What Size Subwoofer Do I Need For My Car

Choosing Subwoofer Type According To Music Taste

There is a variety of options when selecting a subwoofer type. Each one has different strengths and weakness dependent on each individuals audio needs. Two of the most basic options are component and enclosed subs. A component sub best suits a bass fanatic that prefers to feel music and have the entire car vibrate. For those of you with more modest bass needs that actually want to hear the notes above 200hz, it is recommended that you find an enclosed sub or a smaller component subwoofer.

Do I Need An Active Or Passive Subwoofer For My Car

Active subwoofers have relatively simple built-in amplifiers. Active subwoofers are usually less powerful and work in the narrower range of the frequencies.

Still, they are smaller and cheaper than passive subwoofers, for which you need to purchase an amplifier and make more complicated wiring.

The two main types of active subwoofers:

• Under-seat subwoofer, which is a flat box with a speaker that will fit into a small space below your seat.

• Another type of active subwoofer is the spare wheel subwoofer designed to fit in a spare wheel space in your car.

Both of these types have a straightforward installation and do not require additional equipment. However, they usually do not produce a strong low bass. Active subwoofers can be a good option as an addition to your factory audio system, without other modifications in your car.

Passive subwoofers are either speakers installed in the enclosures or free air subwoofers that do not have amplifiers.

They offer much better sound, and you have a choice to combine many different amps with even more speakers to achieve your desired bass effect.

Inch And 65 Inch Speakers

Although 6.5 speakers are much more common than 6, Ill include them here as theyre often a good replacement choice. 6.5 inch speakers are some of the most popular and are one of the largest sizes available prior to 6×9 or similar models.

6 & 6.5 inch speakers are pretty good for midrange, midbass, and even some decent lower-end bass depending on the installation and car audio system. Factory-installed speakers of this size are located in the front or rear doors as well as the rear deck.

Theyre available in a great variety of options :

• Component sets, both separate and stackable component options.
• Midbass or midrange drivers.
• Woofers and subwoofers.

One of the best replacement options you can use is door 6.5 woofers with tweeters mounted high in the doors or on the dashboard.

6.5 inch car subwoofer options

Subwoofers of this size cant produce the bass of a real subwoofer but can sound great when used well. Some 3-way systems use component speakers and a 6.5 subwoofer or woofer to cover the low frequency response smaller speakers cant provide.

They normally have much higher power handling, more speaker impedance options, and a lot more bass than a standard 6.5 could. Theyre commonly used fairly often in 8 ohm home subwoofers as well.

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Breaking In Your Subwoofer

If you install your subwoofer yourself, recheck your connections before firing it up. Once everything looks good, choose a song with a repetitive rhythm that has deep bass. Play that song on repeat at a moderate volume for about 15 minutes. After that, turn the volume up too high and play it for another two hours. For your final break-in, aim to run the subwoofer for 10 to 12 hours. Road trip, anyone?

What Size Do I Need

Most people will find this article typing things like what’s the best 12 inch subwoofer, or best 10 subwoofer. Subwoofers come in a variety of sizes though. Different sized subwoofers have different sized woofers, which will typically determine things like frequency range, and how well it will reproduce the different ranges of bass. The most common automotive subwoofer sizes are 8, 10 and 12 however, more recently, manufacturers like JL Audio have introduced 13 subwoofers. 15 subwoofers are also available but much less common and we’d really only recommend them for performance applications. The bigger the subwoofer is, the more efficient it is as producing lower frequencies and vice versa. We’ve written an article to help you choose the right subwoofer size if you’d like to read more up on it.

Subwoofer diameter isn’t the only important aspect of size though. Some vehicles require a subwoofer to fit in a tight, shallow space. In these cases, we’ve got you covered with a list of our best pick shallow mount subwoofers.

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How Do Subwoofers Work

Most subwoofers are electromagnetically powered. They house a stiff cone that’s driven by a single voice coil centered in a magnetic field.

The single voice coil is attached to the back of the speaker cone. It moves when the current flows through it. It then pushes and pulls on the driver cone, which moves in and out like a piston, creating soundwaves.

Shape

Typically, they’re circular, as the majority of speakers are. This is an ideal shape for funneling directional sound so that it goes in an optimum direction for listening. It also produces a cleaner sound, which is far less distorted than other shapes, which some companies experimented with during the early 2000s.

Other shape options were initially explored for car use because, ultimately, a car is not well suited for typical loudspeakers. A decent speaker requires a fair amount of space to function to the best of its abilities. Bass cabinets – AKA bass bins – that house loudspeakers for concerts are sometimes larger than the trunk of a car.

