There’s nothing like bumping some heavy bass through your new car audio system. The rumble you feel in your stomach is almost magical! Today, there are so many different car subwoofers out there as well as subwoofer installation services. With so many options out there, how can one who is new to the car subwoofer life go about choosing the one that fits them best? Here are some basics on car subwoofers as well as car subwoofer installation.
Choosing the Ideal Car Subwoofer
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What is Your Car Like?
You need to have an idea of what vehicle your car subwoofer/driver will be into. The size of the car and amount of space will directly affect the size and/or amount speakers you can install. Even if you don’t have a car at the moment, planning for the one you will have is a smart idea.
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Measurements?
Once you’ve decided what vehicle your car subwoofer is going into, you can just go out and buy a speaker if you really want to. However, it’s best to do some research first, whether it be simply to talking to some friends in the know, or going to a local car audio installation company and getting someone with experience to voice their opinion. You could also simply get on the internet and get some info on your car, especially if you don’t physically have it yet. Some common measurements you’ll come across are: rear width, rear track, and total trunk capacity. Having these measurements can help you to calculate the dimensions of the trunk (if that’s where you are putting your car subwoofer), which will better help determine what drivers to purchase. The depth and width, while still necessary, aren’t as essential as the height of the trunk. This measurement becomes less important to get right if you’re looking at getting smaller drivers, such as an 8″ driver, or a 10″ driver.
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Car Subwoofer Enclosure Types
Next is choosing which type of enclosure you will use to house your speaker. There are two common types:
- Sealed: A completely airtight enclosure, very basic in design, good speaker performance, improved bass response.
- Ported/Vented: Similar to a sealed type, but with a vent/port installed, used to emphasize a particular frequency, improved reproduction of low bass frequencies, low distortion
How you want your car subwoofer to perform will mostly likely decide for you which type of enclosure you will choose.
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Buying the Car Subwoofer
Once you’ve gotten all the information about your car and what enclosure you’re going to use, you can go out and purchase your car subwoofer. When you first get your eyes on a speaker of interest, you’re immediately going to see a few things that may be confusing for those who aren’t subwoofer connoisseurs:
- Power Handling (Watts RMS and Max) – This is basically stating how much power your subwoofer can handle before it starts damaging itself. Generally, the higher the power, the better it can handle bass when your system is turned up to its loudest. The power rating measurement that you’re looking for is the Watts RMS rating. This shows exactly how much power your subwoofer should take to make satisfactory (and often amazing) bass. If you can’t find an RMS rating, but a Max power rating is evident, generally you can simply divide this amount by two to get an idea of the WRMS rating for the particular speaker.
- Size of the subwoofer (8″, 10″, 12″, 15″) – Fairly self-explanatory, it’s just the size of the driver. The most popular ones seem to be the 12″ type, because they have a decent cone size without being massive.
- Amount of voice coils (SVC or DVC) – The amount of voice coils can help decide which type of amplifier to purchase. Basically, the amount of voice coils is the amount of inputs to your speaker. If your subwoofer has only one voice coil (Single Voice Coil, or SVC), it has one input for you to wire the sub to the amp. If your subwoofer has two Voice coils (Dual Voice Coil, or DVC), it has two inputs for you to wire the sub to the amp. People will generally try to get a DVC sub for multi-sub projects, because it gives them more options when they come to wiring their subs to their amp. But, if you’re only going to be using one subwoofer, you should show more interest in an SVC subwoofer. It doesn’t have any significant advantages over a DVC sub, while still maintaining comparable performance attributes. They also make the subwoofer installation process easier if you’re confident enough to try doing the whole thing yourself.
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Subwoofer Installation Process
Probably the easiest step in the process of upgrading a car audio system is installing it. The subwoofer installation will more often be done by a professional auto electrician, meaning it will work first time! However, it can also be the hardest step if you do it yourself. This is why it is recommended to go to a car audio installation shop to get it done right, unless you have a lot of prior experience.
Recall your measurements:
- Rear Width – Simply the width of the car at the rear
- Rear Track – Track is a little trickier though. Track is commonly referred to as the distance from the center of one tire to the center of the tire on the opposite side. If you’ve ever been driving in rural areas with lots of sand, or you’ve driven through mud, you will have seen an excellent example of how track looks.
- Trunk Capacity – It’s essentially how water/air your trunk could hold if you filled it up. The measurements to calculate this are: Width of Trunk x Length of trunk x Height of Trunk, or LxWxH. It is best to measure the height of the trunk against the back seat, because that’s normally where the subwoofer and enclosure will be placed.
AutoWorks offers top quality subwoofer products and subwoofer installation services as well as window tinting, backup camera installation, and other car audio services to towns in the Monmouth County area. They serve towns including Middletown, Red Bank, Oceanport, Rumson, Little Silver, Marlboro, Freehold, Dayton, Aberdeen, Manalapan, Point Pleasant, Millstone Township, Long Branch, Spring Lake, Holmdel, Shrewsbury, West Long Branch, Fair Haven, and many more. To learn more about our car subwoofer installation services and other services contact us today at 732-671-0225 or visit the website.
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