So really, how much of a difference is there in final sound when it comes to mid bass drivers like 6.5's 6x9's 5x7's etc to be in an enclosure? Ive seen a few cars with literally the door speakers just screwed onto the door with nothing behind it and they still sound great. Ill be honest, rite now my 6.5's are rigged into the doors with alot of open space around them and my mids defiantly dont make me very happy, im going to say this why because in my 300zx i had them fitted and they sounded alot better.
Heres the skinny..in order for a driver to produce accurate sound, you must isolate the front sound waves from the rear sound waves or else we have what is called phase cancellation. And on top of that, door speakers operate in a frequency bandwidth that loves to resonate door panels and other structures in the door. So an enclosure is not a bad idea, and it will do several things. First it will help protect the speaker. Second it will help to isolate the rear wave from the front, third it will help control rear wave interference with the front from reflections of sound waves of the inside of the door. A cheap, easy and effective way to do this is what i called "polybagging" Simply using several layers heavy mill plastic, place it in the hole creating a plastic bag "dish" or enclosure.....next pack the "enclosure" with poly fill. Then secure the driver to the door. the frame of the speaker will clamp the bag layers to the door. Dont worry about having to little volume. as these speakers are generally designed to operate in free air enviorments, so that means they work exceptionally well in very small enclosures.. Every bit helps..especially in midrange area....creates a more natural and realistic, or shall we say "warm" sound
The open space around them is whats hurting your performance. Car speakers are designed to work in a free air environment. But the front and the rear of the speaker needs to be seperated. I use a simple baffle behind my speakers, keep in mind that Rangers don't come with these baffles, but Thunderbirds did have them on the rear speakers. The other thing is make sure its mounted solid. Think of it like this, anything you can feel vibrating in your car is absorbing sound. In other words thats sound thats not heard. Its being absorbed. Mount the speaker (if you have room behind the panel) to 1/2-inch or 3/4-inch MDF. Then mount the MDF to the door. A little dynomat (or equivalent) between the door and the MDF would also help alot. Enclosure in a door would be hard to pull off, but if you can do it, it would help. But the enclosure needs to be sized correctly. Too small an enclosure would hurt performance. So I probably would not try it.
LOL! Ya we did. I have to disagree with you on one thing however. I feel size of the enclosure is not critical to the performance of a midrange driver designed to operate in a free air enviorment. However....if asked to perform in the upper bass region, this could have an impact on performance albiet unlikely. Now, to one up this door enclosure thing..... Years ago I did a 57 vette convertible demo car for Alpine electronics. In the kick panels was a ton of room. I utilized a 6 incher in each location, and keeping with the fibreglass idea (just like the car)...I built tuned and ported enclosures for each one. I believe I tuned them to aaround 80-120 Hz (dont remember exactly) The midbass punch and upper bass performance was incredible! I do remember having to set the x-over on the sub VERY low to get a correct blend of sound to keep it musical and accurate sounding. This car was engineered for true musical reproduction, not SPL...and did a phenomanal job at it....another side note...the 10 was in another fibreglass box i made to fit in place of the glove box....EVERYTHING was up front! And what a difference it makes...
Thanks for the info guys. The explorer these speakers are in have a sort of enclosure behind the speakers that just straight up metal attached to the frame of the door, but they have a bunch of big random holes in them. What i think ill do is throw some fiberglass on that to close up the holes and throw some around the actual mount hole for the speaker to size it correctly.. Thanks! =D
Cancellation isn't really an issue except at low frequencies. You could have the mids and tweeters virtually mounted in mid-air on a stick, wouldn't matter. Speakers designed for doors, trunks, etc. are constructed with different specs than those made for speaker enclosures. Their suspensions are generally much stiffer in order to prevent excessive movement. If you don't believe me about the boxless mounting, then I urge you to read up on some very famous home loudspeakers (which I happen to own) known as the Dahlquist DQ-10. These are a true 5-way system with a sealed woofer and the four other drivers mounted outside and above the woofer on a flat panel. You can actually see the back of the drivers from behind. If you really like home audio, this is one of the best speakers ever built and can usually be found for around $300-$400 a pair. Even if you have to have them repaired, you won't touch their sound quality with any new speaker for under 4-5 grand.
