Types of Subwoofer Enclosure

Subwoofers are of many sizes but an ordinary subwoofer is an 8-inch speaker that needs more amplified power to create quality sound than a simple coaxial speaker. Furthermore, a car stereo subwoofer also needs an enclosure for producing high volume and high quality sound. A woofer enclosure can be as simple as trunk or complex as series tuned dual reflex band pass enclosure. There are many types of enclosures available in the market manufactured by car audio system and accessories manufacturers.

The simplest type of subwoofer enclosure features free air system. In this system the woofer has enclosed from the back of its cone by getting fixed to the rear seat or on a board located at the back of the rear seat. Such types of subwoofer enclosures give these benefits:
- Minimal space consumption
- Simplicity
- Cost effectiveness
There are also some drawbacks with these subwoofer enclosures. This type of enclosure needs more power supply, produces a little less precise sound and is hard to isolate the two sides of the cone from each other.

Another simple type of subwoofer enclosure is sealed enclosure. In this enclosure a subwoofer is fixed in a completely sealed box that isolates the front and rear sound waves. Advantages of this type of enclosure are:
- Easy to install
- Superb sound production
- Smaller in size
- High power handling
The sealed subwoofer enclosures also have some disadvantages. This type of enclosures are less effected than vented enclosures and have lesser low bass as compared to a properly tuned and vented enclosures above the port tuning frequency.

The vented enclosure type seems like sealed enclosures in design but there is a difference that it adds a port of certain length and has a certain area around. Normally this length is a PVC pipe, tuned to a certain frequency by variation in the two parameters of area and length. Major advantage of this length is that rear wave of the cone motion is used to reinforce the front wave.

Some other types of subwoofer enclosure are single reflex band pass enclosure, dual reflex band pass enclosure, series tuned dual reflex band pass enclosure and isobaric enclosures. Basically the subwoofers add high quality of bass in music and different types of enclosures help to produce different quality sounds.