How sensitive is human hearing to enclosure tuning ???

[Fish Chris]

So i'm that guy who obsesses over stuff that probably doesn't make any audible difference, 98% of the time. OCD is a wonderful thing  lol  So my current enclosure is 5 cubic feet, and tuned to 30.5 hz. running the 18" Skar EVL, and two 15" passive radiators. So the sub I'm fixing to swap to is the Skar 18" ZVX. This sub has an optimum recommended tuning of 32hz. Well now, with my passive radiator setup, I can easily change my tuning, by simply dropping the weight disks, from 150 gm, to 100 gm per PR, and bam. Instantly tuned to 32hz. But I'm just sitting here wondering if anybody on the planet, could actually hear the difference of an enclosure tuned to 30.5 and then changed to 32 hz ?

 

Oh, and while I'm obsessing, as I said, my current box is VERY CLOSE (like second decimal place close) to 5 cubes. The Skar ZVX has an optimum recommended cu footage of 5.25. Is their anyone who thinks this might make a substantial / audible difference ? ....because if it really would, I could always invert the sub, and get every bit of an extra .25 cubes. Honestly, it would probably be more like .4 -.5 cubes, in which case I could use spacers to bring it back to 5.25 spot on. But really, are anyones ears good enough to hear a difference ?

[Joshdashef]

I say try it and run it both ways. What sounds better to you? 👀 I’m curious to see

 

From my understanding, if you tune higher you can possibly have an easier time getting louder on the meter versus a lower tuning that takes more effort to have the same metered loudness buttttt lower tuning may sound better to our ears 👂 

[fishchris1]

26 minutes ago, Joshdashef said:

I say try it and run it both ways. What sounds better to you? <img src="> I’m curious to see

 

From my understanding, if you tune higher you can possibly have an easier time getting louder on the meter versus a lower tuning that takes more effort to have the same metered loudness buttttt lower tuning may sound better to our ears <img src="> 

Hey Josh, no doubt a higher tune is going to be louder, but I actually ran this in WinIsd, and the difference between tuning at 30.5 or 32 hz is less than 1/2 of 1 db...

So again, it comes back to how sensitive are our ears to even pick up these differences ?

[AaronT]

It's not really about how sensitive we are to more so than it is about how sensitive the subwoofer is to the enclosure tune

[1point21gigawatts]

Like AaronT said, tuning levels are more geared towards the subwoofer’s capabilities/specifications for performance and then next, the type of music frequencies you are accustom to. But when you change the frequency on a subwoofer enclosure from recommendation to meet the optimal frequency level for the type of music you listen to then you have to change other designs and sizes on the enclosure as well to meet the expectations of the subwoofer. I can design you an enclosure if you want.

[AaronT]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:56 PM, 1point21gigawatts said:

Like AaronT said, tuning levels are more geared towards the subwoofer’s capabilities/specifications for performance and then next, the type of music frequencies you are accustom to. But when you change the frequency on a subwoofer enclosure from recommendation to meet the optimal frequency level for the type of music you listen to then you have to change other designs and sizes on the enclosure as well to meet the expectations of the subwoofer. I can design you an enclosure if you want.

This is an awesome service you're offering to help the community.

 

Very few people know the difference between a box builder, someone who can cut pieces of wood square and glue them together from a cut sheet. Vs a "box builder' someone who mostly disregards manufacturer's recommendations but instead looks at the t s parameters of the subwoofer enclosure based off of those, and usually if the subwoofer company is worth a damn the findings of the Box builder based on the t s parameters should fall in line with their recommended enclosure if they aren't just copying and pasting shit from their build house.

 

I'm more inclined to believe that our buddy giga here, is the latter of the two the real box builder someone who can look at ts parameters, plug them into a program, and design you a box based off of actual subwoofer specifications

 

Lots of people get that Ford built to specification Lost in translation for lack of a better word or phrase.

 

Seeing what the manufacturer recommends regarding their airspace, tuning and port area, and entering that information into a basic box calculator not a box building program but a box calculator, that does not require skill at all all that requires you to operate a computer plugging the right values and then cut pieces of wood got a basic woodshop High School class can do.

 

But someone who looks at TS parameters build a box to the subwoofers specifications, that is the real built to spec box.

 

how many prefabs are out there that think the manufacturer's recommended tuning and airspace, there are hundreds of them. Why do they mostly sound like shit? Because they are based off of t s parameters.

[fishchris1]

5 hours ago, AaronT said:

 

Yes, I'm sure giga builds some nice boxes....

But I'm not sure how this thread digressed to that ? My current box is the nicest sounding box I've ever built. After about 30 of them, I've learned a few things too. 

And I'm fixing to do a few things that should make it much louder too... Like 4-5 db's, and I might play with my tuning just a touch... But if that doesn't make it sound noticeably better, I'd happily put it right back to where it is now 🙂

My question was about whether or not our ears could detect small changes in tuning ?

[1point21gigawatts]

58 minutes ago, fishchris1 said:

Yes, I'm sure giga builds some nice boxes....

But I'm not sure how this thread digressed to that ? My current box is the nicest sounding box I've ever built. After about 30 of them, I've learned a few things too. 

