Focal ISUB TWIN Underseat Subwoofer
Verified2 reviews
- See all
APRIL 2022 – Overall, they fitted my bill perfectly. I am more than able to both design and build my own bass speaker/units but when they are this small (bass enclosure) the costs of doing it myself outweigh the amount of effort needed by me and to that end, these units represent good value for the money and by a decent car audio company. My system consists… Read more
of - * Pioneer P99RS and CD Multi-Player * On the dashboard Sony XS-GS1 Tweeters. * The sound-deaden doors have Phoenix Gold MX65CX 16.5 cm speakers. * 2x Focal iSub Bass Enclosures (Under the front seats) * 1x 15" Fi Audio IB3 Bass Speaker in a 80L Three Chamber AMG sealed box. * 1x Hybrid Audio U1 Digital Bass Amp. * 1x Hybrid Audio U5 Digital Five channel Amp. * 1x Car Audio 2nd Battery (in the boot)
To expect these little speakers to fill a car with loads of low frequencies is unrealistic.. but if like me, you use them to fill in the bass at the front end, so that the door speakers do not have to play too low, then they do an amazing job.
I play mine from 60Hz - 124Hz using the DSP function on my headunit - they are sloped at -24dB on the back and -18dB on the front.. my sub plays from 20Hz - 60Hz with no filter on the 20Hz side and a -6dB filter on the front end. I have mine wired in series from a single 400wrms output from the sub out of my five channel amp.
I like the way it has all come together but do not expect these small speakers to be bass shaking beauties as that is the job of a real sub, in my case, a single 15" unit.
- +2
I love focal, I have lots of their gear but recommend you avoid these – My system consists of: Alpine 702D. Alpine R-A60F Amplifier. Focal K2 Power 130 front stage. FOCAL ACCESS 130 rear fill. Focal Isub twin under seat sub woofers. The good: They sound crisp and clean - at low volume and output. They're reasonably small although they wouldn't fit under the front seats of either my Jeep or my Volkswagen Amarok… Read more
which is the biggest of the midsize utes on the market.
The not so good:
They have incredibly low sensitivity to 83db - to put this into perspective they need to be fed the same amount of power to make the same amount of volume as my massive 1000 watt RMS competition style subwoofer which for this small a subwoofer is a joke. This means you need to feed a lot of power to them for them to make output you can hear but then they can't tolerate that power level without clipping.
Chinese made and they look and feel like it.
They require a 2ohm load each which is a bit unusual at this low power rating, this means you need an amplifier that's either 2ohm or 1ohm stable at very low output which is possible but not common, you will likely need to use a multi-channel amplifier and not a monoblock unless you can find some sort of obscure monoblock with low output.
They are rated at 100 watts RMS each but I have been feeding them at 150 Watts RMS of an Alpine amplifier at a 2ohm load and have found their performance extremely underwhelming.
If you listen to a single style of music for example dance you will probably get away with these as you can set the gains and the low pass filter in such a way that they mostly perform ok. If you listen to variety of music - in my case a lot of 80s and 90s varying from electronic to rock to classical and everything in between you are going to struggle.
What I ended up doing was having to have the gains on my amplifier set to maximum and keep in mind that's 150 Watts RMS per channel. For certain songs for example stairway to heaven even at near full head unit volume I had no output from these subs at all. The very next song would come up for example Queen and they would clip so hard that the cones sounded like aluminium cans being crushed.
This meant that I was using the subwoofer bass adjustment knob on every single song that came up either turning it all the way down all the way up and never been able to have a reasonable midpoint so I could just listen to my music like a normal person.
The problem as I see it is they require too much wattage based on their incredibly low sensitivity which means you end up feeding them a lot of power a lot of the time and then when you get a song with an actual decent bassline they musically fall apart.
When you consider these are $750 a pair that actually buys you a very premium 10 inch or even 12-inch subwoofer and a dedicated amplifier which is the direction I've gone to replace these. These are now sitting in a pile in my junk room.
Just to be clear I bought these on advice from the focal rep in my state and I have bought them from an authorised local dealer here in Victoria.
ProductReview.com.au has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence our content moderation policies in any way, though ProductReview.com.au may earn commissions for products/services purchased via affiliate links.