THE DIY SUBWOOFER NETWORK

What exactly is a Bandpass Subwoofer?  Let’s take a look and see!   Along the way we will dispel some popular myths about bandpass subwoofers.   Forth Order Bandpass Subwoofer Enclosure The image above shows a speaker enclosure with the subwoofer mounted on an internal baffle that divides the box into two separate airspaces.   One of those chambers is sealed, one is ported.   At first glance this seems like an odd configuration.   How does it make any sound if the speaker is inside of the box?   The answer is simple once you understand that a port is just a speaker made out of air.   As the air in the ported side of the enclosure is compressed and decompressed it causes the air in the port to move back and forth and the port produces the sound.   A common myth is that the subwoofer driver makes the sound and the port “let’s the sound out”.   That is not accurate, what you are actually hearing is the sound waves produced by the port itself. DIY 4th Order It turns out that there

  This website* is primarily dedicated to teaching you how to build your own subwoofer.  If you want to get into box building check out this blog post , and this podcast where some top DIYers talk about how to get started:    But, not everybody can do that.  You need tools, time, and skill.  There is no shame in ordering a pre-fabricated (a.k.a pre-fab) subwoofer enclosure from Amazon and installing your own speakers .  Here is some examples of good and bad enclosures along with a breakdown of what makes a good enclosure.  We will cover unloaded (no subwoofer included) enclosures in this post and save pre-loaded (subwoofer included) enclosures for another day. Unloaded:  BYOS (Buy Your Own Subwoofer) Before we get into reviewing boxes keep in mind that if you go with an unloaded enclosure you will need to order a subwoofer to go with it.  Your goal is to match the subwoofer to the enclosure.  Typically this is just a matter of looking up the manufacturer specifications and looking for

There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to design and build a subwoofer enclosure with multiple subwoofers in the same airspace.  This blog post is going to clear it up. A Single Subwoofer in one enclosure Let's start off with something simple, a single subwoofer in a 2 cubic foot enclosure tuned to 28 hertz.  In this example the port has been drawn outside of the enclosure for easier comparison.  The port is 1"X12" and is 17 3/4" in length.  Before you go out an build this enclosure keep in mind that a 1"X12" port is probably not large enough to prevent port noise.  This size was chosen just as an illustration.           If you wish to add a second subwoofer then you will need to increase the size of the enclosure.  If you increase the size of the enclosure you will need to make a shorter port.  This is because you tune the port to the airspace in the box, not the number of subwoofers in the enclosure.  So here is a 4 cubic foot enclosure with a c

Subwoofer ports (a.k.a vents) are interesting things.  In a previous post I provided some background into how ports worked , in this post I am going to dig a little deeper into port design, a.k.a. port tuning. Flared Ports with Wooden Connector Rings The Port Formula There is a formula that you can use to design a port, since formulas tend to scare people away and there plenty of tools available to do the calculations for you this blog post will focus on understanding the four main parameters that you need to think about when designing a port.  Tuning Frequency Enclosure Volume Port Cross Section Port Length We can manipulate any three of these four items and the formula dictates the forth parameter.  For this post we are going to examine how the tuning frequency, enclosure volume, and port cross section influence the length of the port.  It is very important to understand the impact of these four parameters as they will determine the size, shape and sound of our subwoofer.  We need to