Dedicated to Really Cheap Audio Enthusiasts
Hmm, this project does not fall into the really cheap category. I'm actually using a Vifa driver. This came about because it fit my criteria.
I commute about 1.5 hours total each day. I decided I wanted a much better sound system in my 1995 Mazda B3000 Extended Cap Truck. What I am looking for is a reasonable sound quality (SQ) without using any of the rear jump seat area for a subwoofer.
The only other place I thought of was in front of the console, up underneath the dash. I used to think I would build a CD holder here, but I guess a sub is more important. I started this but stopped this approach when the nearly finished cabinet interfered with proper operation of the seats. The old project can be seen here.
So I built a more comventional enclosure, sacrificing one of the two rear seating locations.
This woofer has an f3 of 60Hz in a 10 liter enclosure, plenty low on its own, but I'll also have cabin gain kicking in too. Because I'm not sure where this will kick in and how much gain I'll get, I made sure to buy an amplifier with an adjustable bass boost.
This is an American Legacy LA380 Amplifier, caple of 160 watts into a bridge tied 4 ohm load. I know I'll never get even close to that!
This amp will take the Left and Right RCA outs from my head unit into its left and right inputs. Becuase the outputs are bridge tied, it will combine the bass information in both channels into a single mono signal. The amp has an adjustable low pass circuit which I'll use to integrate this with my other speakers.
I just got a pretty low end CD and MP3 player, the Aiwa CDC-MP3. This seems like it is first generation MP3, in that it takes about 30 seconds to start playing each time the car is started. Bummer. But I picked it up for under $150 (US) with free installation. There's the cheap talking!
