Ok, I'm getting frustrated.

I'm trying to find an answer about 'Feeling' bass and hearing it.

I could swear my old Soundstream Rubicon 302 and 2x 12" non-alluminum Eclipse subs were rumbling way more than my current set up. Looking at 200w RMS subs x2 in a sealed/ported box (don't remember).

Now my Soundstream TRX1000d with 2xTS-W3001D4 Pioneer 1000wrms subs that are much larger and more powerful don't feel anything. Sure I feel something but not like how i remember it a few years ago with a much weaker system.

They make me feel like I am going to go deaf but I don't feel the bass like I used to out of a weaker system.

I know I am not feeing the subs enough power, so I dropped down to one sub to get 800rms out of my amp @ 2amps. (Versus 1000rms @ 1ohm divided over 2 subs so 500rms).

What should I do? I got two TS-W3001D4 subs that are new that I want to get rid of and replace them but with what. What am I looking for?

I want to feel the bass, not go deaf trying to feel it by cranking it.

Eclipse: Felt it, wasn't loud for the sake of being loud.
Pioneers: Going deaf from SPL. At the same volume the feel of the bass is drastically lower than what I got out of the Eclipse system.

something wrong with your tuning, just go over everything and recheck all the bass setting on your deck and gain and lowpass on your amp, some amps have a bass boost swtich, check that out to see if it makes a diffrence.

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DEATH BY SOUND
2008 was a flop, lets see what 2009 brings
i can only go up from here.

I adjusted my gain with voltmeter, my lights dim even with a cap... so it is pulling a lot of juice.

I don't get it. Sealed box vs ported have anything to do with it? Even with 1 sub my lights sometimes dim when on the bass boost knob all the way at max and high volume.

Ported boxes have a much steeper cut-off below the tuning frequency than a sealed box will. If your box is tuned too high (at 40 Hz let's say), you well get alot less energy at 20 Hz with that set-up than you would with a sealed box (-12 dB ported vs -6 dB sealed, or about 4 times less energy).

The plus side is that the ported box will be more efficient around the tuning frequency, so you will get more output there (which means less amp power required for a given output). The sealed box will sound better, and be more linear, but requires more power over it's bandwidth than it's ported counterpart.

I've never been a fan of ported boxes myself. Sealed or aperiodic (damped infinite baffle) are my favorites, but I'm absolutely not an SPL guy.