Passive / Bass Radiators In Doors ? Has Anyone Done This ? ? 17 VW E-golf

[cockerchrisjoe 10+ year member]

Hello All,

I recently bought a brand new car 2017 Volkswagen E Golf ( Full electric ) and its got one of those fancy 12 speaker systems and it has decent sound from the factory but i am of course not fully impressed by it and i believe it could be improved . Now because this is a brand new car and has a really nice factory nav headunit and such i don't want to add wires and a amp and subwoofer to it. I Really Dont want to do any major modifications to the electrical of the car. I know one of the biggest things you can do is just to dynamat / sound deadener each door and also seal it up to help add some more clear mid as well as help with rattles . But another idea i was toying over was actually adding passive radiators / bass radiators to the door panel itself each one to again add more depth and loudness to the factory system . Has anyone done this though ? does it work or make any of a difference or is it a waste of money ? i know parts express has a couple of examples of decent ones.

Also i know Volkswagen sells a factory subwoofer but unfortunately its not compatible with the new E golfs //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif i looked into this when i bought the car . \

sorry if i sound like a newwwwwbie all just trying to learn //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

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[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Passive radiator works like a port. The rest of the box must be COMPLETELY air tight and it will take some trial and error to get the mass right to "tune" them.

Otherwise most midrange drivers designed for car use (or anything you'd likely buy for upgrading) will not have parameters well suited to ported/passive radiator but are already designed to work well in infinite baffle (basically a huge sealed box). Considering "normal" sealed box volume for a sealed box oriented 6" driver is roughly the size of small bookshelf speaker (perhaps a liter), for practical purposes the volume of air inside a car door is "infinite baffle).

Anyway, for your doors you should simply fill all holes that aren't active speakers and be done with it.