Can a sub be placed in a cabinet or does it need to be exposed in the open?

Originally Posted by golfwolf

My wife is having a built in and she asked..........
a) If I could have the subwoofer put on the other side of the room (behind if your sitting watching TV) I figured this is a "no."
b) If the contractor makes a cabinet big enough to hid it so you can't see it.

I think I have a Bic-100.

Originally Posted by golfwolf

My wife is having a built in and she asked..........
a) If I could have the subwoofer put on the other side of the room (behind if your sitting watching TV) I figured this is a "no."
b) If the contractor makes a cabinet big enough to hid it so you can't see it.

I think I have a Bic-100.

Originally Posted by sivadselim

The only way this is workable is if the sub is front-firing and if ported, front-ported. Otherwise, it's a terrible idea. And even if you have a front-firing/front-ported sub, it is not at all ideal for several reasons. One being the inability to optimize the subs location.

Behind, as fireman said, is common.

Originally Posted by KnowledgeSeeker

What about if you optimized the sub's location first and then built cabinetry around it, while keeping the sub sitting on the floor, do you think that would work? Also, what do you think the minimum clearance should be around the left/right/top of the sub?

Originally Posted by sivadselim

I wouldn't put a rear-firing or down-firing port or driver in any enclosure.

Originally Posted by KnowledgeSeeker

That wasn't what I was suggesting, sorry I wasn't more clear. My questions were in regard to sealed front firing subs.

Originally Posted by sivadselim

It's probably not optimal, but I would think that a sealed, front-firing sub could be completely enclosed, although one would want to be able to somehow access the back of the sub. A concern might be a recessed driver, but as long as the driver was flush with the wall or front of the cabinetry it would probably be fine. But still constrained to one single location.

I don't know what your project is, exactly, but you might want to consider an infinite baffle (IB) setup.

Originally Posted by SteveMo

I measured the difference of placing my rear subwoofers in a cabinet once. The cabinets are actually Helmholtz Resonators, They are very large, and no insualtion was used with the graph while they are in the enclosures. I had to turn the gain up on the subwoofers to max. I also had to use some different amplifiers that had gain control. Here are a few of them from my testing. The difference of the rear position or the enclosed position was slightly less than the length of the subwoofer since I had to fire them slightly upwards because I was not willing to remove framing inside the enclosure. Adding insulation decreased the gain so much, it was impractical. What I learned is that for a subwoofer going inside of an enclosure, you need a very loud subwoofer. Adding a hole for the subwoofer to fire out of might help also. These were rear ported also. Room is 20'X13.5'X8.6' and the front subs are not actually in the corners, just close to them. I would not expect to ever see any benifit of them being corner loaded inside of a cabinet. The results I heard/felt was lots of pressure from the enclosures in the back of the room, and lots of flanking up my back wall. Placing them inside a cabinet is a last resort. Fortunately, I found a different solution than to doing this. "enclosed 1" is front subs, 'allsubsenclosed2" is all subs including the rear ones in the enclosure and "allsubscorner" is a sub in each corner without an enclosure. The only adivise I have really is to try something else, or get a subwoofer desinged to go in a cabinet if yours is not.

Originally Posted by KnowledgeSeeker

SteveMo,
Thank you for your detailed response. The 2 subs I have are sealed and front firing (yours was rear ported), and would be sitting on the floor, not sitting on the bottom of a cabinet. We would just be building cabinetry around the 3 sides of them (right/top/left), with the driver side of the subs either even with or extended slightly beyond the cabinetry. Do you think I need to have any particular minimum clearances so as not to impact the sound too much? Understanding this may also help the OP.