Featured Porting Sealed Sub Enclosure.

[huberoy123 10+ year member]

I have two 12-inch subs in sealed enclosures. Can I add Port tubes? What would be the best location? Will it increase the bass performance?

Thanks.

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[huberoy123 10+ year member]

Thanks all. After researching, I found that my sub individually required 1.5 cu. ft. Minimum. Since I have 1.56 in each chamber, I'm going to proceed. If it doesn't work, I'll reseal them. Thanks again for your help.

 

[CertifiedHoodClassic]

Nah, it'll actually make it worse probably. Ported boxes need more internal air space. Assuming those boxes have the proper air space for sealed, they'll be too small for ported.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Ported boxes work on a completely different dynamic than sealed boxes. You may be able to technically pull off porting that box by having the correct numbers, but it's still probably going to suffer performance, regardless, doing it this way. Ported boxes have to be specifically tuned, the airspace and the port area and the port length and orientation of everything all have to be certain ways in order for the enclosure to function properly/optimally; ported boxes can be designed many different ways to do many different things, so typically you want to start fresh for optimal bass. Get a design and ported box specifically for what you need it to do.

 

[shredder1 10+ year member]

Thanks all. After researching, I found that my sub individually required 1.5 cu. ft. Minimum. Since I have 1.56 in each chamber, I'm going to proceed. If it doesn't work, I'll reseal them. Thanks again for your help.

With the airspace you're working with I'd make any ports external if you can

 

[shredder1 10+ year member]

I'd try a pair of 4" rounds external at 15" long in your airspace, that should tune 35hz or so. Those HiFonic 12s you appear to have really are not that capable so don't expect too much. Since the enclosure is not specifically designed for the vehicle/equipment I'd say your best bet is to upfire the ports on ea side of the box and hope for the best.

External ports or rebuild

 

[huberoy123 10+ year member]

I got over my fear of messing up what I had and fired up the stereo. I'm sure I did everything wrong, but I like the improvement. Now, I will seal the tubes and test again. Thanks all for your opinions.

 

[tommydh 10+ year member]

You can always add some fiberfill to "trick" the sub into thinking there is more airspace. I believe there is nothing wrong with the trial and error method.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I got over my fear of messing up what I had and fired up the stereo. I'm sure I did everything wrong, but I like the improvement. Now, I will seal the tubes and test again. Thanks all for your opinions.

Real talk, bro- what you're doing is the one of the best ways to learn stuff. I've done exactly what you're doing before. I would encourage you just to play around with that if you want to do more sound in the future. You know if you're not that familiar with sound and see what you learn. Hell, man, you might even try to tune it as low as possible and see what it sounds like and stuff like that, just a thought, I've learned a lot messing around like that. Just pay attention and go easy on your woofers so you don't blow them.

 

[Deiimos]

I agree there is nothing wrong with playing around and testing, its a good way to learn what sounds good to you, or works and what doesn't.

When I was a young teen I would grab the jigsaw and cut ports in already built boxes and 99% of the time performance was worse, and was even given a couple homemade boxes that sounded like doo-doo with a port the person added and had to plug it for any woofers I put in the box. An exception is when using a sub that requires less airspace and you can add a port tuned properly with no problem. I do have an old Cellbox Soundsystems prefab from the 90's somebody cut a 3" port in the top and plumbed PVC pipe in with an elbow and it sounds better with the port using an old MTX Thunder 6000 10" than the box does sealed, I tried plugging it to see if it sounded better, but the port sounds better (no idea what its tuned to, never measured anything). The low end drops off more with it sealed, but there is a lot of chuffing / airflow through that 3" port. Its in my beat up work truck so doesn't matter.

Point being, nothing wrong with testing, can always seal the holes, it's not that big of a deal. I use to be pretty good at cutting nice circle MDF plugs with the jigsaw to seal the bad port holes I added, even adding small box carpet circles to hide it. I built and played with a lot of garbage boxes as a teen, you do learn quite a bit from the fails.

But yeah, adding a port to an already built sealed box can be a gamble. External ports might even be the only choice in some instances to get any reasonable tuning. A properly built tuned ported box can be a night and day difference depending on sub and such, if you have the space for it in the vehicle.