'95 VW Jetta GL

The same reasoning applies to subwoofers. You can get a bit looser in the rules here, because subwoofers can be further apart due to their wavelength before the ear can identify two separate origins. Mids and tweeters must be no further than fractions of an inch apart or you wind up with a problem known as "frequency dependent shift." You can get away with two 10" or 12" subs or four 8" subs in a cluster before things start to get out of hand. For extra clean bass, I prefer smaller drivers like 8" due to their ability to accelerate faster than a 12", but to obtain the same level of output as a 12" usually requires between two and four 8" subs. As for recommended brands, your appraisal of the sound is essential. A hot brand name doesn't mean a thing if you don't like the sound...

I have a horrible dilemma. I have a with a Sony MDX C7900. I just bought a brand new 12" Infinity Perfect subwoofer. I enclosed it in a 1 cubic ft., homemade, sealed box that fits nicely behind my rear seats. I also have 2-gauge power cable running from my battery to a Stinger 4-way power distributor running two amps. I am running the Perfect off a Sony XM-1502SX with the gain all the way up (no bass boost). It puts out 380 watts RMS supposedly. Also I am running the rest of my speakers with a Pyramid PB780 4-channel amp. My friend has a '93 Ford Probe with the same sub, and has one Coustic amp (late '80s) putting out 120 watts RMS with the gain all the way up. He has some kind of 16-gauge power cable running to his amp. I built him a box, which is much bigger than mine. He has a JVC CD player. Finally, here's my question: I listened to a "Bass CD" in his car. I heard it and made a mess in my drawers! I went home and digitally copied the same CD over to MiniDisc. I put that into my car stereo and had nowhere near the same amount or quality bass that he had. Yet I am running so much more money in my equipment!! I even folded down the back seats to see if that would help, but nope... Three reasons for this we could come up with: 1) the shape of the car 2) the fact that my car has a trunk and his doesn't 3) the possibility that MiniDisc most likely cuts off the frequencies that I love. Since I've heard his car I've been debating whether or not I should ditch the whole MiniDisc idea and just go back to the scratchable CDs. I've also seriously thought about getting rid of my Perfect and going with an Alpine SWR 1240D or two. Please help. This is so frustrating!Gus VoyerOld Town, ME

It sounds like you are trying to troubleshoot in several directions at once. The first thing to do is to unify as many variables as possible. This means testing situations to discover what single condition has the most effect, and then dealing with that first. You don't have any "bad" product, so you can be sure you have discovered that installation is the key to high performance in any system.

Your MiniDisc source is digital and close enough to a CD that there will be no appreciable loss in a properly recorded copy. To confirm that the dub or head unit itself is not the cause, plug your friend's CD player into your system via some long RCA cables and see if there is a difference. I suspect there will be nothing of significance unless you have not set record levels properly during the dubbing process.

Next, go to the other end of the signal path and swap your sub cabinet with your friend and listen again. If your friend's cabinet sounds right in your car when located in the same position as your cabinet, then the problem is a mis-designed cabinet. Have an installer run the Perfect's parameters on a computer to determine the optimal cabinet.