subwoofer box smaller than recommended?

[Breen]

i was wondering what would happen if you put a subwoofer in a box thats smaller than the company recommends. like if the subwoofer has a min 3.0 cu. ft. for ported and you put it in 2.5 cu. ft.. what would happen? nothing?

 

[CTKGP09]

if a woofer is in a significantly smaller box it wouldnt be as loud as i could nor would it resonate at its proper frequency, however .5 cu ft smaller prob wouldnt make that much of a difference

 

[Breen]

oh ok lol i wanna go ported but im limited on trunk space. so i didnt know what would happen if i was under req. thanks

 

[I800C0LLECT]

use WinISD and theile small specs and it'll show you a response graph....it doesn't take into account your cabin gain tho

 

[Breen]

I've never used it before. I tryed one and it was really confusing so I gave up is it free? Userfriendly?

 

[matt5112]

its free but not that user friendly.

try Unibox. its more user friendly.

And if its smaller and you attempt to use the same size port then you'll have very messed up results to say the least.

 

[JayAz]

If you had a 2.5 cubic ft ported box and the recommended is 3.0 cubic ft, I believe it is better to user a smaller box than one that is larger than the recommended size. You can always add about an inch layer of polyfill to the smaller box to help compensate for the "missing" volume.
Test with no polyfill or foam in different amounts, select what sounds best to you.

 

[matt5112]

Or you could model it and see if the manufacturer even knows what they're talking about...

 

[windowrattler]

I have bassbox pro and I'll model up a box for you if needed. Couple things to remember is that the smaller the box the larger the port needs to be making the actually size of the box smaller if that makes any sense at all. Most of the time if the volume needed is lets say 3 cubic feet you'll end up needing about 3.5-3.75 minimum to get 3 cubic feet net. If you give me the max outside dimensions I could see how it would model up.