Simple question about a sealed sub box?

Question

Well the sub askes for 4.6 ft^3 in a maximum sealed box. I made a box at 3.6ft^3. The book that came with the sub says that if i have the box at 4.6ft^3 the rms amount of watts the box should have is 300. But if i have a box at 3.6ft^ and I feed the sub 650 watts rms would it be okay? What would happen it it weren't okay? Here is the website that has the info on the sub. Also should I put in some polyfiller?

http://www.kicker.com/06/tech-support/manuals/manuals/2006/2006%20CVX%20Sub%20a01%20WEB.pdf

Answer 1

i would not send any more than about 50watts RMS extra to it

even if you set your gain perfectly you are more than doubling the recommended RMS wattage so you will more than likely destroy the sub

and the box stuffing would definitely help

since its a DVC sub can you drop the impedance (ohms) before it goes to the amp so that the amp you are considering using would work, this link may help http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/woofer...

Answer 2

First off stuffing a box increases the damping or qtc it does not trick the sub into anything

buy building a large sealed enclosure you are lowering the qtc of the driver, this is not necessarily a good thing typically it lowers the mech. power handling of the driver , the upside is generally a flatter freq. response with good low freq. extension, however you are severely sacrificing the efficiency,

if you are going to build an enclosure that large, I would recommend using the ported design instead.

Answer 3

you should be fine with the amp you have. the smaller the box is on those subs the greater the power handling and since you didnt put it a max sized box it should work fine. and also remember that the 4.6 cubic feet in the manual is internal volume. now is your 3.6 internal volume or is that including the thickness of the wood? if it is then you internal volume is less than you think.

Answer 4

If you want to do the math to check the safety, you'd find that you're probably going to overpower the sub at 3.6 cubic ft. with 650 W RMS.  

Generally wouldn't recommend overpowering by more then 10%.

As to your questions, is it okay?  Probably not.  What would happen if it weren't okay?  Risk blowing the sub.  Should you add polyfiller?  Polyfill will help trick your sub into thinking it's in a bigger enclosure then it's really in.  Do you need it?  Probably not.

Answer 5

Just because an amplifier CAN push 650w doesn't mean it HAS to push 650w. You can always leave it turned down at the input stage and have extra headroom (a good thing).

You are way better off sending too much power to a speaker than not sending enough. If you push a smaller amp to its limits, you will clip the signal and eventually you will send straight DC to you speakers which will burn them up very fast (<5sec).

On the other hand, when sending too much voltage to the speakers, you will hear the cone breaking up long before you do any damage to the voice coil.  Also, sending higher voltages to the speakers will blow them by friction overheating (from rubbing the VC against the pole piece)or over-excursion, which takes much longer (minutes) than electrical overload from DC.

Besides, if you have a bigger amp hooked up, you can run it at less than maximum capacity, which results in a cooler amp and much greater dynamic range.