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The Speaker Project
   
Equipment
 

Setup

Subwoofer
  Testing
  Prototyping
 

Building

The Main Speakers
 

Prototyping

 

Crossover

 

Construction

 

Prototyping the Main Speaker Enclosure

Woofer Enclosure Analysis Part I
Woofer Enclosure Analysis Part 2
Woofer Enclosure Analysis Part 3
Prototype Steps and Pictures
Prototype Sealed Tests
Prototype Ported Tests
Prototype Nearfield Bass Response Test
Prototype Splicing Woofer Response
Prototype Tweeter Tests

 
  Speaker Workshop Project
Woofer Enclosure Selection (B)

For this project, I actually prefer a vented enclosure. The reasoning behind that is that these speakers will be used for home theater. Generally a home theater receiver only has two settings - large front speakers and small front speakers. These speakers will go deep enough to be called large speakers, but the receiver will send deep bass to the subwoofer so I want the low frequency response to be as flat as possible. The other possible, calling them small speakers, will usually engage a high pass filter (crossover). To make that filter work appropriately it is best to have flat low-end response - again predicating a vented enclosure.

The last reason to use a vented enclosure is pedantic - I think it's important for purposes of the tutorial to use a vented enclosure.... so

We bring up the Vifa enclosure and select the Calculate Vented... command. This brings up a dialog box that lets you pick between three different alignments (BB4, C4, and QB3). All three alignments work satisfactorily for vented boxes - and other alignments work as well, but these three are good starting points. Interestingly, C4 and QB3 are identical for a driver with a Q of 0.4, which the Vifa is close to, and hence there won't be much difference between these two.

Comparing the two - QB3 has a shorter port and bigger box, while C4 has a longer port and smaller box. Their response curves are very similar to each other.

Here's a comparison of the C4 alignment (with a 0.3 ohm series resistance) with the butterworth sealed box alignment. The butterworth alignment results are in red.