Now knowing the particulars for the enclosure I needed to build, the first thing I had to do was figure out what shape to build the box. I took some basic measurements of my truck, a crew cab 2000 Ford F350 turbo diesel dually. I figured I would build a basic box that could fit anywhere under the rear seat, allowing me to move the box around to find a location that would work the best.
I started by building the enclosure from 3/4 in MDF and a piece of 4-in PVC pipe, cut to length, to use as a port. Going off years of experience, I designed the box to fire the woofer downward; this will load against the floor of the truck, generally yielding greater output. The Pioneer woofer comes in a dual 4-ohm voice coil configuration and is rated at 2000 watts max power, so I wanted to make sure to push it to its maximum potential. To make good on the power I used a pair of Kicker KX 1200.1 amplifiers; one per voice coil. These amps will easily generate over 1000 watts of power to each voice coil, cleanly. This is quite a bit of power (especially for one sub) and is sure to overpower the rest of my system, but I can easily adjust the levels later. I made good use of the crossovers in the amplifiers, setting them at 100Hz (low-pass) to start. The remainder of my system consists of JBL C504GTI 5-1/4-in speakers powered by a four-channel amplifier delivering 150 watts to each speaker. It also uses a corresponding high-pass crossover set at 100Hz. My head unit is a Pioneer DEH-P9400MP with built-in equalization, but kept on bypass for the test.
I started my listening test with Pat Coil's "A Higher Road." This is a great soundtrack, so much so that it has been used on IASCA judging discs in years past. About 1 minute 45 seconds into this track, the bass guitar comes in real smooth. The TS-W2000SPL responded to this input with decent accuracy. Further along in the track you come upon a drum solo. The quick reflexes and subtle tones played by the drummer often blend together with too many woofers, especially if you don't have enough power to push it, but the Pioneer woofer did a very nice job. At higher levels, I heard some "huffing" (port noise) coming from the enclosure. To eliminate this problem for the remainder of the evaluation, I lined the enclosure with Miraflex, a synthetic insulation that you can find at your local hardware store.
Next I auditioned "Hang On To The Goodtimes" by Little Feat. I chose this track mainly to listen to the tonal balance of the kick-drum. I noticed that the upper bass tones really pulled my attention to the back seat where the sub enclosure was mounted. If you recall, I originally set the crossover point for the sub amps at 100Hz, which proved to be too high for our application. By simply re-adjusting the low-pass crossover point on the sub amps to about 70Hz and the high-pass amplifier (midrange) to 70Hz, the transition from mid-bass to sub-bass was less apparent, thus bass was less localized to the rear. Now I was back on track. I took another listen and found that the woofer sounded very realistic, with the tones of the beater hitting the kick drum accentuated (as it should be), as was the wallow of the drum as it faded out. Very nice.
Then it was on to "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman. Her music is full of energy across the spectrum, so you can expect a good workout from any speakers reproducing her music; from your subs all the way up to you tweeters. Throughout the track I experienced a reoccurring bass note (approximately 45Hz) jumping out at me, almost out of control. It was definitely more notable than the other bass frequencies on this track. My guess is that this was an effect of the enclosure being ported and tuned to 45Hz, resulting in plenty of additional output in that area.
This past January, while I was in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I had the opportunity to see the Blue Man Group live. The group is awesome-so much so that I bought one of their CDs. Seeing and listening to the performance live really gave me a good reference point. I slid the CD into the player of my F350 and auditioned virtually all of the tracks. I found myself constantly going back to the composition "Drumbone." There are some long, sustained bass notes from about 40Hz up on up to the 80Hz range. I didn't quite get a visual of the Blue Men banging on their trademark plastic tubes, but the Pioneer's reproduction was good nonetheless.
One of today's biggest hip-hop artists, Eminem, was next on the list. I actually stumbled across one of his songs on the radio and thought it would be a good track to listen to for the review, so I went to the local record store and bought the CD. I listened to a few minutes of each track and noticed the large amounts of mechanical bass on this album. This enticed me to slowly crank the volume up louder and louder. Needless to say, by the time I had maxed it out, the bass was bumpin' in my truck! At this crazy-loud volume, I heard a small amount of air huffing from the port, but for the amount of bass I was getting it really didn't matter. Yeah, this is good!
The Pioneer Premier TS-W2000SPL definitely performs as strongly as it looks. It handles power gracefully with minimum stress. While not designed as an SQ woofer, it sounds very good, especially for its $250 retail price. I have to admit, I enjoyed this woofer so much that I'm on my way back to my truck with my Eminem CD in hand for another pound session. See ya!