Best way to decrease the internal volume of a sealed speaker?


I have a very fine sealed 0.75 cu foot cabinet that I would like to reduce the internal volume to about to about 0.45-0.65 cu feet. There is limited space to add things like bricks, pavers etc inside.
I am thinking of using some plastic containers with lids glued to the inside cabinet. Should they be filled with sand?

ozzy


128x128ozzy
Use Styrofoam blocks - easy to install and easy to remove too

Best of Luck

Peter
toddverrone,

Will the expandable foam absorb sound like the other products such as wool, fiberglass etc.? If so I think that would be the opposite of reducing the internal box volume. That's why I thought of sealing the exposed area with the Flex Seal spray.
Cutting the pieces of mdf wood and installing them as you suggested might work. I guess I worry that the glued wood may come loose and then rattle or move around.

theaudiotweak,

I will look into the Casacde V sounds interesting.

Geoffkait,

I agree and I was intending on limiting the amount of fill used.

pbnaudio,

Will the Styrofoam blocks absorb? Should I coat them with something?

ozzy





Ozzy

I agree with Geoff limit the amount of damping material. The Cascade reduces the drag of the glue and saw dust and increases the dispersive area of its solids. MDF which is probably in use here..sounds like a dark muffled congested cough..the Cascade seals out that character. The sheeps wool acts like a comb filter rather than damper of character. Tom
If you use Flex Seal, it may have petroleum distillates in it, as the more expensive rubber sprays at Wally World (10-12 bucks) will have. However, the cheaper stuff (2-4 bucks) doesn't have pd's. Pd's are rather corrosive to electronic circuitry.

Automotive undercoating spray (same thing as Flex Seal really and is what you'd be looking for at Walmart or your hardware store) will dry overnight to roughly half the thickness at which it was applied. However, after several days, the depth of the coating will continue to shrink and then be no thicker really than a coat of paint, so it might require simply too many coats and too much drying time to be of practical use as a way to reduce volume on its own...but good as a sealant, though. 

Flex Seal could possibly be thicker, but I have no idea if it contains distillates.

Styrofoam, I would think, would not absorb too much, although something that low mass may be excited to resonate a bit maybe, coating it with the rubber spray may help somewhat. 

Any object left inside the cabinet must Not be hollow, fill it with sand, if nothing else!