Kicker 11HS8 8” 150 Watt Hideaway Compact Car Audio Powered Subwoofer Sub HS8

Ok, first off about me so you have a frame of reference when I talk about sound quality and music. 47yrs old. I grew up listening to 70's rock, 80's rock & new wave, 90's alternative, country, club music, & pop. By the 2000's I was grown and tended to go back and listen to the stuff I grew up on. Now I'm not one for low, low, rumbling bass and trails on and makes trunks rattle and loosens bolts on your vehicle. Nothing wrong with that at all, just not my taste. I like bass that compliments the mids but bass that you can feel in the form of a punch. Take Van Halen for example. You listen to it for the riffs, for the guitar, for the lyrics, but I also like to feel when Alex Van Halen kicks the bass drum, and tom-toms. Same with the Foo Fighters. David Grohl is about the best drummer right now and he displays it in his music. I want to hear it, feel it in a song like Everlong, but without the bass guitar overpowering all the other instruments because I have 1 or 2 subwoofers that can't help it.I used to listen to these songs as loud as I could, going to Galveston beach (don't get in the water) when I was 16 to 22 riding with my buds. Now, as I go from construction site to construction site, in my 2011 Ram 1500 quad cab, for my job I hardly ever go over 50% on my volume knob in my car. Still loud, just enough for my neighbors to hear in the background when I pull up in my drive, but never enough for it to annoy them.That's where this beauty comes in! I get clean, punchy (but crisp), bass for just about everything I listen too. I can feel it too, without giving me a headache. This is great for rock, pop, blues, and even classical. Granted, the rest of your system has A LOT to do with the final sound with these genres, and you might be happy without a subwoofer if you get the right speaker/head-unit combo, cause I was, but when I added this baby....WOAH! It made such a nice difference at all volumes, but especially at the higher volumes where the rest of my speakers began to struggle on some songs.I will say this, get a head unit with at least a 5 band EQ. It'll be really nice if also has a High Pass filter to allow the sub to handle the lows and the rest of your system only have to deal with the higher mids and all the highs. It should allow you to be able to set the frequency you want the sub to handle, but if not don't worry, this sub has a knob for that.I place the sub under the rear passenger side seat in my Ram. I had to place it at an angle in order for it to fit, but at least the sub is angled toward the front. Even under the seat, no problems in hearing it. Running the cables in my truck was easy, your car/truck may differ. There were three cables I needed to run from the front. Power cable (red) from the truck battery. The remote cable (blue) from the head unit that tells the subwoofer that the stereo is on so you better turn on too. The cable for the control dial (black with 3.5mm tips) that comes with the subwoofer, it connects to a knob you install somewhere you can easily reach and goes to an input in the sub. It basically overrides the gain knob on the sub. And on the back of my headunit I had a set of RCA outputs (I supplied them) that I ran to the sub, but the sub doesn't have RCA inputs, only a harness to which you are supposed split the wires that go to your front speakers and reconnect them to the front speakers AND to the subwoofer. However, I ended up using Kickers 2-ch speaker wire-to-RCA adapter. If you do use the spearker wires that come out of your head unit then you won't need to run the remote wire (the blue one).I tried some of the other powered subs from Rockville, Pioneer, yeah they were $99 to $120, but this one was so much better. I honestly couldn't hear the difference with or without the sub with the cheaper ones.This is plenty loud. I have a 23 year old and at 50% volume he asks me to turn it down after 3 or 4 songs, so I may be almost 50, but I still like my music a little loud.If you fall within frame I painted myself in as far as musical tastes, then you WILL NOT be disappointed with this unit.

This subwoofer sounds amazing but it was a b**** to install. It comes with the necessary wiring but depending on where you're putting it, the wires are not nearly long enough.Here's a rough summary of what I went through to install it on my factory stereo for a 2015 Honda Accord:The kicker fit perfectly beneath the passenger seat. It came with a whole mounting kit involving screws and straps, but I didn't want to do any permanent fixtures if I could avoid it. The seat had a retaining bar underneath that worked perfect for me to strap the sub in place and still allow full range of the seat adjustments. I then had to pull a lot of the trim and detach the rear seats in order to run the speaker wires to the trunk. The wires were about three feet too short to reach the driver side speaker so I tried with it attached to just one speaker.I ran the power wire through the front side trim, beneath the center dash column, and through column and dash above the pedals and behind the interior fuse box. There was a small plug to run a wire through the firewall of the cabin which then ran through a large space above the driver side wheel and into the engine bay. Here I crimped together the provided battery fuse and connector and attached it to the positive lead on the battery. I then searched high and low for a nearby grounding point for the ground wire which is only about two feet long, but couldn't find one, so I stripped down an old extension chord I had lying around and used that as a negative lead to a grounding point I already knew of in the trunk.Upon powering on the car I saw the sub was turning on through the high input mode but was not audible and was giving me a red light indicating either overloaded signal or not enough power. At this point I tried some various configuration of connections, before deciding to order some 16 gauge wire, line output converter, and some rca to wire adapters for the line output converter. I then tapped both rear speakers and connected them to the converter which then connected to the wires to the sub.Now the sub wouldn't power on in both high and low modes, which meant I now had to connect the only wire left that I previously was trying to avoid connecting, which is the remote turn on wire. This wire was also only two feet, so I went out and bought some 12 gauge wire along with a fuse tap and crimped together the wires and ran it the same as the power wire through the dash to the fuse box. I tapped the fuse for the windshield wiper slot as this is a low amp circuit and would prevent the sub from turning on unless the car was also powered on. Note that fuse configurations may be completely different depending on your model of vehicle.At this point the sub was now working and sounded great, but I started to get weird feedback. I already knew that this was likely caused by the active noise cancellation that comes with all modern Honda vehicles. I had to pull out the storage compartment in the dash in order to reach the ANC controller and disconnect it. After doing this, the sub works flawlessly. But if my music is turned down I definitely notice the engine a little more than before. At some point in the future I plan to figure out a way to easily switch the ANC on and off depending on if I want the extra bass or not.The conclusion to my story is that installing this speaker is not for the feint of heart, and I suggest you do a research on the speaker and electrical configurations of your vehicle before doing any modifications to your stereo system. If you're willing to put in the work, this sub is amazing for the price and delivers amazingly deep and clear sound for how small it is.