The displacement volume is what reproduces loud low frequencies. Without space then the displacement is not as powerful and impactful as it could be.

Non-circular shapes allow for bigger cone areas in limited mounting space situations but at the sacrifice of sound quality. The louder it is, the more the sound will distort.

Sizes: 10-Inch Subwoofers Vs 12-inch Subwoofers

Type Of Enclosures

The math, for those interested, is explained in this Youtube video:

Introduction: How To Choose A Subwoofer For Your Car Audio System

This instructible will give an idea of how to choose a suitable subwoofer/s for your ride. This has a lot of information regarding selection of your beloved ‘woofer. I have a lot of friends who have taught me a lot of stuff about sound systems, as well as magazines and internet articles, which have developed my knowledge heaps as of late.I hope this helps you people unsure about what to get. Enjoy.

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Is Speaker Wire Sized By The Watts Of The Radio Or The Speakers

A speaker wire is not directly sized by the watts of the radio or the speakers because everything boils down to resistance. But to give you a perspective, for a general speaker that produces about 80W of power, a 16-gauge wire will work just fine. At this point, you must be wondering, What do you mean by 16-gauge wire?

So, the thickness of a speaker wire is measured in terms of numbers assigned by the American Wire Gauge. Numbers like 16AWG are often referred to as 16-gauge and while selecting wires, youll normally come across 12-gauge, 14-gauge, 16-gauge and 18-gauge wires. The wires with smaller numbers are thicker and offer less resistance than wires with bigger numbers. In a nutshell, a 12-gauge wire offers less resistance than an 18-gauge wire.

Final Notes And Opinions Of Subwoofer Sizes

So I hope that now you have got the right answer of what size subwoofer do I need for my car? Just a few final thoughts:

• First, remember to check out your cars space for the placement of subwoofer as it is also an important part of its selection.
• Also, check amplifier compatibility with the subwoofers. I have recently posted an article on why you should have subwoofers.
• I have also posted an article about subwoofers box designs for deep bass.
• Finally, you can read here about 6×9 car speakers.

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What To Look For

Car subwoofers are essentially oversized speakers. They require much more space, power, material pretty much more of everything. When adding a car subwoofer to your car stereo, you will need to make sure to pay close attention to specific things when researching to make sure you have both the right subwoofer, and the right components to power and house your subwoofer. Below is a list of criteria we recommend considering when youre choosing a subwoofer for your car:

How Big Of A Subwoofer Do I Need For My Car

The subwoofer size depends not only on the size of the acoustic space but also on the amplifier, wires, and of course, the bass effect you want to achieve.

The 15 woofers are sometimes slow and need powerful amplifiers. Also, enclosures for the 15 speakers are, in most cases huge, but their advantage is strong and really deep bass. When you have all the right equipment correctly set-up, you do not need more than one subwoofer. You will be delighted with 15.

On the other hand, 10 speakers can be very fast, which means they play clean and deep bass, but its hard to achieve huge air pressure from one 10 woofer.

Smaller woofers however, give you more freedom with choosing the right place for them. They are, in most cases cheaper, and do not need a power plant to play efficiently.

The golden mean can be a 12 subwoofer. However, the tricky part is that 12 subwoofers are the most popular on the market, which means you can pick probably every type of speaker you can think of.

Several years ago, I was a little disappointed about the bass quality from my new 12 when I compared it to the older 10 woofer.

Fortunately, the problem was not in the speaker itself but in its power. It just required twice as big an amplifier compared to my current by then, and the low pass filter frequency was reduced. After these changes, the bass was outstanding, and it still plays today.

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Car Speakers Sizes Chart

Car Speakers Sizes Chart

Figuring out car speakers sizes is really confusing. There are different types of car speakers available in the market and its always difficult to choose one best thing among the variety.

If you are a music lover then obviously the car is the best place to enjoy music but you can only enjoy the music if it is of good quality. The quality of the music is directly influenced by the size of car speakers.

There is a wide range of car speakers sizes and your selection should depend upon your car. Speakers size should be compatible with that of your car size also. If you have a small car, then you must choose speakers according to the capacity of your car frame diagonal measurement, and hole alignment is also important.

In this article, I will describe in detail car speakers sizes and I will also provide car speakers sizes chart.

Factory-installed speakers are of not a good quality mostly. People usually ask me why our factory-installed speakers do not functions as well as the separately-purchased from the market.

If you want good quality music then must change your factory-installed speakers with a new one according to compatibility with your car.

Contents

• 1.7 5-inch car speakers

Step : Decide Your Speaker Cabinet Size

If you are using a single subwoofer with multiple speakers, you will want to size your subwoofer cabinet based on the volume of music you plan on playing.

