Now many people always ask on forums whether or not Sony Xplod branded subwoofers are any good or not and if they are a bad choice. To be realistic here, you always get what you pay for, it doesn't matter if its car audio or a clothes shop. There is always a reason why something is so cheap if not the expensive stuff would never sell. Now with this particular subwoofer, Sony Xplod subs are really not that bad at all. For an entry level system or if you are on a really restricted budget they are well worth the money. People usually say that Sony Xplod subwoofers are a bad choice and they are not any good but installation is more important than anything. We have seen worse brands such as Boss car audio that are total trash to say the least. But setup the Sony Xplod 12 inch 1200 watt max power subwoofer right and you will be impressed for the price. Now we are going to explain to you carefully what you can do to make your Sony Xplod car subwoofer sound louder and outperform even higher end speakers.
1) Its all about the box. The enclosure makes 70% of an impact on how your bass going to sound. Poorly designed enclosure or cheaply made, which is the case with most because of being shoved into a random prefab box from walmart. This is not going to sound the best in terms of audio quality, since the box is not designed for the speaker, insufficient port volume, internal cubic volume, wrong port length etc... The list goes on. What you want to do is either get or build your own ported box for Sony Xplod 12 inch 1300 watts subwoofer to the spec what is made by the manufacturer. A nice slot ported box tuned to 34 HZ will give you loud boomy bass, but at the same time give you a nice deep punch that you can feel in the back of the seat. So make the right box. We have seen a cheap Sony Xplod in a custom box sound louder and deeper than a JL audio W7 wrong sized prefab box on half the power. Its all about the box and you need to understand that. The best type of box design for a Sony Xplod subwoofer is ported it gets you maximum slam for your sub, sealed doesn't work so well since they are low powered to begin with and don't get loud unless ported.
2) Gain and LPF filter not setup on the car amp correctly. The gain controls the distortion and the LPF also known as the low pass filter stop unwanted frequency such as vocals and treble to be played into the sub. This will make it only play bass which it is really designed for and make it more efficient. Set the LPF to on and adjust it anywhere around 60-80 HZ depending on how strong your front midbass is to make the sound blend in. The gain can be adjusted by ear, keep turning it up and stop when you hear any kind of distortion being played through your car subwoofer.
3) Underpowering the speaker. Now on a true scale, a Sony Xplod subwoofer is not rated at 1200 watts. That is just a max rateing for marketing to get peoples attention and think wow this sub is really powerful over others in a bass shop. Its nothing new in the car audio world, everybody does it they are rated to take around 300-400 rms. The max we would recommend that is safe is 500 watts rms of clean power from a mono block amplifier or a bridged 2 channel amp. You will get the best bang for buck. If you are using lets say a cheap generic or unknown branded 200 watt rms amp vs a 500 rms alpine car amp, the alpine will sound better. Simply because they use high quality parts and when they say 500 rms its actually true and not made up. So our point is use a good quality amp that matches the rms a little more of your Sony xplod subwoofer to make it sound miles better.
With this helpful guide, if followed correctly your sony xplod car subwoofer should sound good and feel more worth its money now. But you got be aware that there is only so much you can do, if you are expecting hair tricks and setting car alarms off with 2 of these its not going to happen. But for a daily system that you can use to work and back you should be more than happy with the sound.
Ok, so I have 2 12 inch xplods and an xplod sub, I set off alarms daily and my neighbors hate me with a passion my neighbor 2 houses down says he can feel it in his basement when I'm out front you don't sound much like you know what you're talking about just saying
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