Bass in a small space? Sealed subwoofer enclosure design. @PartsExpressOfficial

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For this video I designed three sealed enclosures to show what happens when you try to get bass in a small space. We then took measurements with a DATS and Room Equalization Wizard to show you that a small sealed enclosure does not work.

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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:11 Three Sealed Enclosures
4:32 How to use threaded inserts
6:34 DATS data collection and results
7:42 Room Equalization Wizzard data collection and results.
11:38 Comparison to a ported enclosure

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I listen to a wide spectrum of music genres and while I notice my preffered sealed enclosures aren’t as strong with the deep bass of rap, I can’t sacrifice their accuracy with percussion in rock and other genres. Investing in better subs with appropiate amplification can compensate for the lower efficiency. Thanks for another great video.

joser
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I am a sound quality guy but love the deep bass also. I have a 2012 GMC Sierra and made a sealed enclosure for my Skar EVL-10 to fit under the front arm rest between my front seats. I am powering it with my Rockford Fosgate 1200-1D. I listen to literally everything music and this performs VERY VERY well!

greggarner
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I'm 52 and from 1993 until 2015 I ran sealed. In 2015 I bought my first ported enclosure for two alpine type S. Man what a difference. Ported is the way to go IMO

jorgem
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This is a nice video to show how a acoustic suspension box can deliver different results depending on box volume. Also a great woofer to use. This is one of your best DIY!

TheSFFV
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The diminishing output of a sealed box can be offset by "room gain" (or cabin gain), for virtually flat extended deep output. The 450w 10" Ultimax performs "better" in a 1.5ft^3 ported box than in a 0.75ft^3 sealed box, but then a 600w 12" Ultimax could fit a 1.5ft^3 sealed box. A 4ft^3 ported box fits a 600w 12" Ultimax, but then a 4ft^3 sealed box could fit a 1kw 18" Ultimax.

xxxYYZxxx
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No question you're right that the properly designed ported enclosure is going to outperform the sealed at low frequency. However, the extreme difference shown on the graph looks more like the result of testing a driver that prefers a ported enclosure. I suspect it's a bit less dramatic when testing speakers that are specifically built for sealed applications. Also, you can EQ boost a sealed sub (within reason) all the way down to the lowest frequencies. You can't boost a ported sub below it's port tuning because it lacks the air suspension to dampen it's movement and it will likely be destroyed.

endall
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Thank you for such an informative experiment. Being a bass lover and had built numerous speakers and subs for past 20 yrs here in Singapore, I would like to share these observations:
- MDF wood made enclosures needs much lesser bracing than plywood enclosures to sound equally good.
- MDF Wood doesn't do well in wet, rain or outdoor conditions.
- Sealed subs produced the least spectrum decay bass, typically less than 10ms aka 'tight' or 'defined' bass. Comparing to ported subs designs, bass seems much lesser.
- Most ported subs are capable of producing more bass than enclosed subs. However, the bass has longer decay around 10-20ms. Which most folks deem bass as 'fuller' sounding. Seems like a little bass decay may not be such a bad thing .
- passive radiator subs produced the most bass among the 3 types of enclosure but has the longest bass decay, usually 20ms & above. Some may find this type of bass undefined or 'boomy'. Still this type of subs are great for outdoor. Bass can be felt further than the other 2 types of subs.
- Lastly, if space is limited, I like to used sealed subs with Apex Aural Exciter+Big Bottom. This is often used in P.A to extend the bass decay to sound fuller without increasing volume.
Fav subs: Cerwin Vega 15" drivers, Das Audio PA 18" drivers and Magnum extra long throw 12" drivers, Eminence 15" drivers & Audax 8".
Software used: Winspeakerz.

kaysionglim
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A friend of mine back in the 90’s had a new Chevy standard cab. He had two 10’s in a box that took up the space behind the seat. Even moved the seat forward but was still small for two 10’s. He went to a stereo shop to see about adding two more 10’s I kept telling him it’s to small for the two he had now. He had to put a big amp just to make it sound decent

chrishorst
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Nice video showing frequency comparisons. One thing to consider is that sealed enclosures generally produce less distortion below the box's resonant frequency than ported enclosures. Ported boxes don't provide driver damping below the enclosure's resonant frequency, allowing the driver to vibrate unhindered.

DrGIzmoBRad
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Im digging the woodworking content. Its great when hobbies overlap

ALegit
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Great video!!! This makes so much sense. I have a ported box for my subwoofers and I would never use a sealed box for them because the difference in output is huge. However, for the midbasses in my doors, sealed would be perfect. It won't take a lot of space and since they are running from 80 hz to 800 hz, I don't need to worry about it getting low. But for subwoofers, I would 100% use ported enclosures.

