DEI bought a/d/s, PPI, Orion, and pretty much any major name brand in car audio. They don't own them all today. I think Epsilon owns soundstream. Anyways, they diluted product lines and moved manufacturing away from the U.S. Long story short, product lines aren't what they used to be. FYI, Orion and PPI were owned by a/d/s/. A lot of their product line was a/d/s/ rebadged. The brains behind PPI amplifiers ended up at JL and that's why JL uses regulated power supplies today.
Speaker size. Displacement is king. But you don't account for JUST size of the cone but also cone movement. That's where linear response is important. Generally speaking, you can obtain very good results by utilizing LOTS of cheaper speakers and reducing cone movement which helps maintain a very good linear response.
Long story short...pay a lot of money for uber amazing build quality, or just substitute lots of cheaper subs and less cone movement.
Btw, I'd definitely take those 10's over the 12's. I like their Qts. There's lots of arguments on how to utilize that specification appropriately though.
