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DIY: in wall sub enclosure - Dampening Material?

post #1 of 7
9/12/10 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 
Hi. I'm trying to make a sub enclosure for my Sonance Sub Two System.

Basically I want to build this:
http://www.sonance.com/products/accessories/detail/63

Looks straightforward. Gets some MDF , cut, nail.
I think the sides use a thicker MDF than the faces but I will have to look that up.
My question is, what do i use as the dampening material. It uses Dacron Dampening Material. Will regular fiberglass insulation work?
I abruptly have to do some work on my house so I need to build one of these quick. I wasn't expecting to install my subs for a while but since the wall is being put up now I need to get one of these built using locally available materials.

Also anything I should know about fastening this to the studs?

And is it me or can't this be made for about 20 bucks as oppossed to the 270 bucks it costs on ebay? Especially considering I need two of them.

Forgive me as I am a novice.
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post #2 of 7
9/21/10 at 2:13pm
Thread Starter 
Ok. So I decided to just build my own.
Took MDF board. Cut it. Glued and Nailed it. Put Great Stuff Foam in it. Then stuffed it full of R 19 insulation.
I hope these will do just fine because I really couldn't see what was so special about the ones you buy.

This is what I got:









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post #3 of 7
10/1/10 at 7:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bonjovi View Post

And is it me or can't this be made for about 20 bucks as oppossed to the 270 bucks it costs on ebay?

Not everybody has the tools, skills, or desire to fabricate their own speaker box -- those people must pay a premium for something that others can do on their own.

It looks like you did decent job on the boxes; however, I'm not sure why you used the great Stuff Foam to seal it. That stuff is good to fill in and insulate areas of a home, but for speaker box sealing, it's not a good choice since it's hard to get a consistent bead along the joints (as shown in your pictures). Also, the expanding property of the foam takes up more of your box volume. Next time use sealant out of a manual gun so that the bead is minimal and you can control the flow.

I would've also used screws instead of nails to put it together and stuffed it with poly-fill instead of insulation (assuming these are mounted in interior walls). Of course, the latter can easily be changed out even after the wall is complete.
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post #4 of 7
10/1/10 at 7:51am
Quote:


And is it me or can't this be made for about 20 bucks as oppossed to the 270 bucks it costs on ebay? Especially considering I need two of them.

Well, how long did it take you. How much overhead like Heat, insurance, building cost you.

The difference between your $20 bucks and the $270 are all those factors, etc. No one is going to sell products in the real world and not get all their costs back.

DIYers all know that its impossible to put a price tag on work done since we have so many assumptions like time is free.

Just enjoy that you can do it for $20 and you chould sell them for $270
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post #5 of 7
10/1/10 at 9:24am
Congrats on saving $250 bucks! +1 on what jsu1995 said about the Great Stuff... not quite the right stuff for the job but it likely won't matter. -1 on switching from insulation to polyfill though, the insulation will be more effective for subwoofer duty and no worries about fibers escaping since it's a sealed design.

Only potential problem I see is with the large height you could end up with standing waves in the enclosure. The insulation will probably take care of that though
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post #6 of 7
10/1/10 at 11:28am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the input. Honestly, I try to think I am more of a DIYer than I actually am. I am getting my butt kicked as I am trying to complete my build. But I'm learning through it and its enjoyable. Also I like collecting tools!

I don't have any idea why I used Great Stuff. I can probably get rid of it by popping it off with a straight edge. I just wanted to make it air tight because that is what the instruction manual for the Sonance Enclosures said (which is what I was trying to copy). Definitely did not come out very neatly! Even the cutouts for the speakers are a bit rough but thats because I didn't have a router. (I do now!!)


Screws would have been better but I glued and nailed it. Its just so tempting when you have that compressor and nail gun. I'm hoping the wood glue will make it a moot point unless there is something else i am missing. I had searched in the forums and the one post I found said that the guy had nailed the heck out of it. Let's hope it doesn't matter too much.

So the insulation is ok then. I figured I had extra lying around. The height was choosen just to emulate what Sonance does (see link in first post). I would hope they calculated it for my particular subs.

Just to clarify, I am stuffing these things full of insulation right or is there a particular amount I want? Forgive my ignorance.

The cost would have been less than 20 bucks each had I needed to buy everything. My cost is just for the MDF board which was $23 and I made two enclosures. I had all of the other stuff lying around. It took me about an hour. By the way they want 270 EACH for these on ebay. So I saved more like $500!
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post #7 of 7
10/1/10 at 12:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bonjovi View Post

Thanks for the input. Honestly, I try to think I am more of a DIYer than I actually am. I am getting my butt kicked as I am trying to complete my build. But I'm learning through it and its enjoyable. Also I like collecting tools!

I don't have any idea why I used Great Stuff. I can probably get rid of it by popping it off with a straight edge. I just wanted to make it air tight because that is what the instruction manual for the Sonance Enclosures said (which is what I was trying to copy). Definitely did not come out very neatly! Even the cutouts for the speakers are a bit rough but thats because I didn't have a router. (I do now!!)


Screws would have been better but I glued and nailed it. Its just so tempting when you have that compressor and nail gun. I'm hoping the wood glue will make it a moot point unless there is something else i am missing. I had searched in the forums and the one post I found said that the guy had nailed the heck out of it. Let's hope it doesn't matter too much.

So the insulation is ok then. I figured I had extra lying around. The height was choosen just to emulate what Sonance does (see link in first post). I would hope they calculated it for my particular subs.

Just to clarify, I am stuffing these things full of insulation right or is there a particular amount I want? Forgive my ignorance.

The cost would have been less than 20 bucks each had I needed to buy everything. My cost is just for the MDF board which was $23 and I made two enclosures. I had all of the other stuff lying around. It took me about an hour. By the way they want 270 EACH for these on ebay. So I saved more like $500!

lol, sweet. Don't worry about removing the great stuff, it won't really hurt anything and the volume lost is pretty small. The amount of insulation you use will cause it to sound slightly different but there's not a "right" or "wrong" amount. I would stuff it pretty full and give a listen. You can tweak the sound slightly by removing/adding insulation. The insulation will help prevent standing waves, if you measured it unstuffed you would very likely see a large null at the frequency whose wavelength = 4 x the internal length. The insulation will nearly completely remove this artifact (there was a thread in the DIY forum quite a while ago where someone measured a sonosub unstuffed then added insulation and showed the null completely removed).

Don't worry about the brad nails either, yes screws are better but brads are way more convenient... that's what I've used on my last couple of builds. The only problem I've had is on the subwoofer enclosure I finished nicely the brads are starting to back out a bit and I've got bumps in the finish now. Since yours is in-wall it won't matter
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