I have no experience with the solo-barics, I'm just wondering how you guys feel about them?

I'm thinking about putting a sub in the S2000, my amp puts out 240x1 RMS. Looking at the solo-baric's specs, the 12" max rms is 600 watts! Would I be under powering it horribly with my amp?

 

I have an old round 10" solobaric. When I first bought it I powered it with a cheapo 200 watt amp that's now powering my mains. When I installed a dedicated sub amp it made quite a difference. The weak amp sounds very muddy and the amp will clip long before you are close to pushing the speaker to its limits. My sub amp is an 600Wx1 MTX thunder 2300X, works great and cost $200. The bass is really really tight and is plenty loud even in the well insulated trunk of my car. If you want to 'boom', note that you will need more and bigger subs though. Solobarics are a really expensive way to get spl. If thats what you want just get some cheap 15s.

Also the installation could be quite a pain on the s2000. I don't have an s2000, but just for kicks I tried dropping the sub into the trunk of a friend's and tuning to the same radio station. You end up hearing the rattling of the trunk more than you do the bass from the sub.

 

I also had a round 10" Solobaric driver in a sealed enclosure (the only way to go for tight base) and it sounded awesome. But that was in a Maxima. I agree with RicePimp that the Solobaric subs are great at generating tight base (which is what audiophiles like), but SPL is very important if you're going to put the sub in the trunk.

However, the newer square Solobarics should generate more SPL because the 10" square driver has more surface area than the 10" round driver. But the S10L7 generates only 85.4 db at 1W/1M. Not very sensitive.

So if you put the driver in the cabin (footwell), then I would recommend the Solobaric. Otherwise, get something else with higher sensitivity.

 

I had 2 12L7's in my last car and I thought they were great subs for the price but they did need a lot of juice to sound any good, 240x1 RMS is not gonna cut it. I don't think thats enough for an 8L7. But if you didn't already buy the solo-barics, check out the new JL Audio W7, although I loved my L7's, I heard a single 12" W7 and it killed my L7's in both SQ and SPL, kind of pricey tho.

 

For the price, I think the squares are awesome. I've got a 12" in my trunk and it sounds great. The big bonus comes in the airspace. It only needs .75cf or something ridiculous like that. But I would have to agree with the previous posts, power it up.