Subwoofer issue (new sub sounds terrible)
 

I've been out of the car audio scene for a number of years, but decided to put a basic system in my truck. For the past year I'd been running a Pioneer AVH-3500BHS head unit, Infinity 6832cf in all four doors running off of head unit power, a Pioneer TS-SWX251 sub-in-a-box (10" flat sub, ), and a Pioneer GM-D8601 sub amp. The crossover point is 80hz. The sub sounded pretty decent, and the amp pushes out 300 watts RMS into 4 ohms, so wasn't underpowered. I recently added a Pioneer GM-D8604 to run the Infinity speakers (yesterday, actually), and ran 14 gauge speaker wire to them in the doors.

I also upgraded the sub with a 2 ohm Pioneer TS-SW2501S2 ( ) to wake up the amp some and get a little more loud to go with the new amp for the fill (the amp is supposedly stable to 1 ohm and puts out 500 watts into 2 ohms). I put this sub in the box the above sub came in, which I guess is about .35 cubic feet. This new sub sounds terrible. It's muddy, boomy, and has no hit to it. The box volume should be within the recommended size for it (.35-.70 cubic feet). I'm not sure what's going on. I had to pull it out and put the other sub back in because it sounded so bad. It gets good reviews... not sure what's going on.

Any ideas?

Oh, power for the amps is a 4 gauge cable going to a distribution block by the amps and 8 gauge splits off to power the amps.

Thanks for reading-- I hope someone can help!

Could be a bad speaker. What exactly does it sound like? Raspy, just not loud? F

It's just really blary, and really loud and muddy around 60-80hz. It doesn't have much bump to it at lower frequencies (kick drum type) and doesn't sound tight at all. It doesn't sound like it's broken. I wonder if it just hates the box. I tried stuffing it with poly fill and it didn't help.

My vote is for the box. Something isn't right there

I haven't used many but I know shallow mount subs can have really stiff cones when new. If it doesn't sound blown I would use it for a few days and see if it gets any better.

I've had it running in there for about a week at this point. I've also heard that they tend to be really stiff when new.

It was the box. I built a box with 0.62 cubic feet of volume and it's much better.

THe box is ugly as sin but works. I need to get carpet for it.