Best Box for 2 10" alpine type E's...???

[Hafrica13]

Hey all,

I just got 2 10" type E's, and was wondering what kind of home i should buy them... sealed or ported (if ported, what Hz should i tune for)? Im running a alpine MRP-M500 amp at 2 ohms, 500 W.

I listen to a lot of hip-hop (more underground than that anthem style rap like jeezy and others), and quite a bit of rock as well.

As of now, I'm thinking sealed, but im concerned ill later be wishing for more low end, carrying notes, that boooooooomm booooooooomm sound. I know the 10's will already give me a tighter sound, so i was wondering if a sealed box would be too tight, or will it still be able to deliver nice long, deep notes? I'd like to do sealed, as its smaller leaving more trunk space, but if its going to lack down low, i want a ported box. Also, if anyone knows what frequency the port should be tuned for that be sweet.

I understand they aren't going to perform like 12's, and I'm more than ok with that. My last sub was a crappy powered 10 inch kenwood in a ported box (pretty bottom of the line, 199 for the whole thing) and i liked it for what it was, but it wasnt nearly enough.

I know its really personal preference, but I just dont know how it going to sound. Any input would be much appreciated.

-Henry

[HsOffRoad]

A lot is going to depend on how loud you want them to play versus how low, as well as how much power you have to give.

For high volumes with reasonable power for daily use, the best compromise setup will probably be a large ported enclosure with around 10-15 square inches of port area per cubic ft. tuned approx. 2-3 hz above the Fs of the speaker. You may need to use a subsonic filter to prevent over-excursion of the drivers at low frequencies. The big drawbacks are you will lose pretty much all of your trunk, and you won't be able to re-create the really low-end stuff on some recordings.

If you go sealed, then you can use a smaller enclosure, but it will require more power to play at higher volumes. The sealed enclosure will also allow you to play the really low stuff, where the ported would not.

A small ported enclosure tuned higher with tons of port area would be the loudest on the meter (if you have enough amplifier power to support it), but worthless for daily use.

Either way, you should consider either building (or having one built) a custom enclosure for the woofers. You'll be surprised what those tens can do in a properly engineered enclosure.


Hans

[Hafrica13]

Hans, wow. thanks for clearing that up for me.

Im thinking i'll go with a sealed. do you have any recommendations on the cubic footage a sealed should be? Crutchfield says .75-1.5, do you know whether i should be on the hi or low end of that range?

And would you say 500 watts is enough? the RMS is 250 of the subs. should i bump it to the MRP-F600 amp, and run each at 300?

[funkbucket007]

We do dual Type-E 10's in .75 each with an Alpine MRP-M500 a lot & they do well for the money. It's plenty of bass for most people.

[HsOffRoad]

Depends on the sound you are looking for, and how much trunk you are willing to give up. In the smaller enclosure, they will handle more power, and sound "warmer" (boomier) on the higher bass notes, but not as loud on the really low stuff. The larger enclosure will be tighter and less boomy up top, with more pronounced low end, but you won't be able to feed them as much power without them bottoming out.

Everything's a trade off. Putting them in 1.0 cube each (net) will yield a QTC around 0.9, which will be a bit boomy, but good for hip hop music. To get the QTC down to around 0.7, the box would have to be enormous (around 3.75 cubes net per driver), which wouldn't even fit in your trunk.

The change between 0.75 cubes net per and 1.0 cubes net per is only around 1 Db on the graph, so if you're tight on trunk space, the smaller enclosure would work just fine. However, if you put them in 1.5 cubes net per driver, they do flatten out considerably and you gain about 3Db below 30Hz (if you like the really low stuff).

Power wise, I'm a power junkie. I put big amps behind everything. Heck, the amp for my front stage is rated to put out almost 500W RMS. I assume you will be running both of them off of a single mono woofer amp at 2 ohms?.... If thats the case, I personally would look for an amp that makes around 1000W RMS at 2 ohms. Having the extra power on hand is really nice, if your budget allows for it. But like Funk said, you can certainly get by with less power and have them work just fine, if you are tight on cash.


Hans

[Hafrica13]

thanks for the input guys... much appreciated.

[mikey]

if you can find one for cheap I know Alpine actually makes a dual 10 box speced specifically for those subs. If you lived up in Toronto there's a place that we used to used called Hammerhead that made boxes made to spec for each sub..... you just tell them what subs you have and what kind of trunk space you have and they'd custom fabricate something for you that'll utilize exactly how much cubic footage you need for your subs.

I'm sure that down in Chicago they have something similar somewhere