10 great subwoofer brands that you have never heard of!

There are a lot of great subwoofers brands on the market right now.  Most people are familiar with mainstream brands like Alpine, Sony, Polk, Kenwood, Klipsch, Yamaha, Kicker and JL Audio*.  But there are a ton of others that you may not know about, but you SHOULD!  Since this is a DIY page we are going to focus on raw drivers that will work well in both the home and the car.  These are the subwoofers that the insiders and the experts know and love.  So if you know these subs then you are either an insider or an expert. 

#1 Dayton Audio 

Dayton Audio 10" Ultimax

Let's kick off the list with a brand that we have LOT of personal experience with.  Dayton Audio is the house brand for Parts Express, Parts Express specializes in DIY audio and they supply parts to OEM speaker manufactures.  We have personally built several projects using these drivers. 

 

They offer the “classic” line of value priced entry-level subwoofers, these are great subwoofers for an entry level home theater build.  

Dayton Audio Classic 12"

 

The Dayton Audio Reference Series are aluminum cone drivers available in both High Fidelity and High Output versions.  The Ultimax is an awesome home theater or car audio subwoofer.

 

 

 

#2 NVX

Speaking of house brands our next subwoofer is NVX, this is the house brand for Sonic Electronix, an online car audio retailer.  They offer a wide variety of subwoofers, and it is not uncommon to see these drivers at car audio competitions.  The VCW line is an absolute beast.  Check out this massive 1,000 watt 15” sub with a three-inch voice coil that you can pick up on Amazon:

NVX VCW152 1000W 15" VC-Series Dual 2-ohm Car Subwoofer

    #3 Savard

Speaking of Amazon, Savard is another great brand that you can get on amazon.  Back in the 1990's this small company out of Baton Rouge had a cult following, and made fantastic speaker system for the car and the home.  Bill Savard's son, Will, as resurrected the brand.  It is back and better than ever.  The 6.5”HI-Q subwoofers is an absolute beast!  This is a 300 watt 6.5 with a 2" inch voice coil. 

SAVARD Speakers HiQ Series 6.5" inch Dual 2 Ohm Subwoofer

They also have the less expensive RAP series, but don't be fooled by the entry level price.  Just give this this 1,000 watt RAP 12 with 16 mm of XMAX a look.  AT $150 shipped you going to have a hard time finding a better bass for your buck.

Rap Series 12" D2v2 Subwoofer

#4 GRS

Next up is GRS, the budget champion.  GRS stands for great replacement speakers.  If you want to breath some life into old speakers these are affordable drop-in replacements.  The subwoofers work well in a wide variety of ported and sealed enclosures. When I say affordable, I am not kidding.  The 12” model is less than $25.  If you are looking for a budget subwoofer this is the hands down winner. You would pay twice that for a similar subwoofer from a mainstream car audio company.  The DIY Audio guy used one of these in the budget bass box:

#5 Image Dynamics

IDMAX12 V.4 D4

Not every subwoofer on this list is a budget subwoofer.  Image Dynamics has a great reputation and they have been around for a long time, so you have probably heard of them.  The IDMAX line of subwoofers are handmade in the US!  They are are known for their amazing sound quality, and look fantastic with an understated, elegant logo across the front!

It is common to find these in infinite baffle trunk builds.  If you want something that can get nasty low, make some serious bass, and sound good doing it you can't go wrong with Image Dynamics.  On top of all that Image Dynamics can be re-coned in a matter of minutes with their re-cone kits!

#6 Wavecor

Here is another amazing sound quality subwoofer, Wavecor.  They have a wide variety of shapes and sizes, like this funky looking shallow mount.  Check out this big 12 with the aluminum cone:

Wavecor SW312WA03 12-1/4" Aluminum Cone Subwoofer

You may look at this and think that the power handling just ain’t what it should be on a sub at this price point. But check out the sensitivity.  This thing does not need a lot of power to get loud. You can pick these up at parts express.

#7 Rockville 

Now it is time to stir up controversy with a sub from audiosavings.com, the Rockville K9!

Rockville W12K9D2 12" 4000w Car Audio Subwoofer

What do I mean by controversy?  Rockville very famously LIES about their power ratings.  This driver can only handle 500 watts RMS.  There was even a class action lawsuit filed against audiosavings.com. So, why are we recommending this sub?  Because it is a great subwoofer offered at a bargain price.  We are not the only ones that think so.  The YouTuber HiFi Vega thinks it is the best 12" for under $150.  Here is his video:

   

#8 Tang Band

 

Tang Band W8

Tang Band is very popular among the DIY audio crowd.  "The Uglies" by Toid's DIY Audio makes use of a pair of the W8's in each tower.

The DIY Audio Guy used a 6.5" version the W6 in this compact subwoofer build:

If you want to make a compact subwoofer these drivers are hard to beat, but if they are to big for your needs Tang Band also offers a 5.25" version, the W5:

Tang Band W5

#9 Eminence

How about another made in the USA brand?  Eminence, made in the small town of Eminence, Kentucky.  This brand is best known for making guitar amp speakers.  But, they produce drivers for many different companies and applications. Just click on this pic and look at the stats on the 12C!  This is a nice subwoofer: 

Eminence Lab 12C

#10 SKAR

SKAR is known for making powerful subwoofers at bargin prices.  They provide excellent bass for the buck and have gotten very popular over the last few years.  As best we can tell SKAR is copying the look you would find on a Sundown and DC Audio, but doing it much, much cheaper.  They also have a line of affordable amplifiers.   Check out this 15" subwoofer it is an ABSOLUTE MONSTER!

