Hey Guys,

A lot of you suggested the Image Dynamic 8 inch sub for mounting in the stock Bose location in my 5th gen. I was reading on soundomain.com that this sub can be used as a free-air sub..Anyone tried running one of these as a free air? It also says it is optimized for a small enclosure, but the free air would be so much easier to build and mount...What are your guys thoughts on running this free air?

 

have you ever built a "free-air" application? You have to entirely seal the trunk for best response. That means sealing the baffle board, the rear deck, and the decklid. That is a BIG task. I woudl go small box, unless you have a lot of patience, and a lot of silicone and foam sealer.

 

It'll work, but free-air is often pretty weak. If you are only considering a aingle 8 though you may be fine with that setup. I bet it will sound much better than stock, but I would certainly spend a little time trying to seal up things as well as time would allow. Fixing a small enclosure around it and placing it in the same location would be even more slick, take a little woodworking and some good planning, but you'd get better punch for your money.

 

Thanks, guys...It looks like JL just updated their site with their new speaker line....They are releasing a 8w7 come April, I think I will hold out for that, and get the box built by then

 

I don't think you can do better for SQ than an ID8 with a .33 enclosure. It produces an incredible sound

 

Comparing the IDQ8 to an 8W7 really isn't fair. You could probably buy 4 of the IDQ8 for the same amount of money as one 8W7. But comparing max listening SPL will be similar. The IDQ will be easier to build an enclosure form. The 8W7 is deeper than the diameter of the cone.

I know it is not the only thing to look at, but Xmax of the 8W7 is 19mm. Xmax of the IDQ8v3 is 15mm. The JL needs of 3.5 inches greater mounting depth to achieve 4 mm greater linear excurion. Seems like an engineer at JL made some miscalculations.

The question that was asked was if the IDQ will work free air. The simple answer is yes, because any speaker will. But the more involved answer is that it will not work well. Not at all well. It is optimized for small sealed enclosures. Low Qts, low Vas.

But if you want monster sound out of an 8 that you can get now, look at the Elemental Designs A8. It has most of the abilities of the 8 W7 and still has a fraction of the mounting depth and at afraction of the cost.

http://www.edesignaudio.com/ep/aspecs.htm