Advantages of low QTS woofers

Low q drivers tend to have higher efficiency, and more suitable box requirements
for ported applications.

The q of the system is usually more important in determining if it's "warm" or

"fulller" than the q of the driver itself.
QTC is the final factor, not the QTS. However when comparing drivers, if driver A
has a QTS of .72, and driver B has a QTS of .37, driver A's QTC will most likely
only go as low as .72 (most likely up), whereas driver B can be as low as .37 but
can be brought up to .6 or .7 or higher by putting it in a small enclosure.

That flexibility I felt was the big advantage.

And when you referred to the Scan Speak being more robust than the Seas
Excel....was this what you were referring to? It's lower overall Q?

Low Qts is generally an advantage in car-fi because a lower Qts woofer will
generally yield a lower sealed Qtc in a smaller box, with a relatively high F3. The
higher F3 is a huge component in why lower-Qts woofers often sound better, because
some woofer's low-end rolloff dovetails nicely with the average car's transfer
function. That leads to relatively smooth LF response (though EQ is always a very
good idea). One of the most common SQ-killers in car audio is excessive and lumpy
VLF, caused primarily by a fundamental mismatch between the acoustic (or assisted)
rolloff of the enclosure and the car's transfer function.

Note also that woofers with low and high Qts can model and sound damn near
identical in similar enclosures if they're designed to meet a given response
profile in a certain sized enclosure and have similar motor designs. An example of
that is the "home" Peerless XLS and the "car" Peerless XLS; the "car" one has a
much higher Qts, but if you model them both it's really hard to tell apart the
graphs.

Also, high Qts doesn't make a woofer better for I-B installs. What it does is
reduce the need for LF EQ compared to a similar woofer with a lower Qts. I can't
think of an 8" driver I'd rather use as a midbass in an I-B install (or any other)
than the B&C 8NDL51. It has a Qts of 0.44 (which is actually about .2 more than I
thought it was), but because of its high Fs (66 Hz) it needs considerable EQ to
reach down to 60Hz or so in an I-B. By contrast, consider the Peerless SLS8, which
has a Qts of around 0.5 and an Fs of about 35Hz. In an I-B install, an SLS8 will
give you an F3 in the low 40's without any sort of EQ. So if you're a minimalist
when it comes to processing, higher Qts is indeed better. But if you're not averse
to loading up your midbass with EQ, then you can possibly do better by using a
lower Qts (or higher F3, or both) driver with a superior motor design.
Qts, the main reason to seek a higher Q sub for IB, and more specifically, a
woofer with a higher Qms, is that a woofer in IB operates in an "unloaded" state
and therefore must rely on it's own mechanical suspension stiffness to control cone
motion and/or prevent over excursion. Qes is a contributing factor as well, but
basically ALL free-air -specific subs have something in common>>>Higher Qts
(usually around 4.75-6.0), and higher Fs (usually 40-50Hz).
THe Fs of a free-air specific sub belies it's actual performance, as in-car
frequency response extends EASILY below the natural "anechoic" Fs of the driver
when installed properly. A sub "rated" at F3 of 45Hz, for example, can easily play
down to 20Hz if installed properly, maybe even lower!

On the flip side, if you use a Low Q driver in freeair application, the sub will
have a limited power handling ability (as suspension can easlily reach Xmax) and
careful EQ will need to be applied to try to prevent overexcursion. Sonically, a
LowQ woofer in IB will exhibit good deep bass response and not use a lot of
amplifier power, but that response is often mistaken as "a great IB performance"
because the amount of low bass extension overshadows the fact that sub bass
resolution has been diminished, midbass and transient response is sacrificed, and
overall tonal accuracy is adversely affected. In layman's terms, you'd have a lot
of "bass", but to an audiophile it will be "sonic slop".

Using a higher-Qts driver for IB with a higher Fs yields a vast improvement in

tonal accuracy and transient response campared to the low Q driver in IB, and the
resolution of adjacent tones especially in the bottom octave become much more
easily rendered and discerned. So, in a freeair application, some call this a "dry"
sound, whereas a lowQ woofer would be called "boomy".

Of course, you throw these subs in an enclosure and things change drastically!

Qts = (Qms*Qes)/(Qms + Qes)

Since the Qes is usually a much lower value than the Qms, the equation above
reveals that the motor is more responsible for the Qts value than the suspension.
Taking that a little further will also reveal that the job of the suspension is to
prevent the coil from moving too far and for IB applications is important in making
sure the speaker isn't destroyed. The motor determines the shape of the roll-off
and the behavior above that roll off. In the speaker's passband, the suspension has
no almost effect on the frequency response.
i've just change my midbasses from a low Qts (0.35) to a medium Qts (0.55).
They show less bass and much more controled midrange. They looks better for a car
door install.

Simply put, you can raise the Qtc up to your desired level, starting from Qts, but
you can never lower it.

If you want a Qtc of say, 0.60, it cannot be achieved with a woofer of Qts of 0.7.

However, if you want a Qtc of 0.6, it CAN be achieved through the enclosure design
with a woofer of Qts (for ex.) of 0.4

But what happends at the car door? It has enought air volume to act as IB?
If so, you can not raise the Qtc of the driver.

If you'll use an electronic crossover for the midbass in the door and the frequency
of the crossover will be slightly above the resonance of the speaker, then none of
this matters much as long as the Qts of the driver is below 1 or so.

Keep in mind that all of these discussions about qtc are based on measurements in
an anechoic chamber. In a car, cabin gain will have a larger effect on frequency
response than QTC will.

Basically you have to look at the loudspeaker and the car as a system, and factor
in the influence of the car.

For instance, I'm running some B&C eights in a bandpass box in my car for midbass.
According to the sims, the drivers should have a fourth order rolloff around 180hz.
But once you add cabin gain into the equation, their rolloff is much shallower than
fourth order, and the output extends all the way to 100hz.