And I'm fixing to do a few things that should make it much louder too... Like 4-5 db's, and I might play with my tuning just a touch... But if that doesn't make it sound noticeably better, I'd happily put it right back to where it is now <img src=">

My question was about whether or not our ears could detect small changes in tuning ?

This thread is posted in the subwoofers/enclosures section and you did ask a frequency related question and frequencies come from an enclosure so it was bound to PROgress to enclosures and their frequency sensitivities since you did ask about sound human hearing sensitivity. There again, PROgression, not digression. It’s all about talking car audio and trying to help each other. Chill out dude. It’s all good. We are all suppose to be a forum community that coincides together and goes back and forth about car audio or whatever in a healthy way. The topic never changed. We all just touched base on it from different directions so you would have a better understanding. There’s only one correct reason in changing an enclosures tuning from recommended to something else and that’s if the recommended sizes of the enclosure are changed. On this forum there is no such thing as digression when it’s all about learning, helping and PROgressing in car audio.

[Fish Chris]

12 hours ago, 1point21gigawatts said:

This thread is posted in the subwoofers/enclosures section and you did ask a frequency related question and frequencies come from an enclosure so it was bound to PROgress to enclosures and their frequency sensitivities since you did ask about sound human hearing sensitivity. There again, PROgression, not digression. It’s all about talking car audio and trying to help each other. Chill out dude. It’s all good. We are all suppose to be a forum community that coincides together and goes back and forth about car audio or whatever in a healthy way. The topic never changed. We all just touched base on it from different directions so you would have a better understanding. There’s only one correct reason in changing an enclosures tuning from recommended to something else and that’s if the recommended sizes of the enclosure are changed. On this forum there is no such thing as digression when it’s all about learning, helping and PROgressing in car audio.

Okay first off, I think we have a little misreading because of only seeing blk/wht text here  I'm really chill about all of this. All I was asking was, "Can we detect very small changes in tuning, with only our ears ? OR, would very small changes to an enclosure make noticeable changes that we can actually detect ? So generally speaking, I do stick pretty close to the enclosure size and tuning frequency, which the manufacturer says is optimum. But now like with the new ZVX 18" that I'll be replacing my EVL 18 with, they recommend it to be tuned at 32hz. and also that the enclosure be 5.25 cubes. Okay well, my box is exactly 5 cubes, and tuned to 30.5 hz. So the whole reason I was asking is, because of my passive radiator setup, I can easily adjust it to 32 hz, but is this going to make a noticeable difference ? Also, I can add .25 cubes (probably a little more than... and then have to use a few small blocks to take up a little space) by inverting the sub. This would go from, -.2 to +.2, which is a .4 cu ft difference. But again, do you think we would be able to hear a .25 cubic foot difference, with a pretty large 5 cu ft box ? Obviously if this were an 8" sub, going from say a .6 cubic ft box, to a .85 box that .25 cu ft would make a much bigger difference, and would likely be quite audible.

[1point21gigawatts]

2 hours ago, Fish Chris said:

Okay first off, I think we have a little misreading because of only seeing blk/wht text here  I'm really chill about all of this. All I was asking was, "Can we detect very small changes in tuning, with only our ears ? OR, would very small changes to an enclosure make noticeable changes that we can actually detect ? So generally speaking, I do stick pretty close to the enclosure size and tuning frequency, which the manufacturer says is optimum. But now like with the new ZVX 18" that I'll be replacing my EVL 18 with, they recommend it to be tuned at 32hz. and also that the enclosure be 5.25 cubes. Okay well, my box is exactly 5 cubes, and tuned to 30.5 hz. So the whole reason I was asking is, because of my passive radiator setup, I can easily adjust it to 32 hz, but is this going to make a noticeable difference ? Also, I can add .25 cubes (probably a little more than... and then have to use a few small blocks to take up a little space) by inverting the sub. This would go from, -.2 to +.2, which is a .4 cu ft difference. But again, do you think we would be able to hear a .25 cubic foot difference, with a pretty large 5 cu ft box ? Obviously if this were an 8" sub, going from say a .6 cubic ft box, to a .85 box that .25 cu ft would make a much bigger difference, and would likely be quite audible.

It’s all good dude. And the subwoofer enclosure you have now would work for a zvx. No problem. For sure. Just invert the subwoofer and wire out of phase. Don mess with the phase control on your amp if it has one. And if your enclosure is tuned to 30.5hz before subwoofer displacement, it’s around 31-31.25hz after subwoofer displacement. So if that enclosure is 30.5hz without displacement then it will stay at that frequency if you invert the subwoofer. But if that enclosure is 30.5hz after subwoofer displacement then you can’t invert the subwoofer because inverting the subwoofer to save volume in that scenario would make the enclosure 29 point something in frequency. Or better yet, in that scenario you COULD invert the subwoofer, just adjust the tuning like you were talking about. That would be the only scenario I would recommend adjusting the frequency. On that enclosure, is it tuned to 30.5hz before subwoofer displacement, like did you design it without putting subwoofer displacements into the program?