sub enclosures
#6
10-23-2008 | 01:19 PM
HCF Member
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 361
From: Louisiana
Pre-fab will work if you are going with a sealed enclosure, mainly because sealed enclosures are generally more forgiving as long as you are fairly close to your subwoofer's recommended volume. For example, if your subwoofer requires .625 cubic feet after displacement, a .75 cubic foot sealed enclosure could still work and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between having your subwoofer in the .625 cubic foot sealed enclosure and the .75 cubic foot sealed enclosure. Plus, if you are really OCD about getting to that magical .625 cubic feet, you could always put something solid in the enclosure to reduce its volume.
Ported enclosures are best utilized when they are tailored to the subwoofer you are using and the manufacturer's recommended specs. Some 10" subwoofers will sound better in a ported enclosure that is tuned @ 34 Hz whereas others sound better in a ported enclosure that is tuned @ 40 Hz. It will be hard to tell you which enclosure to go with without knowing the subwoofer you are intending to use.
Pre-fab bandpass boxes are best left on the showroom floor of Best Buy or Circuit City. Don't get me wrong, bandpass boxes can be designed to sound great, but you will rarely get that out of a drop-in solution from BB or CC.
Now here is the difference between all of them, but keep in mind these are just generalizations. In "most" cases a sealed box is supposed to play deeper than a ported box because a ported box usually has a serious drop off in frequency response below its port tuning frequency. In real life, this is not always the case and it varies by vehicle and subwoofer! Regardless, a sealed enclosure generally gives you a smoother sound. The pros of a sealed box is that they are generally smaller in size when compared to ported or bandpass. The cons of a sealed box is they usually don't play as loud as the same subwoofer would in a properly built ported box with the same amplifier.
Ported boxes are generally bigger than sealed and will play louder at the port tuning frequency than a sealed box will at that same frequency, then have a serious dropoff below the tuning frequency. The cons to sealed boxes are their size, generally larger than a sealed box; their uneven frequency response since some will generally play twice as loud at their port tuning frequency (+3 db) than other parts of the sound spectrum (flat); it is easier to force the subwoofers into over excursion thus causing damage if you try to make them reproduce those ultra low, sub-sonic frequencies that a 10" subwoofer isn't designed to play so well. In other words, if you have a sub-sonic filter on your amp, you should use it with a ported box because your 10" subwoofer does not need to try to reproduce 18 Hz frequencies.
Lastly, the bandpass box. A properly designed one is usually HUGE and they are extremely efficient. The cons are that: It is tough to get a properly designed one; they are usually so loud, that it takes a lot more mids and highs to blend properly with them; because of some designs, it is nearly impossible to tell when your subwoofers are at their physical limitations and it is possible to overdrive your subs with a clipped signal due to the fact that a bandpass box masks the physical distortion of a subwoofer very well.
I am sure I missed a few things, as I am just typing the generalizations that I can recall off the top of my head. Also, don't take what I typed as the Bible of all subwoofers because there are some notable exceptions to all of what I wrote depending on which subwoofer we are talking about!
Ported enclosures are best utilized when they are tailored to the subwoofer you are using and the manufacturer's recommended specs. Some 10" subwoofers will sound better in a ported enclosure that is tuned @ 34 Hz whereas others sound better in a ported enclosure that is tuned @ 40 Hz. It will be hard to tell you which enclosure to go with without knowing the subwoofer you are intending to use.
Pre-fab bandpass boxes are best left on the showroom floor of Best Buy or Circuit City. Don't get me wrong, bandpass boxes can be designed to sound great, but you will rarely get that out of a drop-in solution from BB or CC.
Now here is the difference between all of them, but keep in mind these are just generalizations. In "most" cases a sealed box is supposed to play deeper than a ported box because a ported box usually has a serious drop off in frequency response below its port tuning frequency. In real life, this is not always the case and it varies by vehicle and subwoofer! Regardless, a sealed enclosure generally gives you a smoother sound. The pros of a sealed box is that they are generally smaller in size when compared to ported or bandpass. The cons of a sealed box is they usually don't play as loud as the same subwoofer would in a properly built ported box with the same amplifier.
Ported boxes are generally bigger than sealed and will play louder at the port tuning frequency than a sealed box will at that same frequency, then have a serious dropoff below the tuning frequency. The cons to sealed boxes are their size, generally larger than a sealed box; their uneven frequency response since some will generally play twice as loud at their port tuning frequency (+3 db) than other parts of the sound spectrum (flat); it is easier to force the subwoofers into over excursion thus causing damage if you try to make them reproduce those ultra low, sub-sonic frequencies that a 10" subwoofer isn't designed to play so well. In other words, if you have a sub-sonic filter on your amp, you should use it with a ported box because your 10" subwoofer does not need to try to reproduce 18 Hz frequencies.
Lastly, the bandpass box. A properly designed one is usually HUGE and they are extremely efficient. The cons are that: It is tough to get a properly designed one; they are usually so loud, that it takes a lot more mids and highs to blend properly with them; because of some designs, it is nearly impossible to tell when your subwoofers are at their physical limitations and it is possible to overdrive your subs with a clipped signal due to the fact that a bandpass box masks the physical distortion of a subwoofer very well.
I am sure I missed a few things, as I am just typing the generalizations that I can recall off the top of my head. Also, don't take what I typed as the Bible of all subwoofers because there are some notable exceptions to all of what I wrote depending on which subwoofer we are talking about!
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