[zacjones]

What are the drawbacks, if any, of having an in-wall front ported subwoofer flush-mounted to the wall, with the enclosure built into a closet that opens from another other room? Reduced output? Whole house rattles? Difficult to predict bass response due to the sub enclosure being behind a wall in a closet? The enclosure would fill up almost half the closet space. Ideally we would use the rest of the closet space for a/v equipment, but sharing the space to with the sub enclosure might to prove to be too much for the equipment to bear.

The subs would be (2) IXL 18.4's in 24cf tuned to 16hz powered by an EP2500 at 625wpc.

The front baffle will be 48" wide by 24" tall.

 

[Mike P.]

Re: in-wall ported sub?

If it's flush mounted to the wall there won't be any output issues. If you have enough output the house is going to rattle no matter where you place the sub. As long as the cabinet is built with enough bracing to mimimize vibration the equipment will be fine. The only disadvantage is you are commiting the sub to one placement which may not be the ideal location for the best bass response. Do you have a sub at the moment that you can place where the closet sub will output into the room and see how it sounds?

 

[lcaillo]

Re: in-wall ported sub?

Ditto what Mike said. His comments are exactly what I would have suggested.

 

[Ricci]

With solid planning it should be good to go.

+2 on Mike's suggestion to check the response of a sub at that position first.

 

[zacjones]

Thanks for your responses you guys. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the proposed location will work out. The audition will have a very strong bias towards the in-wall placement. Hopefully any issues can be resolved by BFD tuning.

I have 2 IXL 18.4's in separate enclosures that I could lug over there for testing. One is 12 cf tuned to 16hz, the other 9.5cf tuned to 20.5 hz.

Please keep in mind that the closet opens to a hallway. The baffle would be placed into holes cut into the back wall of the closet, facing the listening position in the livingroom.

There will be no cutting holes in the drywall and orienting the drivers through the hole just yet, so where and how to position the sub(s) to most accurately resemble an in-wall placement?

(1) Both in front of the wall where they would be recessed? How far from the wall, and oriented which direction?

or

(2) Both in the closet? It'd by a tight squeeze for sure, but for fun I'll go ahead and ask... How far from the wall, and oriented which direction?

or

(3) One in front of the wall and one in the closet? How far from the wall, and oriented which direction?

Or any combination of the above with one or two subs.

I'm hoping you guys can steer me in the right direction, but I understand that even after completing this exercise the end result may still be fairly unpredictable. :doh:

 

[Mike P.]

Just place one sub up against the wall where the baffle would be, have the driver forward facing the same as the closet sub would be. That should give you an idea how the closet sub would sound.

 

[zacjones]

Thanks Mike. I'll give that a try then.