What do you all think would be better a 10" free air or a sealed 8"

I don't have any scientific evidence for this, but...

I have never considered an 8" speaker to be a subwoofer. To me, an 8" speaker is a mid-range speaker biased towards the lower frequencies.

What follows now is strictly my opinion, based on what I have seen. I am not an expert, so this is probably worth about what it's costing you.

I am a big fan of 10" subwoofers. You can run a 10" sub full range (no crossover) and get incredibly rich midrange, and yet still pick up the bass and sub-bass frequencies. Or, you can cross them over at about 90Hz and get very clean, tight bass and sub-bass.

Unless you spend some pretty serious money, most 12" subwoofers seem to come off rather dark and muddy sounding, unless you have the gain cranked up to the point where they can run efficiently at which point the bass and sub-bass is overwhelming the rest of the system.

There's a Lexus that competes in the events I go to (not in the same class, thank heavens) that has a pair of very expensive 12" subs (I'm guessing in the $1000 apiece range) that even at very low volume are smooth, velvety, full, rich, with incredible presence thumping the back of your seat. But that car is the exception. We're figuring that he has about a $60,000 stereo in his car if you counted the many hundreds of hours of custom work at $60 an hour. Probably $20-$30,000 worth of actual componentry.

So, IMHO, if you've got a choice of a pair of 8" speakers or a single 10, go with the 10.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"