has anyone heard of putting cotton in your sub box. i heard from a friend that it makes your subs produce tighter bass. is this true or is it just going to be a waste of time if i take my subs out of the box and put the cotton in it?

 

Some ppl use polly fill in small enclosures to "trick" the subwoofer into thinking its in a bigger box. I would guess thats what he is talking about with the cotton deal, but I dont see it making it tighter at all.

 

ok. thanks.

 

Back in the 80's and 90's when I was into car stereo we used polyfil pillow stuffing in alot of sub boxes. The stuffing stiffles air movement so the air inside the box moves less. The box has to be tuned for it though, just stuffing will change the sound, but if it isn't tuned right it'll sound worse than it does empty.

 

What do you mean tuned....the point of adding polyfill is to trick a smaller enclosure into thinking its slightly bigger....so if your box is already tuned why would you need polyfill?

 

Basic principle in the old days was that it allowed the subs to play at a lower frequency levels than they normally would. Ever heard of SabreSound? Back in the 80's their box with two 8inch subs basically started the sub-enclosure explosion. I had an engineer friend who went to NC State and did a project on these enclosures. By using polyfil, sealing and tuning he proved the box could change frequencies if set up right. I'm no engineer, but I was there when he used all of his equipment to show in detail the differences in the box frequencies when he used the boxes sealed with and without filling, then used ported filled and unfilled with different lengths of port tubes to tune the boxes. Like I said, that was back in the day and I don't get into car stereo anymore, I prefer good sound over volume. My first $5k in a system was the last money I spent on car stereo equipment.

 

Old Potatoe sacks work better than cotton.