Car Subwoofers are some of the most common & distinctive sound system components to put on your car. Unless you have been hiding under a rock you have experienced coming up to a stop light and having your guts vibrated from someone in a car near you with an ear blowing (literally) subwoofer.
We know for a FACT that all this high volume listening today can cause significant hearing loss years later. But that doesn’t mean that having a subwoofer in your car is a bad thing. Playing it so loud you damage your hearing, however, is a bad thing. A good subwoofer can really enhance your music enjoyment. But protect your hearing gang!
The world of car subwoofers is filled with a diverse number of brands. Many have been around for years and are almost household names. Here at DDAcoustic you will find such subwoofer brands as Kicker, Rockford Fosgate, Kenwood, JL, Pyramid, Audiobahn, Clarion, Selenium, Audiopipe, Acoustic Audio and more. You can see the list is huge!
Automobile subwoofer enclosures come in 3 basic styles. There are others but this covers the majority of them.
Ported Subwoofer Enclosures
- Vented/Ducted/ported subwoofers have a tube leading to a hole in the box where it lets sound out at a frequency so as to re-enforce sound below the resonant frequency of the speaker. (Resonance is the frequency it would vibrate at if you tapped it in free air.) A ported subwoofer can add significant amounts of bottom end. It has the side effect that you can hear noises from the port as air flows in and out of that hole. Considering all the ambient noise in a car on the road this may not be a big factor. It can also make the sound “loose”. It can make the sound kind of flap and make noises that were never part of the music.
Bandpass Enclosures
- This type of speaker cabinet is really a subset of the ported subwoofer. It has amazing amounts of volume across the frequency range it reproduces. There is the problem though. It tends to work well over a very narrow range of frequencies. So when the car next to you is playing the “one note bass” even though you know the song has a wider range than that, chances are they are using a bandpass car subwoofer. Think of it like blowing air across a pop bottle. It is “tuned” for one frequency. These bandpass subwoofers are sometimes a tube design and sometimes a cube design. A true audiophile wouldn’t be caught DEAD with one of these. But they are really popular with the kids and the people competing in loudness contests at auto shows.
Sealed Enclosures
This is my personal favorite but is the least popular design for a car subwoofer. The reasons are simple. It doesn’t put out as much VOLUME but does it better over a wider range of frequencies. It also requires that the interior volume of the box be larger because the port makes the box appear to be bigger acoustically. Also, the speaker must be more closely matched to the speaker box internal volume to be successful with this design. So it is harder to pull off CORRECTLY in a car. But, if done right, the sealed car subwoofer has the advantage of having the tightest most musical range of any of the subwoofers. But most 18 year olds will not be impressed!
Look around our website for the ideal system for you. It doesn't matter if you just want a 10" sub in a sealed carpet box or a full on custom sick install, you will find the sub speaker to fit your space and budget. You will find a great price and large variety here at DDAcoustic.com
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