standard and shallow subwoofers?

If you have room for a standard size woofer, use one.

i am an idiot wrote: If you have room for a standard size woofer, use one.

not for room for my car trunck.

kapirani wrote: i am an idiot wrote: If you have room for a standard size woofer, use one. not for room for my car trunck.

Haha, do we have a famous quote section? Too funny,   hey Kapirani whats happenin? He was referring to having the rooOOOM in the vehicle to use a normal size sub/box. Meaning: shallow subs are used as a alternative to normal. Mainly due to their performance.   Avoid that alternative....if possible.This is what I do for FUN!

all you have to do is go to # and watch a short film about both types in action, if you can't see the difference, then I don't know that I'm comfortable with the thought of you driving a vehicle while being distracted by a high end audio system.

When you pick up a 8" woofer and the magnet weighs more then your odd sized slim 13" woofer you know the difference ;) plus a 13" woofer throws some really odd sounding bass. Then again the only systems i have seen with slim 13" woofers were put in by an idiot and he had the woofer mushed against the floor and box so it slapped the floor constantly instead of making bass.

In the past shallow woofers have had limited throw and limited power handeling, in the past year or so companies are claiming to have the same excursion as their standard brothers and similar power handeling. So for example the CVT and CVR kickers have similar preformance, alpine has a type R slim hitting the market that is similar to the regular type R, MTX also has a shallow thats decent. The kicker CVT is one of my TOP selling woofers of the last year and they worked really well but if I have the choice between the two Ill go with the standard woofer over the slim everytime, if for no other reason then Im an installer and hence resist changedouble-secret reverse-osmosis speaker-cone-induced high-level interference distortion, Its a killer

Shallow woofers suffer from terrible rocking modes, that CANNOT be avoided, simply due to their physical configuration. A triangle will ALWAYS be more stable than a straight line, and the steeper or taller that triangle, the more stable it will be. If you cut a woofer in half ACROSS it and through the magnet, there are three mounting points - the two outside points at the surround, and the inside point(s) at the voice coil/spider - a triangle. The more "squat" that cross section - the closer to a straight line - the worse the rocking modes will be... WILL be, not CAN be. It's the physics of the thing. If you can't tell, I am NO fan of a shallow woofer, in ANY case. If there is no other choice, use them, but if you have room, get a standard woofer. Even if you don't have room, use a smaller woofer with a shallower mounting depth, and possibly more of them. It'll sound better in every case. Possibly not as LOUD, but certainly BETTER. Plague. Avoid.It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Rocking can be taken care of within the design whether from a wider gap or stiffer suspension. However this forces some major compromises that will effect the end result. So as Dave said, if you can use a standard subwoofer, definitely do. I've heard the JL Audio's TW5 subwoofer as being comparable to their 12W3 in performance. But when you consider the 12W3 is half the price it becomes obvious which to choose if depth isn't an issue.