Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio subwoofer mounting

What does mounting the subwoofer backwards in the box? I know a friend who has a sq system that runs his this way and says it is better for sound quality.

What are the pros and cons of doing this?

i've seen that before...i dunno, i'm no expert, but simple logic tells me that it helps reduce intreferance. Its deffinately not as loud, but when i played with mounting options on my system, it sounded tighter, and cleaner, but not as accurate and half as loud....i reversed the phase though...haha...i don't think that helped much...any one else have some insightful comments?

The only thing it really should do is increace box size by the volume of sub displacement. This can help the low end a little but otherwise it's only cosmetic.

Truth be told it only effect a very small frequency band. But it does do a good job of more acurately reproducing that limited freq band. It does require as much as 5 times as much power to get the same SPL. But should only require twice as much power to get the same loudness.
Note;
Loudness does not equal SPL (sound pressure level).

How is this possible? If this was the case, wouldn't ALL speaker makers recommend this style of mounting? I have never seen Wilson Audio do this in thier set of $125,000 speakers Sound quality would actually be degraded from the air moving across the basket, magnet, spider, etc. Not to mention the God awful dispersion pattern.
I'm not sure what this has to do with the question. I will agree, percieved loudness does not equal actual SPL, but this is mainly seen when compairing 20Hz to 500Hz not 20Hz to 80Hz. The human ear is not linear in it's response. We are dealing with a very small portion of the audio spectrum in this case.
If you do mount the driver backwards, remember you must account for the change in the volume(cubic feet not SPL) of the box.
Just my 2 pennies.

Assuming the box size is compensated for, there would be no difference in the sound. If the same enclosure was used for both the one mounted magnet out would have a bit better transient response but may be affected by vent noise if the motor structure is vented.

If you had two subs one mounted magnet in, and one mounted out, sharing the same volume, the method of mounting can reduce distortion compared to both woofers facing the same direction. This is the method that M & K uses in their home subs.