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alright, i have seen this done in some custom enclosures in some show cars and stuff and was wondering what good it was to have a box, other than to have a place to mount the sub. i have seen people put the subs in facing into the box, with the magnet and everything on the outside and the cone facing in. what good is this? wouldn't this in effect be making the sub a free-air sub? it was puzzeling to me, and i was wondering the acoustic effects of it, does it make the sub pound harder, etc? i just don't understand it....
reason i am asking is cause i am designing my trunk currently, and have the floor for the amp and everything layed out and all ready to be cut and assembled, and was thinking on ways to put a few more subs, so i was wondering if this would be a decent route to go with or not?

 
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all you do is screw the speaker in backwards, and you switch the positive and the negative on the speaker (or amp) it is identical performance, its usually done to show off the magnet

 
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its not free air cause it would be compressing the air in the box, if it was free air, it would be like mounting a board vertically in your trunk, with no seals anywhere, i.e., top of trunk, etc. sometimes what people will do is take 2 subs, mount one normally, and the other facing in towards the box. this method is called isobaric. Check out JL Audio's website, it has a tutorial on the usefullness of mounting them this way

but mainly, like Lud pointed out, its done to show off some of those fancy baskets and magnets, while still sounding decent

 
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I like to think of it like this.

Whatever noise the front of the speaker makes .... the back side is making the exact opposite noise. Both sides produce equal volumes of the exact same sounds, they are just out of phase.

Together they tend to cancel one another out. This is just like having two subs together in a car. Both speakers in phase, the bass adds. If both speakers are not in phase the bass tends to cancel out.

Try taking a 6.5" or something and play with a long wire. Try it without a box just sitting on a table, and then move it over into a box just holding the edges. You'll swear you just almost doubled the volume.

This is one of the most important things a box helps prevent ...... cancellation.

Infinite baffle has no "box" ...... but the concept is still there. With this setup people tend to seal off the trunk from the rest of the car. The woofers front faces into the car while the rear of the speaker is in the trunk. Since the trunk is sealed off from the rest of the car ... the trunk is essentially a really big box.