I have been jacking around with my setup for over a month now and am still highly displeased with the quality of sound I have.

Originally I owned a Saturn SL1 and had the same system that I now have in my E. I figured with the extra cubic feet of air within the cabin of the E, my sub would beat quite a bit harder.

Wrong.

For some reason, my Saturn was about twice as loud as my E. I had the rear seats folded down and the woofer facing towards the front of the car and it was S-L-A-M-M-I-N-G. I drop that exact same system in my E and the voume of the bass has decreased over half. Now I have to push the HELL out of my woofer just to get a decent amount of volume out of my sub in my E.

Like with any other setup, I noticed that in certain locations in the E, the bass would gather and create a bass pocket. With my sub behind my rear passenger seat facing backwards, the bass pockets build up right against the windsheild (which is normal in any car I've been in) and in the rear behind the rear seats (where the woofer sits). In other words, where people are going to be sitting, the bass is 1/3rd as loud.

When I point my sub to face the ceiling, the volume drops almost half and all my bass pockets shift to the floor. When I face it forwards, my bass drops about 1/4th and I cant find a decent bass pocket to save my life.

I should also mention that no matter what way my sub is facing, when I roll the windows down it tends to beat just a little bit harder and, if I roll down the passenger window, the bass pocket forms around the driver's head (and vice versa).

Have any of you played with the acoustics of your woofers and tried to center that pocket up around the front seats? I have a SUPER high end woofer and a 1000 watt RMS amp so for all intents and purposes, that thing should be flexing my glass. It certainly did in my Saturn.

Oh and by the way, I have a sealed 1.25 cubic inch box with a pound and a half of polyfil to drop the space down. I have tried with and without polyfil, and I've tried both ported and sealed boxes. Ported was certainly louder, but I want the range of a sealed. When the sub was in my Saturn, it was in a sealed box. Hope any of that info helps because I'm really starting to get irritated.

Don't have any experience with putting subs in the E but what you are describing sounds like bad standing waves --- those "bass pockets" --- where the bass hits an acoustic wall and has nowhere to go except reinforce itself.

This is of course a byproduct of the interior's overall shape. Which is sort of cubic, judging from the outside, and flat floor inside. A cube shape is about the worst you can have for accurate bass, because the "good" bass tends to cancel itself out. Ask anyone who's tried to have quality bass at home in a square room --- no good.

Your Saturn, being a typical car, is a mixture of uncommon shapes inside, and the overall shape suggests something closer to a rectangle. Even a standard SUV isn't a square like the E is, even though a standard SUV is just as open inside.

Keep experimenting with different sub placement. Some parametric EQ might be called for as well. or even some "bass traps" in one or more corner. A "bass trap" is common in higher-end home audio to negate the bad effects of a room's natural 90-degree corners. What it does is lessen the "bass pockets" (trapped standing waves) so that what you're left with is quality bass, not the one-note (but louder and crappier) bass you now have.

Consult with one or more pro audio shops. Surely they've got some tricks for this problem. And don't ever expect what worked in one car to seamlessly transfer over to another. To do so completely ignores acoustics --- the most important "component" there is. Good luck!

I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine regarding "bad sound in a square room" and relating that to my E.

I am not going for pure loudness (or I would have stuck with the ported box), but overall sound quality. The volume of the bass is significantly lowered in my E, no doubt due to a bad acoustic setup. My speaker has an excursion of 1.75 inches each way, so its pretty disappointing to watch that thing move a good 3.5 inches in and out, but not have the sound that I had before.

So far I have tried 3 different boxes and multiple locations including facing backwards, forwards, and upwards. I have seen some people actually build their enclosure into the spare tire well and I was curious how that sounded. I doubt I will ever give up my spare tire (music aint that great on the side of a highway with a flat), but I am open to pretty much all suggestions from any audiophiles on this board. An audio forum might be more up my alley, but they wouldnt have the same experience as another E owner...

Thanks for your help so far. I'm trying to brain storm to see what kind of solutions I can find for improving the volume, but maintaining the sound quality of my sub. Trial and error seems to be kicking my @ss at this point..haha.

