Adding a subwoofer

[Nova]

I’m anyone yet able to confirm whether one of the Pioneer (or similar) underseat subs, actually fits in an Emira?

No chance. There is zero space under the seats. If there were, we'd be able to lower our seats more. Not going to happen.

 

[Nova]

Yeah there are a few considerations (there are tons, but these are my most important):
1 - volume of air moved (cone diameter, excursion)
2 - low frequency range

I'm part owner of a headphone company (thinksound) and know a bit about audio, but that doesn't extend to car audio for the most part...some principle are consistent but the environment is completely different. The way I approach the above is:
1 - There's no way around this, the little guy is smaller. It does have a ton of excursion though, so pushes more air than other small subs. An 8" would move more though, no question. I'm not too concerned about this, since the cabin is so small - compare the Emira cabin size to a sedan, and it's pretty clear that the relative air being moved by a little sub is far greater than a big sub in a big car.
2 - This thing hits 35Hz! That's kind of perfect and you'd have to go 10" at least to get lower (in the Focal range for example). Below 30Hz would be great, but I'm more a fan a tight bass vs thumping bass, and I feel that tight controlled sound is more aligned with the spirit of a sports car: precision sound for a precision car. Also, since I'm going to run a DSP, I can extend the frequency range a bit lower than 35Hz.
3 - loudness. Everything will be loud enough, this is a non-issue.

I run an 8" sub under the seats of my old Defender 110 (so 2 total) and they are absolutely perfect: punchy, precise, and you feel it in your chest if the bass is turned up even a little. That experience changed how I plan out audio installs. Full transparency, if I can fit this instead, I probably will: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_091SUBP20S/Focal-P-20-FSE.html?tp=111

I mean, who knows what it will actually sound like...I'll have to install it and report back - car arrives in August...so be patient

Cool, hoping to see how it turns out. Remember to come back and post. Haha.

 

[Rapture]

For those of you on here, like me that would like to replace the existing subwoofer with something better in the factory location here are my thoughts.

I’ve had the interior of my car apart the past few weeks to install sound deadener and look at upgrading the subwoofer. I’ve taken the door panels off and installed deadener both on the interior of the exterior of the doors and on the interior door panel mounting area as others have done. I have also removed all the components in the rear areas that house the rear speakers and have applied sound deadener in those areas. The sound deadener really helps improve the interior space and may in itself help how we hear the sound in the car (It certainly feels like it does). My initial plan was to upgrade the 6X9 subwoofer in the factory location using the speaker linked below. It has some pretty good specs, and I thought I could modify the factory sub box to make this work. I do believe I could make that large speaker fit but I’m not sure if it would have the ideal volume that speaker would like to perform optimally. I’ve learned a lot for others on the forum and learned that the factor speaker is a dual voice coil, the replacement I chose is not, so If I hooked it up to the factory amp, I would lose half of its power. I don’t know how much power the factory amp puts out, but it likely not enough to power the new sub adequately. I can’t locate another 6X9 subwoofer with a dual voice coil as an alternative option.

The factory sub box is in there pretty tight. It uses the drain hole on the bottom as one of the mounts to the vehicle along with two bolts on the upper portion that tie into the body shell. If someone had the skill (I unfortunately don’t) to design and fabricate a new enclosure that uses those factory mounts and could perhaps support an 8-inch driver, that would seem to be ideal. There is about 1 ½” in front of the factory sub enclosure before you hit an immovable object so not a lot of extra room to build a larger enclosure. If you could then find a decent 8-inch subwoofer that was also a dual voice coil maybe the factory amp has a chance of running it cleanly (I wish we knew the specs on the factory amps). I also wonder why KEF wouldn’t have just designed this space for an 8-inch sub? Additionally, there is not much extra room in either cavity to add an amp for a new subwoofer and I don’t think either of the two factory amps can be removed if you continue to run the factory system (versus complete replacement).

I have also tried the system after the sound deadener was installed running some heavy bass EDM music in the car. I can say that factory 6X9 is trying pretty hard to put out some sound with mixed results. I can’t say the same about the 2 other 5 inch mid bass speakers mounted higher in the rear. They don’t seem to contribute much. I’m wondering now how closely the EQ settings are related to the three speaker types. Maybe increasing the mid bass relates primarily to those 5-inch upper rear speakers. I’ll play around with that a bit to see if there is a setting that may optimize their use.

I’m waiting for some more supplies so the rear area will be apart for a bit. If anyone needs any pictures or has any other question about that area, please let me know.



Here is the 6X9 sub I found.

https://www.mmatsproaudio.com/site/product/mbw690/?gQT=1#