Hi guys.
There are a few nonsensical things that have been banded about in this thread that i think i need to clear up.
Firstly with regards to the notion that a "12 is less punchy than a 10" this is utter rubbish i am afraid.
The speed of a woofer is not determined by its cone area or indeed by Mms (moving mass) but by the BL product of the driver. This is the motor strength, or more importantly the force the magnet can excurt over the voice coils of the driver, which directly leads to the movement of the cone.
Secondly, whilst it is true that a square woofer would on paper have a larger Sd (cone area) than an equivalent sized round design, this is vastly missing the point. And that is one of suspension. You see for you to accurately have a reproduction of the AC waveform at the cone, you need the cone to move in a completely linear motion. There are 3 critical components here that allow this - the Spider, the Cone itself and the Surround.
On a conventional round woofer neither the Spider or the Surround has any particular pressure points as the load is spread evenly around all 360 degrees of the surface and therefore a linear and accurate reproduction of the AC signal being fed through the coils is easy to achieve.
With a Square coned woofer there are 4 points at which the surround builds pressure rapidly - the corners. This conspires to limit excursion as there is tremendous wastage involved in the driver trying to push past this inherent resistance. In addition it leads to the driver ending up with huge distortion figures, much akin as it goes to the Vibe subs which are far far cheaper.
Now obviously to minimise this you can run the Kickers ported which will limit this effect somewhat, however the subs are not really the best design in the world and do not tolerate low tuning (35hz or lower) and therefore tend to get very boomy.
Next thing i have to take issue with is why on earth you would want to reproduce 100hz loudly - nothing about about 55-60 hz is really what i would term "bass", hell you are not even allowed to burp at 80hz or higher in db Drag which isnt about music at all. Accordingly when we set up SQ installations we tend to cross the mids out at between 50 and 80hz with a 24db/octave slope (sometimes as low as 40hz 24db if they are in kicks) and bring the subs in about 50-63 hz. More than that you tend to get boomy, laggy bass which leaves people going "loud but sounds s**t".
Also i love this "SoloX are the best" rubbish people say. They are not. If you are talking about competitions then the DD9917 obliterates it. For Streetbass use there are plenty of more competent products that take more power and drop lower for longer - look at the Oz Power series or the RE XXX to name but 2.
Play nice