1996 Jetta GL car audio suggestions (1 Viewer)

[Josh Sieg]

Hey! I'd like some PRO suggestions on what I should do with my car stereo =)

I have 2 Lightning Audio 15"s that I bought REALLY cheap from a liquidation sale.


Detailed Description of the S2.15.4:
S2.15.4
Competition Grade
Cast Basket
Strike 15" SVC
200 Watts/400W Peak
Impedence: 4 ohm x 1

I also installed the following speakers in my car:


6-1/2" 3-Way Speaker, 180 Watts Max. Power

With those kind of specs, I have 2 questions.

1. What kind of box should I get for my subs.
2. What kind of amp should I get? Brand? Wattage?

Thanks a TON!

 

[Brad_Harper]

To me a sealed box in a car has always been the way to go. Cheap and easy to make. Plus they always sound great. With two 15's you will have more then enough bass without resorting to ported or bandpass designs.
As far as amplification goes get a class D amp of some kind for the subs. JBL makes excellent ones. You should aim for around 200W/sub. Then get a good 50x2 amp for your pioneer speakers. There are a ton of companies that will fit the bill. Check out some car audio review sites and read up on different amp models.

 

[Dave Milne]

Perhaps, but with the driver already chosen, one needs to look at the Thiele/Small parameters to determine the appropriate type and size of box.

For the Lightning S2.15.4, using T/S params from their website, vented is out of the quesion: the sim suggests an 11 cubic foot box with an F3 of 18.4 Hz (Hmmmm... sounds like an interesting home theater "infinite baffle" application). As far as sealed, the Butterworth "maximally flat" alignment yields 3.33 cubic feet (per driver) with F3 ("cutoff" or 3db down point) of 39 Hz. Not bad, but a farily large box. If you shrink the box to 2 cubic feet per driver, you get Qtc=0.802 (slightly underdamped) with F3 of 41 Hz. Many car audio designers will go all the way to Qtc of 1.0, expecially if cramped for space or if they want that punchy, exaggerated mid-bass sound. In this case that would be a 1 cubic foot box per driver. The down side is F3 rises to about 48 Hz and there will be a 1.25 dB "hump" at 88 Hz.

A final interesting option is to keep the small 1 cuft box (or even a little smaller) and "fix" the response with a Linkwitz Transform circuit. Do a search in the DIY forum here for more details.