the subs and how do you have them wired? you could have them wired at a high rating (8 ohms or greater) and that could be why. the box shouldnt cause a problem, you could always add some polyfill to fix that too.

 

They are dual 4 ohm subs. They are wired I believe what is called series parallel. I verified my wiring off of the companies website so I'm sure that is okay. I'm not one for drawing pictures so I'll describe how I have them wired. + of one voice coil the - of the other. Same on the other sub. Then the remaining + and - go together with the remaining + and - off the other sub and then into the amp. Hopefully that makes sense.

 

break in is a crock of ****. Even if you do buy into that crap, there's no way it's going to make a large difference. You've got something wired wrong, or something else set up wrong. Those xtrs pound like hell with that kind of power. What kind of Orion amp is it though? XTR, HCCA, or *cough* cobalt?

 

Jim, that's pretty much what I was thinking. It's an xtr 900 and it should pound like hell. I think I need to take a closer look at how the amp is set up. It should be fine but I must be missing something. Maybe a sub out of phase or something. I don't know. Just incase your curious this is the rest of my system layout: Alpine 7863, Orion XTR 800.4 to kickpanels and midbass in doors, Audiobahn AEX-300 eq/crossover (not currently installed because I need to find a place to put it), stinger 1 fared digital cap. Orion XTR 900 to 2 XTR 12's.

 

i never said breaking in made a huge difference, but i was not going to pound my sub at full volume the first day i got it. as long as you're repectable about it for the first couple days, you will have no problems. but i agree that there is something wrong that you're not hitting like ya should. check out amp and sub wiring again

 

The wiring for the amp and subs are correct. I've concluded that I must be picky and that the XTR doesn't do as well in a sealed box as a larger ported box. I put in a DMX CD and they are moving around pretty good but don't excatly rattle your head like I'm used to with past systems. I'm going to mess with the x-over and eq a little more but I'll probably just give them to a friend and buy some subs I know will work in the enclosure I have. JL, Alpines or eclipse's if I can sell my kidney. Does any one have experiences with running a pair of XTR 12's in a sealed box?

 

Does your cd payer have sub volume control on it, if so you may check that. Just a thought