NocThunder
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Thank you for the great video. In winisd don't forget to encourage your viewers to look at group delay when comparing two models. The sealed enclosure will handly outperform most any ported design when judged on basis of a metric that quantifies transient response, but will need more drivers/excursion if it is to stack up to the ported design in steady state SPL. The casual listener is accustomed to late bass, but will prefer "tight" bass, all other things being equal, 100% of the time. Late bass isn't phase aligned well with the harmonics of the waveform being reproduced. Its the kid that always lags behind riding bikes around town. With complex numbers, like Winisd most certainly uses, there are at minimum two plots that define a response. Magnitude and phase. It is probably worth the small amount of time to play around with the parameters in the planning phase of a project, maybe sacrifice low end extension to give a better transient response, at a minimum know what the tradeoff is in simulation land.

claytronico
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I've got 2 jbl 15inch subs... Ported box...bass works box ... It's ran at 1800 watts. I definitely love em. They are like a free massage ❤❤❤

MikeBlackford
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Awesome video. It's rare to see a sub that performs so we'll sealed and ported, but I'm even more surprised by how much better the ported enclosure performs here.

HakAtIt
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What a lovely channel with so much knowledge to share !!!

MrDeanGr
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IMO sealed, OB, or IB are the clear winners for sound quality _IF_ you use an appropriate driver. The trick is that the market is so heavily skewed toward tuned cabinets that the selection of such drivers is limited. For deep bass in a sealed enclosure you need both low fs and rather high Qts. That is to say the huge magnets that sell so well are contraindicated.

The other thing that is often not considered is room or cabin gain. If f3 is significantly below the frequency where room gain starts you get a nasty bloom or bloat in bass output and then when the 4th order roll-off kicks in the bottom falls out. For some applications this is no big deal but for serious music listening it can be a problem.

In a sealed enclosure the 2nd order roll-off is closer to the room gain boost curve so the final result is often more natural.

I also think that in general (up to a point) you are better off getting your displacement from larger cone area than from excursion.

mkshffr
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Thanks for the video! It's like you knew exactly what I wanted to see. I've always thought it would be fun to build a few boxes and compare them.

**(Sorry for the wall of text lol, it makes sense in my head but as I type it, it might get a bit disorganized and lose a bit of my intended meanings)**

One thing to touch on is the sealed box for the UM10 (and just about any sub) is when comparing these sealed enclosures, it's good to keep an eye on cone excursion. I bought the sealed kit for my UM10 so the box was 1.5 cubic feet. Technically 1.5 cubic feet and a 1 cubic foot box would perform identically. Only difference is efficiency of the bigger box would add a dB or so to the sensitivity around 20Hz. Which personally to me is insignificant and almost pointless. If you look at cone excursion for them, I'll look at 20Hz for this example, the cone excursion for the 1cuft box is touching xmax on 500w. While it takes 400w to reach xmax on the 1.5cuft box. So while you can get an extra 1dB on 100w less power, in reality that extra output you'll likely never hear. And you gain more the lower it plays, but this sub isn't going to do that well under 20Hz, and the cone excursion rises fast in the 1.5cuft box to the point it physically can't perform better than the 1cuft box under 20Hz.

I know you didn't go bigger than a 0.85cuft box in the video. But in the end the 0.85cuft box after looking at it in WinISD is probably the biggest box you need for the UM10 sealed. Because any bigger won't really give you any big additional improvements due to xmax limits on rated power. Which you basically already shown in the video with the small vs medium showing a much smaller difference.

Touching on the ported part. You've already seen my PR box for my UM10 but it basically acts like ported and going from sealed to that new (not new these days but you get what I mean) box it was like a whole new sub. Blew my mind with the low end I got out of it the first time I played it. Sound quality didn't get worse. IMO it sounds 10x better being able to cover a wider bandwidth.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling lol. Thanks again for the entertaining video!

JoshM
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Great video explaining how the basics work.
Please can you do this test again with all 3 boxes but now put in the fabric that fools the subwoofer into thinking it is in a bigger box. I see other comments about doing a ported one, which would be fun, but just adding some speaker fabric (don't know technical name) into it, how much does it increase the perceived volume. Since the boxes are already made, not much has to be changed.

MisterEE
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I kerf and port every enclosure including the port. Haven’t met a sub that sounds cleaner in a sealed enclosure! I also am a fan of fit the sub to the vehicle because they don’t fit the car around the subs! Awesome video! Excellent job explaining the difference in enclosure size and why experienced builders don’t just guess!

wiredperformance
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Idea for a video! I'd love to see what the actual measured differences are between a ported enclosure and a sealed enclosure besides the benefit of extension and/or output from the vented. I guess my question is how much do things like group delay change the response inside a vehicle...

sminton