Curious I keep seeing this in Crutch.

 

A "free air" subwoofer will work in a infinite baffle situation. Succinctly, it needs no box in order to work efficiently. You can use a free-air subwoofer in a plate type system in the hatch area of a F-body.

 

actually, a free air sub is designed to work around a very large sealed enclosure, such as a trunk, if you put it on a plate, it will sound like ****.

actually, it will sound like ****. (notice the period at the end of the sentence)

 

^^^

those guys got it right

you dont want a free air sub i ran one for a week while waiting for weekend to build a box and it had no bass at all compared to now

 

Like mentioned already, a plate setup is not an ideal setup for an IB sub. The airspace is probably going to be too small for a pair of IB subs, plus IB subs don't magically eliminate cancellation from a non-isolated rear wave. A proper IB installation still requires sealing the trunk 100% from the interior of the car.

The only benefit to an IB sub in a plate configuration is that the stiffer suspension will help prevent the sub from committing suicide from over excursion. Typical sealed (and yes, even ported) enclosures damp the motion of the cone because of the air mass within the enclosure. In an IB configuration, you don't have that, so a normal sub's excursion isn't as well damped as it should be, and the over-excursion can damage the sub. Most IB subs have a stiff suspension to help deal with this.

However, because IB subs also have a very large qts, using them in a situation where the airspace is too small (like under a plate) will result in boomy high bass with very little deep bass output. It would be no different than jamming any other sub into a box that's way too small.

 

free air means it sucks...stay clear of it man..

 

I wouldn't make a blanket statement like that. There are some very good free air subs that can sound fantastic in a proper free-air environment where the trunk was properly isolated from the cabin. I've seen a lot of very high sq scores with IB subs.

But, our cars aren't the type of cars that can benefit from the advantages of IB subs.

 

what about in the Sail Panels? I was set on Kicker Comp C8's in the rear sails to kinda make up a lil between the 6.5s in the front and the 15 in the rear.

 

In an application like that, the high qts of a free-air driver, along with it's stiffer suspension, can be an advantage. Keep in mind that low bass will be impossible with that setup because the back side of that driver is opened to the interior behind the spare tire plastic, but if you're only using it as a high-passed filler for midbass, then it can work well.

 

Free air subs take more power to achieve the same power output of a sealed subwoofer. Go sealed.

 

Not necessarily. If you stick them into a box they will, but in free air, their efficiency is just like any normal sub in a box. It varies from brand to brand, but they usually have average efficiency. The difference is, a free air sub gets its damping from the suspension instead of the air pressure within a box.

 

Yes, I mean the efficiency depends on whether or not the subwoofer was designed to be used in a free air application or not. If it wasn't and it was used in a baffle situation then it would take more power to drive it properly. But you are right.