 

SKAR ZVX 15"

Is this the end of the list?

Of course not!  There are TONS of awesome subwoofer brands that most people have never heard of.  Which ones did we miss?  Leave a comment and tell us about them!

*This site uses affiliate links, when you click on an affiliate link and place an order we may earn a small commission, as an Amazon Associate we earn a small commission on qualified sales. 

 

How Does a Subwoofer Port Work?

This speaker enclosure has a hole it, and that hole makes better bass.  How can putting a hole in your speaker box make better bass?  Keep reading to find out!

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Ports look very simple. They are nothing more than tubes or slots built into your enclosure.  But they are actually quite complex.  There are also a lot of misconceptions about ports and how they work.  To those completely unfamiliar with subwoofers they look like a terrible idea.  When the driver pushes out would it not suck air in, and thus the sound back into the enclosure?  While those who are slightly more familiar with subwoofers, in an excellent example of the Dunning Kruger Effect, will argue that when the speaker moves inward the air in the box, and thus sound, sound comes out of the port.  Thus taking advantage of both the backward and forward movements of the subwoofer.  Both of these ideas use the same logic to reach opposite conclusions.  So we need to dig deeper.  

The air inside the port has mass!

We don't think of air as something that has mass, but it does.  Think back to high school science class.  Remember the Periodic Table?  Every one of those elements has a mass, and some of those elements are gasses, like Hydrogen and Oxygen, some of those elements combine with others to form molecules, like carbon dioxide, a gas.  What is our atmosphere made up of?  Gasses.  We don't feel the weight and pressure exerted by these gasses because we are used to the feeling it, but it is there.  When you are visualizing a subwoofer port don't envision an empty round tube that is open on both ends.  Don't think of a subwoofer as a fan that blows air in and out of that tube (well, under the right circumstances it does, more on that later).  Think of air in the port as a chunk of lightweight material (like paper), that chunk of material vibrates to make sound waves.  As the woofer moves it does not pump air in and out of the port.  Instead, it causes the air mass in the port to resonate as the air in the enclosure pressurizes and depressurizes.  I will let Sponge Bob show you what that looks like:

 

A port acts like an extra speaker cone.

What else is a vibrating mass that creates sound waves?  A speaker cone of course! The port is a BONUS CONE!  The port's job is to resonate and make sound waves in order to complement the subwoofer and help it play louder and/or lower.  Sometimes we just skip the port all together and throw in a speaker with no voice coil or magnet, this is called a passive radiator.    

Speaker cones and subwoofer ports "resonate."

Now comes the cool part, the part where we start to understand the physics of creating sound.  Sound is nothing more than a waves propagating through the atmosphere.  We quantify waves by measuring the number of times the wave peaks and falls (a cycle) per second.  We call that hertz (hz).  Your subwoofer plays the slowest and largest of these sound waves.  Typically 120 HZ and lower.  It takes a lot of energy to produce these waves, that is why the best subwoofers are huge and use a lot of power. 

Every subwoofer driver will have a specification called the free air resonance, or Fs.  This is the frequency where the mass of the cone is perfectly offset by the subwoofer suspension (the surround and the spider)  If we put that subwoofer driver into an enclosure the air in the enclosure now becomes a part of the suspension, and we get a new specification for the system.  The resonate frequency of the subwoofer system, or the box frequency, Fb. 

At Fb the subwoofer has a very hard time moving.  Why?  This is the frequency where the suspension is most effective at holding the cone steady.  The spider, surround, and air in the enclosure becomes a very stiff spring.  If the cone is not moving, then you get no sound.  But, do you know what has virtually no suspension?  A mass of air sitting in a tube.  At Fb the air in the port takes over for the cone.  The port is now producing almost all of the bass.  You can verify this with test tones. If you know your box tuning just play a test tone at Fb, the cone should move very little, but the port should be moving a lot of air. How is it that the speaker can pump so much air in and out of the port when the speaker is not moving?  Because the speaker cone is not a pump and a port is not just a hole in a box.  The entire system (box, cone, port) can be thought of as a Helmholtz Resonator. The same concept is used in performance car exhaust systems and intake systems and can be tuned to create a cool engine sound. 

If you play increasingly higher frequencies the port starts to move less.At a high enough frequency the air in the port will stop moving and the system will behave like a sealed enclosure.  The pressure changes in the enclosure are not enough to overcome the weight of the air in the port.

What happens if you start at Fb and then play increasingly lower frequencies?  BAD THINGS HAPPEN.  You don't want to do that.  As the frequency gets lower the pressure changes in the enclosure begins to overpower the weith of the mass in the port.  You eventually reach a point where the port now acts like a literal hole in the side of the enclosure, at this point the cone DOES become a pump that just pushes and pulls air in and out of the port.  The port and the sub will start canceling each ohter out, and the cancellation gets stronger as the frequency decreases.  Most importantly you risk damaging the subwoofer.  The subwoofer driver will no longer benefit from the air suspension inside of the enclosure and the cone will move to much, causing distortion and at high volumes you will damage the subwoofer. The DIY Audio Guy has a great video on this topic:  You should check it out!

 

The important thing to remember is that port behavior, and the boost you get from the port, is dependent on frequency.  The goal is to design the port so it resonates at the exact frequency you need to get the sound you want.  In the next port post we talk about how to design the port in order to get the most out of it.  We call this "tuning" the port.  In the mean time here are some awesome subwoofers that you should check out:

 

 

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