Speaker Questions???

Question

I Have tons of those 5 gallon water jugs....i live next to the bottler....

I chopped the top off of one and at the bottom i put an old car speaker and screwed it in place.

This made it sound WAY better....why???

I also added about an inch of water and the bass went up but you could not understand peoples voices...

I think this is called acoustic suspension chamber......

Answer 1

actually you are canceling back  waves generated by back movement of the cone which interferes with front waves . These are sometimes in phase some times out of phase and sometimes complex phase so giving all type of sound distortion, to avoid that we use boxes or filters or mats which absorb the power of back waves

Answer 2

think of it like a beam of light. if the beam is widely dispersed it isnt very powerful right? then if you focus it it can even burn things. its the same concept here. this is why they make special sound boosting enclosures for subwoofers. im not sure why the bass increased with the water though. it could be the audio qualities of the water enhanced the bass. but as your voice gets distorted underwater in a pool i thnik the same thing has played out here. thats a good idea for getting the most out of your speakers :)

Answer 3

Good One! Sound is moving air. The more air that moves the greater the sound. It is measured in SPL or sound pressure level. The surface of a speaker can only move the air effected by the motion of the cone itself. But put a speaker in an enclosure such as your water jug, now the speaker effects the air within the enclosure ( a greater volume ). And in turn a greater volume of air is moved. This is not to say any enclosure will make the sound better. With out an engineered enclosure, the speaker can work against itself and compromise intelligibility.