It sounds to me like you have the right ideas and "priorities." From what I recall (it's been a few years) the sub-in-the-spare-well idea is done mainly to save interior space. I don't know that there's necessarily an acoustic advantage.

If you have a proper enclosure for your sub that's a good start, although it's true that perhaps a different sub and box might react better in the E than whatever you now have.

I take it you already have something good in all the doors? And what trim level do you have? If it's not an EX you might consider swapping the lower dash console for an EX's, in order to put a dual voice-coil 6.5" in there. You'd again nothing on the bottom, but a strong 6.5" right at your feet will add a little punch.

That seems to be one advantage of the EX: with it's factory sub location it seems to saying "we know the acoustics suck, so we're gonna just put the woofer as close as we can to you and hope for the best."

I have the EX, but I have removed both the stock sub and amp. Putting them back in is only a 10 minute job, but then I would need to re-wire the sub inputs to RCA's and buy two "Y" adapters so that my headunit can control both subs at the same time.

That is really the only viable solution I have for using the stock sub, but there is a reason why I'm hesitant to do this:

I would have to control both subs via my headunit with only one "sub" volume. This would mean I would have to balance my 12" dual voice coil sub and my 6.5" dual voice coil to be roughly the same volume, this way I wont have to blow my 6.5 in order to just *hear* my 12'.

In the end, I would love to incorporate that 6.5" stock Alipne sub into my system, but I'm not sure if its worth all the effort if I have to push the living bejeezus out of it just to hear my high-end sub. I would certainly love the range, but I hate being limited to the amp in the stock setup. You simply have no control over the gain levels.

I'd always heard rumors about which way to aim subs and finally decided to see which ones were correct. So I used a friends RTA & OSC setup in my E to find the best spot for my own fairly serious sub - an Eclipse Alum 12" DVC in a sealed enclosure of anout 1.25 sq. ft.

We found that the optimum placement in the rear hatch was to have the woofer pointed to fire at the center of the rear gate and pushed up against it as closely as possible. The angle of the sub box face took care of the upward reflection itself.

It sounds counter-intuitive but by placing it this way the sound reaches your ears almost perfectly in phase. Eddie Runner (a car audio legend) did a good write-up about why this works so well at the url below. Even though he was testing a car trunks - the same principals still apply - maybe even more so. Boy, do I wish I'd found his article before we did all that testing ourselves (although I probably wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen/heard it myself with the scopes)!

http://www.installer.com/tech/aiming.html

Hope this helps,
eMass.

Oh, I didn't mean retain the stock sub necessarily. Myabe use a better one, something beefier? I hear JL audio also makes a 6.5" dual vioce coil model.

... You simply have no control over the gain levels.

As long as you have separate amplification to the center sub, you can control how loud it goes. Either set it semi-permanently at the amp (or use another crossover) or if you want constant control you should be able find a line-level volume ontrol that wires into the system with RCAs. Alpine used to sell one years ago; somebody probably still does. Tiny little knob you could mount anywhere and then the knob's RCAs go between the amp and radio or crossover unit, etc.

Yeah, if I was to use an aftermarket amp, setting the gain would be a snap. I was primarily referring to using all the stock stuff (sub and amp), and then having issues setting the gain (since there is no gain control on the stock amp). I suppose I could wire an inline gain control too, so thats certainly an option I could use with the stock sub and amp...

I would like to completely replace the stock sub and amp with something in the same sound range (meaning I wouldnt want a JL Stealthbox) for up front, but I wonder what kind of hell that might play on my soudstage having my SPL's coming from behind and my semi-low frequencies coming from up front. I guess I'll never know until I try. I'll put some pictures up here of the work I'll be doing (this is sort of an ongoing project) and maybe I can help someone else out who wants to refine the sound in their Element.

I read that article (among others) about how the waves werent "in sync" and I tried to move my speakers as close to the tailgate as I can get it. It improved a bit, so at least I know I'm on the right track. After reading those articles, I have a better understanding of what exactly those sound waves are doing. Thanks for the help guys. It's much appreciated.