Got this hooked up today behind the drivers seat. It fit's well and I still have lots of room. I'm a little underwhelmed by the sound though. I'm not sure if I need to adjust some of the settings or if the location isn't ideal. I'm going to play around with it a bit and see what I can do. Anyone else have this problem? It sounds like it doesn't fit in with the other speakers...

 

Bummer. I'd mess with settings before moving it. It sounds like there's a crossover and/or phase issue, but it could just be as simple as level matching. What HU model do you have? Does it allow you to set a crossover frequency for different speakers?

 

I have an alpine 143-bt HU. I connected the Sub to the S/W specific RCA out on the HU. There's also a S/W volume setting on it. I didn't have a lot of time to play around with tuning yesterday since it took me a while to hook everything up (running the 12v wire was a bit of a pain). I'll try messing with the phasing tonight. As mentioned, I put the speaker behind my seat. Would the direction that the speaker is facing make a difference? I have it facing my seat (towards the dash). Would it be better to have it face the rear instead? I'd like to try and get it to a point where it sounds like it fits in together with the rest of the system.

 

Worth a try, but I suspect that it will sound better firing out instead of against the back wall. Without being there, here's what I'd try for troubleshooting:

-Get the levels as close to even as you can.
-Set the HPF for your polks to 80Hz on the HU. Make sure the LPF on the HU is off, and mess around with the LPF dial on the sub. The number isn't important, but ideally it will be high enough over 80Hz that there isn't a frequency gap, but not so high that it competes with the Polks.
-Once you've found a setting that sounds decent, mess around with the levels again, and then play around with the phase on the sub. If it's out of phase, the sub will cancel out frequencies near the crossover frequency and will sound weird, which may be what's going on here. I'd do that part last, though, after making sure your levels and crossover are right.

If you find the sweet spot, let us know what the settings are so we can freeload off your hard work

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll give this a shot and let you know how it goes.

 

Alright, I messed around with the sub some more today. The best settings seem to be:

- Sub facing towards trunk. I find the sound a lot more punchy this way
- The base EQ dial maxed out (all the way clockwise)
- The phasing dial about 1/4 turn clockwise
- The LEVEL dial about 1/4 a turn clockwise. This makes the largest difference. If turned up too high, it'll quickly overpower the rest of the system and sound out of place. I found a quarter of a turn balances the system out and compliments the polks. If I go higher, the sound quickly starts to sound distorted and out of place.
- The Frequency dial is about in the middle (just past) so about 100 Hz.

On the head unit, I set the HPF to 80Hz and turned the LPF off. I keep the subwoofer volume maxed out (at 15) and the base setting at +6 (max is 7). This seems to sound the best for me.

Overall, it sounds okay. It definitely sounds better at high volumes than at low volumes. I don't know if putting it under the seat would make any difference in sound quality. It definitely sounds different when I push my seat fully back vs. having more of a gap behind the seat.

 

Mine sounds good and I didn't have much of an issue tuning it. I find that having it out in the open verse up against a barrier lets the sound really get out.

Mine definitely has noticeable kick especially sitting in the footwell like that.

I did read before buying that some of them (a small number) have issues and may need to be returned.

I do agree that high volume is where it is at for this sub. The higher you go the better it gets. Can really kick at that volume as wel.

 

Nearly a year later and its still working great. I now have it hidden in the footwell with the passenger floor mat over it and no wires visible. I have had no issues with it and it still packs quite the punch.