Kicker opinions, what now?

Agree with Rob, disagree with Soundmasta. You can't throw JL in with those 7 other low line sub brands you mentioned. If you were a JL dealer your opinion would be differant.

sealed you say? using the thiele/small parameters one of the calculators on the bcae1.com site it says sealed as well. how come the kicker manuals go on about how much better ported is? wasnt it designed as an SPL sub and isnt spl more inclined to ported? i guess i dont really want/need it to be that extra loud anyway

Honestly I don't think you will notice that much of a loss of output if you go with a sealed enclosure.  If you are really wanting a ported enclosure keep playing around with your design just keep the volume of the port the same.  On a completely different note, at the kicker dealer I used to work at we had a Solo X 18 in a huge ported box. Everybody that came in the store looked at it and was wowed and then they would procede to get down on all fours and look in the port.  Even had one guy stick his arm up in it.  Its like they didn't believe the port was real or function.  Funniest thing ever.  Sorry this reminded me of that.  Good Luck! 

The solobaric line was developed as a sub engineered for use in a small sealed enclosure. Why people go on and on about this new breed of subs in a ported box, this is it's happy home where it's output capabilies have been found. It plays by far and away louder, just as deep, but with far more output at those lower frequencies.  Personally, I hate this sub, to my ears there are far more subs that eat it for breakfast in the small sealed box category and needing a monster slot load port enclosure for a pair of these is just not my idea of what I want to weigh my car down with.Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.

the kicker manuals say that  the ported enclosures are so great because, up untill kicker really started pushing them, not alot of slot ported boxes were being made, and they are more efficient than a sealed box. they kind of used it as a marketing tool, impling that it's a driver specific design or some sh*t, and mr. "avrage kid off the street" doesn't know the difference.  the solo barics started out as a solution of sorts to isobaric boxes, which were a common way to save space then. the porblem was that to be able to use an enclousere half the size of the common reccomended size, which was usually quite large, you had to use two subs, and more power and you only got the results of one sub in it's regular, larger box. the solo barics' enclosure, much like it's isobaric namesake, was much smaller than almost any woofer on the market at the time, utilizing a stonger suspension and improved motor sturcture to allow for a smaller enclosure and great preformance. today's solo baric can play in a box as small as .88 cubic feet, smaller that both the kicker comp and comp vr.