good suggestion with the carpet glue danr1...I had never though of that. Something else I would do (if budget and skills allowed) is to fiberglass the inside and outside of the box. MDF is like a sponge and will lower your bass levels. If you apply a coat of fiberglass it will become more rigid and allow for the sound to reverberate a lot more.

 

Whether you want to reflect or absorb bass frequencies (and which ones) has to do with a lot of factors - the subwoofer, the volume of the enclosure, the shape of the enclosure, ported or not ported, the materials used, as well as the music you typically listen too.

While a lot of guys strive to make a visually appealing enclosure, sometimes they don't put any thought into the physics and in turn, math involved and they end up making something that doesn't necessarily sound the best it could.

MDF doesn't absorb much of anything across the audio spectrum, it mostly reflects because of it's high density. The worse I've seen in car audio is the enclosure vibrates with the beat and sometimes rattles itself apart at higher power levels.

We use it a lot in recording studios if a reflective panel needs to be created, but most studios use absorbers trying to cut reflections, and MDF is not used because it's very reflective across the board.

Another tidbit about audio - high frequencies are very directional, low frequencies are not - which is why 2.1, 5.1, and 7.1 sound systems have multiple high frequency drivers and only one sub. More subs only increase the SPL and not help much at all with "location" of the stereo mix.

Nice pics though to the gent who shared his assembly.

I've created structures of this kind before out of plywood, MDF or even steel and covered it with vinyl, fabric or fiberglass for appearance purposes. I always made the structure to work by itself, then covered it with whatever I wanted to at the time. Carpet works too.

 

Yeah I used basic tools. I don't work with wood to often and no mater how many times I measure there's always an issue but I'm getting better. I'm not worried to much for loud bass I just want a slight bass. I went with MFD board because it's cheap and I've always been told that's what most builders use for sub boxes and it suppose to sound better then plywood. I think my box will work fine for what I listen to and it's a small cab that will sound good one way or another. I was going to fiberglass but I don't have the money and have a hard time figuring out how to make a mold of it. Unless I just glass the box and paint or whatever over it?

 

my last box had a few "gaps" in it. i got a tube of PL premium construction adhesive and used it like silicone covering every seam inside the box to get a good seal. it worked pretty good

 

Yea that's basically what I did. I used liquid nails and did every seam and any gap that I had.