Hello Guys and gals.

I have seen free air subs being placed in sealed boxes for more control.

I understand it gives them more control and a smoother response but just wondering if I am doing any harm to the subs by boxing them up .

I am referring to Pioneer TS-W253F pair of 10 inch subs.

I want to box them in a 1 cu ft per sub enclosure.

What do you guys and gals think?

All sub can be play free air mode, wat u mean is infinite baffle sub. They've been designed as an IB subs, so i'm guessing u'll need quite a large box. Are u limited to those subs only??

To my knowledge, it uses the boot space as the box and should be installed very skillfully so the front air does not meet the back air pressure from the subwoofer.

But when you install it in this manner, you tend to loose control of the sub during high volumes so when the speaker states it can handle 400 watts, it seems to loose contol way before its rated power, 100rms is enough to make the sub sound muddy and distorted, so I thought boxing them up would make it sound more true to life sound.

Some free air subs I have read about before would suggest very large boxes. You could always try it, no harm in that

It depends on the structure of the woofer itself. But yeah you correct. Maybe a proper sealed box sub will yield a better result.

Yes
Yes you can box a sub recommended for free-air applications.
Can you post
VAS
QMS
QES
QTS
BL
Le
Fs
and I'll tell you whats best.
Cheers

Sorry mate,

Don't have those details for it. but the similar model for enclosure recommends 1 cu ft sealed box.

I'm not a fan of sealed enclosures.
For me it doesn't make any sense to use when you can design a vented enclosure to achieve the desired response curve, control the the speakers excursion and extend the bass shelf.

What do you mean by bass shelf exactly? (my noob question)

A woofer that is designed for Infinite Baffle applications will not work at all well in a smallish sealed enclosure. It has been designed to work in a very large enclosure and will exhibit severely limited low bass output, likely poor transient response and will sound boomy and thin in a small enclosure, either sealed or ported. Put it into a big box, say 200L like it was designed for and it will sound fine within its power handling limitations. Of course, a 200L box is around the size of most small boots, so it be just as good to mount it Infinte Baffle as long as you have good sealing front to back to prevent acoustic short circuits.

There are esentially 3 different vented enclosure design. One of which is "extended" bass shelf.
The idea of this design is to lower the 3db down point. This is the most common design in car audio. To achieve this you add a port tuned to where the enclosure/speaker combination naturally roll off. For example you have a speaker/enclosure design with a 3 DB downpoint at 34HZ. By tuning the port lower you increase output at tuning freqency. This lowers the 3 DB downpoint.
Butterworth designs are used more in home audio or for the "purist" listener.

Free-Air subs generally have a high QMS values meanying it takes alot of energy to over come the mechanical losses of the speakers design. Equally thier VAS is often very large and this means they are not suited for small enclosures. This makes them a less than perfect choice for car audio due to space.
One thing that everyone must consider is that all woofers can be driven in a "free air" environment.
When do so, you hear the speaker for its worth. An enclosure by design is meant to over come a speakers short comings by dampening the cone with an enclosure. EG controlling it.