With an abundance of automobile speakers and woofers to cherry pick from, most users are at an uphill battle when they want to make a choice to receive the best. When you dive deep into the world of speakers, with the current advancing technology and time, there have been enormous development that may lead you to a lot to choose from. Specifically for cars alone, you could find a huge variety. From tweeters to subwoofers, there’s a speaker for every type of listener. However, with passing time, many users have grown to prefer air subwoofers, and that too for good enough reasons. Free air subwoofers, therefore, have been a mainstream for as long as anyone can remember. They’ve been quite a demand in the market and for all the right reasons.
Regardless of their highly praised and acknowledged properties, there is still a vast majority of users that tend to get lost in the maze of understanding on how to properly install a free air subwoofer. In addition to that, many are also unaware of the different aspects of a free air subwoofer that are necessary facts beginners must know in order to extract the best out of the experience.
If you’re one of those people who are new to the world of automobile speakers and want to be equipped with the proper knowledge before getting a Free Air Subwoofer for yourself, then you’ve stumbled upon the right post thread that’ll hopefully arm you with all you’ll ever need to know about all that and much more.
Also Checkout: Beginners Guide To Replacing Car Ignition Switch 2022
What Exactly Are Free Air Subwoofers
To understand what free air subwoofers are, we’ll first need to recognize what they used to be before they were designed as the famous space-savers. Subwoofers have been known, and are still a mainstream item, as having top sound quality and pristine bass that is unmatchable to any other counterparts in the market. However, with all their benefits and perfect qualities, they fell short when users started becoming exasperated with their automobile speakers taking up a huge chunk of their automobile space. This is where free air subwoofers entered the market with a profound innovation and flipped the entire game. Now, instead of taking up unnecessary space, which would have been utilized for many more essential purposes, free air subwoofers are able to deliver the identical pristine audio quality and deep base without occupying the entire length of your car’s rear package shelf or any other similar areas. You’ll receive the same audio quality but without the hassle of space enclosures. As long as you have your hands on a free air subwoofer, you won’t have to fret over the installation in an enclosure, or any other technicalities and sophistications.
So far, we’ve seen all the good. But is there a bad, and if so, what should you be aware of in regards to your own Free Air Subwoofer? Talking about the cons, however few they may be, free air subwoofers are coming short on the bass not being as tight or booming. But that’s really all there is to the cons. It all gets ignored when we get to compare it with the pros that are incredibly noteworthy. For instance, not only are they space savers but they are also found to be relatively cheap, demand way less power and are light weight that adds more to the already ideal experience.
Now, are there other types of speakers to consider that are competing with the subwoofer technology at hand, such as the Infinite Baffle Setups, and the more traditional box setups? What will be the pros and cons of each of them, and how would they benefit different clients that have different needs and choices? What are some tips and tricks to consider when working on such a project? In the next section, we’ll be diving deeper into the different options that you have, and how they would help you decide what’s going to be best for your situation.
Infinite Baffle Setups, and What Are They?
Infinite Baffle Setups, as complicated as they sound, are simple in concept. They are setups that require a box and aren’t the same as Free Air Subwoofers at all. What people usually conclude about baffle setups is that they don’t require a box. While that may be true in some way, technically speaking, a baffle setup differs from a free-air in the type of box it uses and not whether it has one or not.
Where a Free Air Subwoofer uses a box externally created, an Infinite Baffle uses the whole trunk (or part of it) as its box. This is done by modifying your car to have a sealed trunk to produce best sound quality. This way, using a baffle setup relieves you of taking up any other extra space in the car and saves you from the annoyance of having to put your groceries and items in the seating area.
Other than that, an Infinite Baffle Setups require a bit of modification and careful tweaking to the mechanics of the car and asks for a complicated task of sealing off the trunk. Whereas, a Free Air Subwoofer relieves you of all of those labor-intensive tasks and provides the same sound quality with a top-notch bass.
Which Is the Better Choice? Free Air Subwoofer or Infinite Baffle System?
There have been many debates over which to go for, and people can seem to endlessly talk about this topic without reaching conclusions. From our research into this matter, it slowly but surely became clear that the choice is in your hands at the end of the day, depending mostly on what you’re looking for, and what suits your transportation vehicle’s mechanics and your likes and dislikes.
Both Free Air Subwoofers and Infinite Baffle Systems create a beautiful sound and strong bass, with the infinite baffle setup having a punchier bass to it compared to its counterpart, and the final question to ask yourself is whether you’re looking to save space or save yourself a laborious task.
If you’re looking to install a system that takes up less space, then go for an Infinite Baffle setup. However, if space isn’t a problem and you’re looking to avoid complicated sealing tasks, then go for a Free Air Subwoofer. Apart from that, the sensitivity of your baffle setup should be taken note of if you’re installing it. Be careful as to how much power you apply to it. Sometimes, a poor amplifier leads to dangerous swings of the drum of the speaker, which leads to tearing of it and permanent distortion.
Things To Think of When Choosing Your Speaker
One of the preparations that you must make before going out to look for a speaker is to see what kind of vehicle you have at hand. Is it a spacious one? Is it too crowded in the trunk? Is the trunk small or big? How much space do you have at the rear deck? What are the sizes of the speakers that you are looking for?
These questions are a must. For instance, if you have a huge trunk. Would you let that space be used up completely by an Infinite Baffle Setup that requires sealing and empty space inside it? If not, then you would need to go with a Free Air Subwoofer option.
However, if you have a small trunk in your car that is of no use already, then you can use it to set up a sealed Infinite Baffle system. This way the small trunk would be utilized and you won’t need to make an extra space for a Free Air Subwoofer.
Some Tips to Have in Mind Before Setting It All Up
There are some miscellaneous things that need to be considered and given as much importance as any other point mentioned in this article. These would help you in avoiding long term problems that you might face at some random future moment.
If you’ve decided to go for an Infinite Baffle system, then prepare for having distorted sounds when filling your trunk with items, because the empty space when changed, changes the acoustic characteristics of the rear box of the system, which in turn changes the nature of the sound.
Another thing to note, is to go for dynamats when going for a Free Air Subwoofer option, because these allow you to get better sound isolation, create a vibration free environment and miscellaneous sound absorption that result in a smooth sound delivery overall.
Besides that, remember to create proper and strong reinforcements for your speakers, whether they are subwoofers or baffle systems. Otherwise, you might face annoying vibrational noise and a danger of the setup collapsing in the future.
Conclusion
After reading through our brief overview of free air subwoofers and other similar types of speakers mentioned, we hope to expect that you are now finding yourself at a clearer path to understanding your stance on this topic. Many users tend to get lost in understanding the technicalities and therefore are left even more confused. Through our collection of simple and brief facts and explanations that we curated from a number of experts in the field, we hope that you were able to learn something and are now able to make decisions regarding your very own automobile speaker systems.