using one 10 and one 12 woofer

Has anyone ever done this? Does/will it work? Given the subs are the same ohm and roughly same watt ratings? I like the deeper bass of a 12 but I also like the crispness of a 10. Why not get both? Any negatives?

My crappy rendering of a sealed, chambered box.

Just your average 12 second station wagon.

not a good idea at all.... just wait, you'll see why !

LOL @ Gary ^^ At the frequencies you are running (subwoofers are typically run 100Hz or so, and down...) there is no difference in "crispness". The inductance of the voice coil determines this completely arbitrary "specification". I have also used in my own car, both 12's and 10's (they were both Eclipse Ti woofers) and the 10" driver actually played significantly louder, and went NOTICEABLY deeper than the 12" woofer on the very same DA7232 2kW/channel amplifier. Did I notice any difference in "fast"? Nothing notably faster, but the other two areas, there was a marked difference. I still to this day have a Ti 10" in use. Before anybody says anything, I built both enclosures in JBL SpeakerShop, applied MEASURED driver specs (as opposed to published specs) and they were both built for a Q of .7 As far as I am concerned, however, and again, at the frequencies applied to subwoofers, you are not likely to gain anything; however, there may or may NOT be any detrimental effects. If you HAVE 'em, use 'em. I would not recommend going out any BUYING one of each, in the quest for the perfect subwoofer system - it probably will not happen. People are gonna come on here and spew all kinds of stuff re: "cancellation", and nonesuch garbage like that... that is NOT the issue. The issue is the fallicy that there are differences in the outputs of otherwise relatively identical drivers, and that a 12" will always go deeper than a 10", or that a 10" is "faster" than a 12". I can tell you from experience that this is NOT always the case. If the drivers are the same drivers under the hood, (i.e. motor, magnet, voicecoil, diaphragm material, etc.) the *only* difference being the cone area, and they are placed in equal alignments, they will perform nearly identically. There is not enough difference in the moving mass of identical (save area) diaphragms to effect audible changes. The listener would require very expensive and sophisticated measuring equipment to even FIND the difference, in nearly ALL cases. As I said before, if you HAVE them, use them in good health

The real problem is that the bigger woofer will beat up on the smaller one, especially if they are the same brands.  Bigger brothers almost always beat up their smaller brothers, and you don't want to have to listen to it whine and cry.

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haemphyst wrote: LOL @ Gary ^^ At the frequencies you are running (subwoofers are typically run 100Hz or so, and down...) there is no difference in "crispness". The inductance of the voice coil determines this completely arbitrary "specification". I have also used in my own car, both 12's and 10's (they were both Eclipse Ti woofers) and the 10" driver actually played significantly louder, and went NOTICEABLY deeper than the 12" woofer on the very same DA7232 2kW/channel amplifier. Did I notice any difference in "fast"? Nothing notably faster, but the other two areas, there was a marked difference. I still to this day have a Ti 10" in use. Before anybody says anything, I built both enclosures in JBL SpeakerShop, applied MEASURED driver specs (as opposed to published specs) and they were both built for a Q of .7 As far as I am concerned, however, and again, at the frequencies applied to subwoofers, you are not likely to gain anything; however, there may or may NOT be any detrimental effects. If you HAVE 'em, use 'em. I would not recommend going out any BUYING one of each, in the quest for the perfect subwoofer system - it probably will not happen. People are gonna come on here and spew all kinds of stuff re: "cancellation", and nonesuch garbage like that... that is NOT the issue. The issue is the fallicy that there are differences in the outputs of otherwise relatively identical drivers, and that a 12" will always go deeper than a 10", or that a 10" is "faster" than a 12". I can tell you from experience that this is NOT always the case. If the drivers are the same drivers under the hood, (i.e. motor, magnet, voicecoil, diaphragm material, etc.) the *only* difference being the cone area, and they are placed in equal alignments, they will perform nearly identically. There is not enough difference in the moving mass of identical (save area) diaphragms to effect audible changes. The listener would require very expensive and sophisticated measuring equipment to even FIND the difference, in nearly ALL cases. As I said before, if you HAVE them, use them in good health

Thanks for the very infromative and well thought out reply! It is appreciated. I was only asking because I do, indeed, have an extra sealed box for 12's and a couple different extra 12" subs to choose from. The only thing I would have to pick up would be a 10" sub.

