Opinions on speaker enclosures?

[Pataforce8 10+ year member]

Hey all,

I'm pretty new here but I've looked around a lot. I noticed that not many people use speaker enclosures for the mids/highs. I was wondering if there was a reason to this? I was planning on using an enclosure for all of my door speakers.

I also noticed in the stickyed thread "proper sound deadening" or something that there was a tip to seal the holes in your door, isn't this essentially turning your entire door into an enclosure?

All opinions are welcome and thanks!

Click to read more...

 

[okiedokie 10+ year member]

Sound Deadener Showdown - Your Source for Sound Deadening Products and Information

^^^^^^

Start here first

 

[Pataforce8 10+ year member]

That's a great read, I wasn't planning on sound-deadening but I think I will now. What about using a speaker enclosure though? Should I worry about it or just mount the speaker in the door?

 

[k_schutte 10+ year member]

That's a great read, I wasn't planning on sound-deadening but I think I will now. What about using a speaker enclosure though? Should I worry about it or just mount the speaker in the door?

deaden doors and mount them in there...

 

[09civic 5,000+ posts]

deaden doors and mount them in there...

yezzir

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

or u could do enclosures for ur mids, but then u have to put them in the kicks, by ur feet. generally u can do a tiny sealed box for most mids

 

[Pataforce8 10+ year member]

Are there any advantages for building small sealed boxes and putting them by your feet?

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

well i guess if u seal, deadened, etc ur door correctly there might not be much of a difference.

if u build a sealed enclosure, its going to be the correct box size for the driver, no leaks, the front and rear waves are correctly seperated, etc.

most people just seal and deaden the doors, so maybe u dont see a big difference. though people that go 3 ways do their mid bass in the kicks in an enclosure, so perhaps it performs better for mid bass.

 

[SmartAsss 10+ year member]

for any speaker that plays below 500hz building a proper box will help to control cone movement, A controlled cone/suspension will allow the speaker's resonate frequency to be lowered. this will enable the speaker to play lower with less distortion and better power handling.

the main thing is to separate the back-wave from the front-wave, sealing the doors or building a enclosure does this. A proper enclosure will help enhance the speaker's abilities though.

 

[Pataforce8 10+ year member]

for any speaker that plays below 500hz building a proper box will help to control cone movement, A controlled cone/suspension will allow the speaker's resonate frequency to be lowered. this will enable the speaker to play lower with less distortion and better power handling.
the main thing is to separate the back-wave from the front-wave, sealing the doors or building a enclosure does this. A proper enclosure will help enhance the speaker's abilities though.

When you say "speaker's resonate frequency to be lowered" do you mean that it will resonate less or just at a lower frequency?

Also, why is seperating the front and rear sound waves so important? I didn't think you would be able to hear the rear sound waves.

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

IB and sealed u need to separate the waves to have the proper sound. in a door, the rear waves have no where to go, so they come out behind the woofer(ive been told its very very important to seal up where the driver meets the door to try and eliminate, or minimize the rear waves coming through). if u seal it up, as in the whole door, and where the driver meets the door, they have no where to go, much like a sealed box.

 

[SmartAsss 10+ year member]

When you say "speaker's resonate frequency to be lowered" do you mean that it will resonate less or just at a lower frequency?

the resonate frequency is when the speaker's cone actually starts to vibrate its self, this is different from the normal vibrations that the cone produces from the music signal. the lower the resonate frequency the cleaner the sound will be at the lower end. You do not want any speaker to play at or below its resonate frequency because at that point the cone is uncontrolled distorting and possibly being damaged.
most speakers have the resonate frequency listed in its specs as "fs" this number is normally derived when the speaker is in a perfectly sized enclosure by the manufacture to get the best number), this number can vary quite a bit when the speaker is not in a proper enclosure and will be much higher normally if you were to install it into say a large door.

you will be assured that you are not playing the speaker past the fs by building a proper volume enclosure. the sound will be tight, clean, able to be played lower and the speaker will be able to handle its full power rating or more.

And like cruser was talking about, if you don't seal the back wave off very well, the back wave will "leak" out from behind the speaker and cause acoustic cancellation of the front wave, which will have the most detrimental effect on the mid-bass range. the better you seal it off the more mid-bass you will be able to hear. mid-bass is one of the main things that most people lack and it is almost always due to improper sealing off of the back wave.

 

[Pataforce8 10+ year member]

Thanks guys so much.

Next question though....how do you find out the right size enclosure? In all of my sub manuals it's simply listed but I've never seen any speakers that list a recommended box size

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

In my experience, most car audio mids are designed to play IB (or relatively large sealed) due to the designers assuming the vast majority will be mounted in doors. Its hard to even get t/s specs on a lot of car audio mids, because manufacturers dont expect people to build enclosures for them. So stuffing them in tiny little sealed enclosures to fit in the kick panels will diminish cone excursion and hurt low freq extension. Most serious SQ guys using mids in the kicks either port them (when possible), go with aperiodic membrane, or run dedicated midbass drivers in the doors so the mids in the kicks dont have to extend low enough to require a larger enclosure.

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

one option is to buy woofers from parts express or madisound which have the T/S, and madisound even tells u what size box. just get a 4 ohm, but it also requires u to run active unless u have a passive crossover from a component set and u know its crossover points

so for simplicity, most just sound deaden and seal up doors to give the best they can for simplicity and pretty cheap