tadda
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As many of you know I had posted a thread here on our forum a while ago on How to Improve OE Sub Bass Quality and Eliminate Vibrations
To briefly summarize, surprisingly, the Harmon Kardon 8" Subs in the Supra are actually very good speakers once you correct some very basic design issues that were overlooked by Toyota... Without ports added, the bass exhaust energy was literally trapped behind the rear panel which created quite of bit of vibrational noise and also muddied bass response...
Adding exhaust ports to the rear panel along with lining the enclosure walls with wadding and insulating the space behind the narrow rear panel, essentially lowered the Q (damping effects) and resulted in a flatter / clearer bass response...The Bass is now deeper, punchier, and far less distorted and eliminated much of the vibrational noise heard...
I also mention that for anyone considering installing direct replacement subwoofers as a knee-jerk reaction to improving sound distortions, vibrations, and rattles, these basic improvements should be seriously considered before replacing them...
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Which leads me to the Bavsound Ghostsubs...
After all these improvements were made I was curious as to if the Bavsound Ghost subs would further improve bass response and sound quality above that of the OE Harmon Kardon woofers....
After installation of the Bavsound Ghostsubs I gave the subs the recommended 10 hour break-in before evaluating them fully...Actually I gave them over 20 hrs of breakin to re-evaluate...
I have to say that sadly I was disappointed and a bit underwhelmed...I really wanted these to be better than the HK subs, but they were not...While I did experience to slightly punchier upper bass response, the lower bass response was noticeably lacking....
Now Bavsound does make the claim that their subs produce "2x the bass" and are "+10 db louder than the factory subs from 20hz to 60hz"...Both of which I did not experience...Perhaps this applies to the underseat ghostsubs in the BMW, but this is not the case with the Supra, where the enclosure design is very different than that of BMW underseat application...Like I said, I really wanted to like these and was disappointed they didn't work out for me....The Supra's factory Harmon Kardon subs actually produced a much deeper bass response with very good clarity!
====================
I decided I would return the Ghostsubs as Bavsound has a 100 day satisfaction guarantee return policy....They were very accommodating and quickly issued a return ticket and also paid for return shipping....This level of customer support I was very impressed with...
I reinstalled the OE HK subs and remain very pleased with their overall sound quality...Again, I need to note that this is only after making improvements to the OE sub enclosure that I outline in the thread I mentioned earlier...
Below are a few comparison pics and a pic of the Bavsound Ghostsub installed...As a side note, I was kinda surprised that there really wasn't much of a weight difference between the two subwoofers...
To briefly summarize, surprisingly, the Harmon Kardon 8" Subs in the Supra are actually very good speakers once you correct some very basic design issues that were overlooked by Toyota... Without ports added, the bass exhaust energy was literally trapped behind the rear panel which created quite of bit of vibrational noise and also muddied bass response...
Adding exhaust ports to the rear panel along with lining the enclosure walls with wadding and insulating the space behind the narrow rear panel, essentially lowered the Q (damping effects) and resulted in a flatter / clearer bass response...The Bass is now deeper, punchier, and far less distorted and eliminated much of the vibrational noise heard...
I also mention that for anyone considering installing direct replacement subwoofers as a knee-jerk reaction to improving sound distortions, vibrations, and rattles, these basic improvements should be seriously considered before replacing them...
====================
Which leads me to the Bavsound Ghostsubs...
After all these improvements were made I was curious as to if the Bavsound Ghost subs would further improve bass response and sound quality above that of the OE Harmon Kardon woofers....
After installation of the Bavsound Ghostsubs I gave the subs the recommended 10 hour break-in before evaluating them fully...Actually I gave them over 20 hrs of breakin to re-evaluate...
I have to say that sadly I was disappointed and a bit underwhelmed...I really wanted these to be better than the HK subs, but they were not...While I did experience to slightly punchier upper bass response, the lower bass response was noticeably lacking....
Now Bavsound does make the claim that their subs produce "2x the bass" and are "+10 db louder than the factory subs from 20hz to 60hz"...Both of which I did not experience...Perhaps this applies to the underseat ghostsubs in the BMW, but this is not the case with the Supra, where the enclosure design is very different than that of BMW underseat application...Like I said, I really wanted to like these and was disappointed they didn't work out for me....The Supra's factory Harmon Kardon subs actually produced a much deeper bass response with very good clarity!
====================
I decided I would return the Ghostsubs as Bavsound has a 100 day satisfaction guarantee return policy....They were very accommodating and quickly issued a return ticket and also paid for return shipping....This level of customer support I was very impressed with...
I reinstalled the OE HK subs and remain very pleased with their overall sound quality...Again, I need to note that this is only after making improvements to the OE sub enclosure that I outline in the thread I mentioned earlier...
Below are a few comparison pics and a pic of the Bavsound Ghostsub installed...As a side note, I was kinda surprised that there really wasn't much of a weight difference between the two subwoofers...
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