Lets say you have a subwoofer that can play at 100 watts and you plan on playing country music. Your subwoofers power needs are .

The subwoofer has a volume of 1 cubic foot. To calculate the number of cubic feet of space your subwoofer needs, divide the total watts by the watts-per-cubic-foot rating for that speaker .

So now we know our subwoofer needs to be 8.7 cubic feet in size. If we were going to use three speakers with this setup, the math would look like this: 3 speakers with an amp output of 200 watts would require , so the total volume of the system would be 52815 ÷ 200 = 10.76 cubic feet.

To find the volume of the system for a pair of speakers and a subwoofer, you need to subtract the volume of the subwoofer from the volume of the system.

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What Is The Rms Power Rating

RMS stands for Root Mean Square and it is a statistical measurement of voltage or current. The RMS power rating indicates the highest possible amount of continual power that the speaker can handle. It’s the most important number to look at when trying to work out how powerful a sub is. This is how powerful it will be capable of for long periods rather than for brief spells, which is what you will find out by checking the peak power output.

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Suggestion Before Buying Subwoofers

It is my suggestion that you keep your budget in your mind, dont compromise with the price of subwoofers, a lot of crap local sellers are selling the low rated products with a high price to make people fool, so beware from this kind of fraud. You should have to check the buyers reviews and the product reviews before finalizing the item.

Another most common issue that makes a buyer confuse is the size of subwoofers. Get, subwoofers are used for music not to fill the car space. Simply select any size of subwoofers according to the space available in your car. If you have powered car subwoofers, you must know how to install it with the factory stereo.

I personally use an 8-inch subwoofer for my car and also have a 10-inch subwoofer in my other Honda car and both are working perfectly.

Some of my fellows are satisfied with 6×9 car speakers that provide quality sound without using a subwoofer.

What Is Free Air Subwoofer

When your car has a small trunk, or you do not want to use the entire space for the enclosure, you may choose a free air subwoofer. The free air subwoofer is a speaker that does not require to be installed in the enclosure. Typically, free air subwoofers are installed in the back seat or the rear deck.

Free air subwoofers work best in sedan cars, and they are a cheaper option than the subwoofers in the enclosure.

Nevertheless, you will need to add a baffle to the rear deck or back seat, depending on the place you will choose for the subwoofer. Installing a baffle that will hold your subwoofer is mandatory because construction has to be stable. You cannot just bolt a 10 powerful speaker to the plastic deck. It will simply not work.

When talking about speakers, there are hundreds of different models to choose from, and the hardest part is how to choose the right subwoofer?

When choosing a free air subwoofer, you will need a powerful speaker with firm suspension.

Remember also, when you install a free air subwoofer, the whole trunk will need to be correctly sealed because it will actually become a large enclosure, and if you want to achieve a clear quality bass, your car should not have any free air movement between a trunk and a cabin.

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How To Install A Subwoofer In A Car

The method depends on whether you’ve bought a bare sub or one that’s already inside an enclosure. Either way, you’re going to find the installation process very simple.

Thanks to the popularity of the SPL wars, there are copious amounts of instructional videos available online.

If you are still unsure, you could contact a professional. There are millions of garages and mechanics worldwide, who are all capable of making the correct connections and ensuring that everything is neat and in working order.

How To Use A Different Size Speaker In Place Of The Originals

Theres some great news if youd like to install a different car speaker size than the originals. A speaker adapter will make this easy in most cases.

These fit in place of the original speaker and provide a standard car speaker size hole to mount your replacement speakers. Some also include additional openings that can be scored with a utility razor and cut in case youre using a different size.

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Do I Need Two Subwoofers Advantages That Multiple Subs Bring

One of the questions often asked when building a custom car audio system is to get two subwoofers or one. The answer is not a simple one. For most, a single subwoofer is the better choice, while for others dual subwoofers work better.

There are several things to take into consideration when making this choice. The amount of space you have to work with, the type of music you prefer, and the cost of the subwoofers as well as a dual subwoofer enclosure.

Sound

The advantage to running 2 smaller subwoofers is a sharper, louder sound with a better clarity. Sound wise there is not enough difference for most people to adopt dual subwoofers in their systems. But there is a difference. Part of how subwoofers work is by displacement of air. So a dual subwoofer enclosure with two 12 in subwoofers will be clearer and louder then a single 15 in subwoofer will. Due mainly to a greater surface of air displacement.

Clarity

The only advantages to running dual subwoofers are loudness and clarity, but even that depends on the size and quality of the subwoofers. While two 12 subwoofers may sound better than one 15 sub, two 8 subwoofers will not.

Cost