Ben-Drifter, on 29 January 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:
But, a subwoofer free air, wouldn't sound anywhere near as loud as when it's in a box, would it?
Ben-Drifter, on 30 January 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:
yeah, I had it just sitting in the boot off the amp, and it wasn't very loud at all :|
Ah. 'Sitting in the boot' is not actually a proper 'free air'/infinite baffle installation, despite the literal interpretation. In a hypothetical environment (ie: for the purpose of explanation), infinite baffle would entail a huge open space/room, divided into two by an 'infinite size baffle'; imagine a huge gymnasium with a dividing wall, that divides the place into two. That's the concept, but even bigger in the hypothetical world. Now mount your sub onto the baffle. The result is having 'the front of the cone on one side' and the 'rear of the cone on the other side', with no communication between the two sides.
Applying this to a car, the idea is to have the sub mounted either on the parcel shelf, or on a baffle board where the rear fold-down seat is.The 'two spaces' become the boot, and the cabin. In the car, the boot ends up being the enclosure for the sub, instead of a conventional subbox, but more importantly you must seal off the boot from the cabin (ie: seal over all air gaps) to create those two separate air spaces.
You can gather that your attempt is far from a proper free-air/IB installation. The sound waves off the front of the cone are mixing with the waves off the rear of the cone, resulting in mega phase issues and negligible subbass. So, it wasn't proper free-air, and therefore not proper sound, and therefore an incorrect presumption that free-air is not very good/loud.
And as discussed, a sub properly designed for free-air/IB offers the best results. These typically have a pretty high Qts spec (>0.50).
Ben-Drifter, on 30 January 2012 - 01:14 PM, said:
Thanks callum and... (doesn't know shiny's name, so will just call him shiny) Shiny

"shiny" will do.