If you really want to feel the kick, believe it or not kick you in the chest bass isn't all that deep. I think you might benefit more from a high tuned ported box but without more info such as the type of car, hatchback or sedan, and what type of subwoofer, it would be hard to make a recommendation.

 

I had that thought too, I think a ported enclosure would benefit all around. My subs are recommended for both sealed and ported. I went with sealed because I can get tighter more accurate bass.

 

the kick is produced in midbass frequencies. not the sub

 

Peak at 50-60hz and another peak at 100-150hz works really well. It might sound really throaty and resonant on other types of music because of the midbass peak. Also make sure 1-1.5k has a little boost, that will help with the kick snap and keep things from sounding too muddy and thick.

unfortunate disclaimer: this is not the end-all-be-all recommendation on tuning your system. Yes - it will sound bad to some of you.

edit: I should point out that some metal just has really poorly recorded kicks. Probably the most dominant metal kicks I've ever heard are from Cerebral Bore, but they use triggered drums.

 

Thanks man. I know what you mean on poor recording some hit really hard and some just sound really muddy.

On my mids and highs my frequency is fixed @ 80 hz, I have not tried my amp in full range, I don't know if I can adjust the frequency on full range, just low pass.

 

hit the piece of metal with a hammer while suspended and use a series of different tuning forks to determine the frequency. Oh wait, sorry. Wrong metal

 

Frequency range is 40-130hz

On my mids and highs my frequency is fixed @ 80 hz, I have not tried my amp in full range, I don't know if I can adjust the frequency on full range, just low pass.

Just to clarify to be sure you understand, these frequencies you're listing are crossover frequencies, not tuning or boost frequencies. You're not adjusting frequencies, you're controlling the point where the speaker response starts to roll off.

To get good kick drum, you want your sub and midbass working together in phase. So if you have the high pass crossover on your midbass at 80Hz, try starting out with your sub low pass at 80Hz as well. Also try a bit above and below. Going too high will start making things sound muddy though. Also, assuming the amp or head unit has a phase invert setting, try that as well. If not you can switch the + and - wires going to the sub and see if it sounds better that way.

 

It is hard to find 80hz on my subs without a crossover calibrator. My head unit has LP 85,120,160. What would u suggest doing.

 

Do you have any variable crossovers for the mids? Set the LP for the subs at 85 for now. If you have a variable crossover for the mids it will be easier to tune - just listen and adjust until it sounds good. Strakele has a good point as well. If you don't have t/a or phase adjustment try swapping the polarity of the subs to see if bass/midbass transition becomes smoother. It probably won't but it's worth a try. It would be much, much easier to do if you had even a rudimentary way to measure frequency response.

 

No. My amp is fixed @ 80hz in HPF, but my head unit has 100,120,150hz. So if I use my head units LPF what does my amp freq need to be @?

 

With only a limited number of options, just go through them all until it sounds best. I could give you technical reasons why you should or shouldn't try to over/underlap the crossover, but without knowing how the sub and mid sum together or what the natural acoustic slope looks like for either driver I can't really offer any solid advise.

 

Thanks anyways, I activated my full-range filter and set my HPF on my HU to 100hz and my LPF through. It's sounding pretty solid now.