Hello I just bought a 12″ free air speaker and my question is what is the best enclosure for free air speakers?
Dear Tony, drivers made for “free air” applications need to be in very, very, big boxes. In cars, for example, a trunk is the only place where they will work well, and it is a tremendous amount of work. You need to modify the rear deck in such a way so that the front of the driver is firing into the car, and the rear of the driver is “seeing” the full air space of the trunk. Since some rear decks aren’t even 12″ wide, it’s kinda hard to cut a hole that big, make a grille over it, and make a whole “baffle board” under the rear deck that seals off the cab air from the trunk air. A much easier, and better performing idea is to find out the Thiele-Small parameters of the driver (from the owners manual or by contacting the manufacturer) and seeing if a band-pass enclosure can be built to optimize the output – especially between 40 and 90 hz. Then you can simply run a small (4″), port thru the rear deck which is easy to install, get to seal and look nice, and remove someday if you need to. A
