Down-firing in a hatchback sounds good

[XHiFiX 10+ year member]

Today I decided to experiment with a downfire sub setup. I had an extra box (1.25cu ft) sitting in the garage and I just cut 2" length pieces of wood to make feet for it.

I've currently been running 2 Pioneer champion series 12's in a 3 cu ft sealed enclosure. Each one is the D4 version and they're series/parallel wired to a RF T3002 for 702wRMS @ 4 Ohms bridged.

I took one of the Pioneers to use in the downfire enclosure. Wired the coils in parallel for 2 ohms which would let the T3002 put out 923wRMS bridged.

Here, I corner loaded the box in the hatch.

Result - the one 12 in the downfire box sounds better than my previous box with the two 12's firing to the rear. There was noticeably more depth and 'rumble' and the bass sounded more natural. It was still loud but the sq was better.

So now I'm interested...what makes down-firing work better? Does it reduce cancellations? Why do they usually work better for vehicles with open cabins (trucks, hatchbacks) instead of cars with trunks?

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[YourNameHere 10+ year member]

hmmmm... interesting, i would like to try this

 

[josh99v6stang 10+ year member]

ima try that

 

[mazdakid 5,000+ posts]

i always fired my port down into the spare tire well in my old talon and really liked how it sounded.

 

[XHiFiX 10+ year member]

If a sub's percentage of sag is too high it won't be suitable in a downfire setup.

Here's how you can calculate sag - http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/DriverOrientation.pdf and http://www.partsexpress.com/resources/downfire.html

 

[x1le 10+ year member]

interesting.