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» InCar Expert » System Planner » Subwoofer system

Subwoofer system

Choose your subwoofer system, comprising of one or more speakers and the type of cabinet (bass box) to use.

This will give the sales staff a good indication of the result you want to achieve. Their recommendations will take into account the amount of boot space in your particular vehicle (or you can tell them to ignore that!) and the optimum space required by each speaker for best results.

The differences between the main types of bass box is quite a detailed subject, but here are some pointers on which one to choose.

FREE AIR - also known as 'Infinite Baffle' ('free air' is a misleading term but somehow got adopted as a description), this does not use a bass box but instead uses the boot as a cabinet. The speaker may be mounted on to a panel (the 'baffle board') behind the rear seat (or suspended from the rear parcel shelf), so it fires sound through the ski hatch or simply through the back of the rear seat. The rear and front soundwaves from the speaker must be completely isolated one from the other (hence the term 'infinite baffle'), otherwise one will cancel out the other (phase cancellation). It's a cheaper method but the air space in the boot is generally too large and not sealed well enough to provide any damping to the speaker. The speaker can therefore easily over stretch itself, causing severe mechanical damage if driven too hard. However, some speakers are made with a very stiff mechanical suspension to help cope with this, and with good installation methods (sealing the boot area and using multiple speakers) this can still give good results.

CLOSED BOX - will generally give a tighter, more controlled sound, with a natural roll-off. Good for rock, jazz, classical music. The trapped air helps to provide good mechanical protection to the speaker at high levels (limits over excursion). Tends to be less efficient (produces less output overall) than a ported system.

PORTED BOX - also known as a vented box, will generally give considerably more output (higher efficiency) than a closed box between 30-80Hz. This gives it a big sound, well suited to dance music styles, but when combined with the natural boost caused by the passenger compartment, it can result in an unnaturally big and undercontrolled bass. Below the port tuned frequency the cabinet unloads (the air inside no longer acts as a brake) and this can cause a sudden over-excursion of the speaker unit. At high levels this can be terminal.

BANDPASS - a hybrid of the ported enclosure, the bandpass box houses one or more speakers fully inside the cabinet, so that the speaker does not directly radiate sound to the car. The sound exits only via the port, often a rectangular vent. As the speaker or speakers have a controlled mass of air on both sides of the cone, they have a high degree of mechanical damping and control. The result is a high efficiency, high output system. See-through acrylic bandpass cabinets look very cool! The downside? They output a relatively limited frequency range because of the vent design - this isn't necessarily a problem but needs to be taken into account when designing the overall speaker system. Speakers can become toast before you know it, because having them fully enclosed hides the telltale distortion that would tell you to back off the volume control. Bandpass designs are generally more complex and more difficult to get right, so they tend to cost more to build.

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