It must be the difference in equipment then. I have 2 12's with a Lanzar amp (old amp) in my wifes car. It hits really deep but not real "fast". In my Jeep, I have a RF (old amp) amp running a single 10" Bazooka tube. The base is still great (for real, it really is) but seems much "faster/crisper", and not quite as deep. I was just thinking of combining the two sounds. I guess it's just not that easy.......

Just your average 12 second station wagon.

Just recently read an article from CarAudioMag that mentions this.

caraudiomag.com wrote: Garry Springgay: I love this one. I hear it all the time. The reason that whole thing got started was back in home audio there were a bunch of sealed box systems and the boxes were being built too small. That made the sound really boomy and people would blame it on the woofer's size. Well, no, it's because that woofer's not in a 6ft3 box like it needs. You can have 15s that sound very tight and fast or you can have 10s that play very low with good output. The whole object of the game with loudspeakers is air displacement. It's done two ways: either with diameter or excursion. You can take a smaller speaker with more excursion and it will actually play lower and louder than a larger speaker with less excursion.

Car Stereo Questions and Answers - Car Audio Fundamentals, Myths, Misnomers & General B.S.

Each speaker is designed for a specific Frequency, I think the best way to get the clearest out of each of them is to use seperate boxes. You may have to use seperate amps or crossovers to make sure you cover each part of the frequency spectrum each speaker is designed for. If your interested in doing this, why not experiment you could learn alot from it, i dont see anything wrong with doing that. I thought about it myself.

But using one box with two diff. sizes will not sound clean. I think your idea is to cover precise sound at low fq. So when your jamming to different tunes one speaker will output those sounds the way it was meant when it was produced, obviously one low fq speaker can't cover them all. It could work.

how a sub sounds to your ears, as far as tightness and accuracy goes, really depends on a lot of different things working together to make it sound accurate. ofcourse the sub itself has something to do with it but the size really doesn't matter. from my experience, the tightness or "quickness" has more to do with your box design and tuning frequency or the box in relation to what the sub works best in. an enclosure doesnt necessarily have to be %100 to spec for a sub to sound good. it just all depends on what sound you are trying to achieve. the other thing that i find really matters is the relationship between your subwoofer and midrange/midbass drivers. if they are propperly blended together so that they will complement eachother in actual music (excluding rap and most R&B because the bass notes are usually in their own little world in those genres). but when you have music with real drums you need to have the right balance of sub to mid in order for each drum kick to sound natural and live. i run an 18 inch sub in my truck and i mostly listen to rock and heavy metal which usually has a ton of double bass drums and very fast beats and i get people all the time asking me how i get my system to sound clear and accurate even when the drummer is going crazy fast "ala slipknot" . people are amazed that you can really hear each drum hit instead of it sounding like random noise. its because i have the discipline to keep my sub turned down proportional to my mids and to have them properly blended with the crossover frequencies so that it doesnt sound like 2 individual speakers, it just sounds like 1 complete system.

leafer wrote: Each speaker is designed for a specific Frequency, I think the best way to get the clearest out of each of them is to use seperate boxes. You may have to use seperate amps or crossovers to make sure you cover each part of the frequency spectrum each speaker is designed for. If your interested in doing this, why not experiment you could learn alot from it, i dont see anything wrong with doing that. I thought about it myself. But using one box with two diff. sizes will not sound clean. I think your idea is to cover precise sound at low fq. So when your jamming to different tunes one speaker will output those sounds the way it was meant when it was produced, obviously one low fq speaker can't cover them all. It could work.

Actually it won't matter at all.  The two speakers will not produce different frequencies it's just that larger diaphragms tend to produce lower frequencies with more output.  Having seven different sized woofers and even a couple of tweeters in the same enclosure is not a problem at all, and indeed is the way loudspeaker systems have been built since the dawn of multiple element systems.

And to those who believe audio myth #173, re: "smaller woofers are faster and "tighter" (whatever that means) than larger woofers," all I can say is the size of the woofer makes no difference to its transient response.  What you think you hear is due to something else entirely.

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