As an example, to produce, say, 90 dB of output at 100 Hz, a subwoofer cone might have to move 1 mm forward and rearward. As audio frequencies decrease, cone excursion increases dramatically.
#Car speaker enclosure design driver#
The drawback of this type of installation is that there is nothing to control the motion of the subwoofer cone other than its suspension.įor a midrange driver playing above 300 Hz, cone excursion isn’t a concern because it doesn’t have to move very far at these frequencies. These systems are also relatively easy to construct, as long as the trunk is sealed well. The subwoofer can be mounted in the rear deck of the vehicle, and the trunk becomes the enclosure. Infinite baffle installations are very popular in factory-installed subwoofers systems in sedans. Benefits of an Infinite Baffle Car Audio Subwoofer System
![car speaker enclosure design car speaker enclosure design](https://ddaudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/enclosure-design-bending-rules.jpg)
Jared Bahley of Sony Car Audio built this Subaru Impreza as a demo vehicle to show off the capabilities of its High Power source units and GS-Series speakers and subwoofers. In reality, this is very similar to a sealed enclosure, except that the enclosure is extremely large and doesn’t affect the frequency response of the speaker. This type of design doesn’t work with SUVs or hatchbacks since they don’t have a trunk to capture the sound from the back of the subwoofer cone. The sound coming from the rear is trapped in the trunk. Your installer will either cut a hole in the rear deck of your sedan or mount a subwoofer on a board behind the rear seat so that you hear only the music coming from the front of the speaker. That’s exactly what happens in an infinite baffle subwoofer installation. The simplest solution is to create a wall or baffle that keeps these sound sources separate. We need to separate those two sound sources from each other for us to hear bass information. Understanding that the sound coming off the back of the subwoofer (or speaker) cone cancels the sound coming from the front is the first step in comprehending why a subwoofer needs an enclosure. Signals that are equal in amplitude and frequency, but opposite in polarity, will cancel each other out. When they are added together, they cancel each other out, and you get the green line. In the graph below, you can see two sine waves, one in yellow and another with opposite polarity in blue. As the cone moves forward, the pressurized air in front of the cone is canceled by the rarefied air behind the cone, and vice versa.
![car speaker enclosure design car speaker enclosure design](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/eb471014-2873-4f1b-836c-2d5f23af689b_1.38325ad9d28b7892f59b30b5a0e62c90.jpeg)
If you were to take a subwoofer out of its carton, connect it to an amplifier and play music, it wouldn’t make any bass. In all cases, the enclosure has two specific purposes that are crucial to ensuring that your subwoofer sounds excellent. Many enthusiasts have debated the benefits and drawbacks of acoustic suspension (sealed), bass-reflex (vented), bandpass and infinite baffle designs in hopes of choosing the best solution for their application and expectations. Most of us have heard of many types of car audio subwoofer enclosures.