Infinite Baffle

[RebelDogg 10+ year member]

Can someone explain wtf this is? Not too technical, please. I'm just curious what the benefits are and what is the basic design concept.

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[PokeFan 10+ year member]

The design is basically separating the front sound from the rear. An easy way to think of it would be cutting a hole in your closet door and mounting a sub to it. Shut the door and the closet acts as your enclosure, the door is the baffle. It will have a good low frequency sound but the power handling will be drastically reduced.

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

IB refers to infinite baffle.

basically all it means is placing a barrier between the back wave and the front wave without an enclosure on either side. or if you are trying to install one in a room, both areas (the front and back of the cone) should be 10x the Vas of a speakers paramaters.

for car installations, its usually refered to as IB, but technically a trunk is not going to be 10x the Vas, it will be just a giant sealed box. but it is commonly accepted because it mimics the response of a true IB fairly close. to be honest, if you did 10x the Vas, versus 8x the Vas, you would not be able to hear the difference by ear.

the benefits of IB are an extremely smooth frequency response that is natural to the speakers abilities. here is an example using an IDmax12v3

as you can see, the frequency response is very smooth and has way less peaks than a ported enclosure and is better suited for sound quality. the trade off you get with IB is usually a lower overall output and less mechanical power handeling. but you gain in the fact that there is usable area because there is no box, and you can make up for the lack of output with more cone area (bigger\more speakers).

here is a few pictures of my infinite baffle installation.

hope that helped //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[RebelDogg 10+ year member]

Yes it did. Thanks!

I guess the IB would be fairly impractical in a Tahoe... Plus I figure I would end up needing many more speakers to make up for the power loss. But it's interesting to know

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

yep. 99% of IB installs are done with trunk cars. mine being a hatch is an exception because of the way the hatch closes and the ledge that the factory hatch area is covered with.

def not practical in a SUV unless its in a glassed enclosure in the side of the hatch area and vented outside the vehicle somehow with a moisture proof barrier like gortex.

 

[Just_Crazy 10+ year member]

Ok, I understand the sub part being that the trunk closes and for lack of a better word seals off the two compartments. Now what about mid and woofers and I'm refering to the dash mounting, I understand the door mounting quite self explanatory.