Door pods

I have a set of mb quart ref series components, and I plan on fabbing up some custom fiberglass panels/pods for the doors of my civic. My question is if I were to seal the back of the pods how would this affect the sound quality of the mids? I know that most speakers are designed to be mounted in a free air environment, but I'm just curious if this would tighten up the bass response w/o any neg affects on the sound quality or life span of the woofers.

Hey guy...........I dont believe you'll have any problems with sound quality if you want to seal the backs of those door pods. In fact , every set Ive ever seen either custom or prefab were sealed up tight. The midrange speakers dont require big amounts of space. They have such little amount of cone excursion that it makes little difference. I wouldnt make them too smal or tight but sealed or open should give about the same response. At least from my experience anyway.

I think it will affect sound quality if you make the sealed door pods too small.  Especially if you expect to get midbass out of the pods.  If, however, they are true -midrange- speakers and aren't being used to play midbass frequencies the air volume will matter less. 

From MB Quart:   "All of MB Quart’s midrange/midbass speakers are optimized for infinite baffle/free air mounting, which is essentially mounting in the door or factory speaker locations. They will work best in this type of mounting using the door cavity as the enclosure. Sealed enclosures are not recommended since they would require larger than practical volumes for the speaker to function optimally. This holds true for all MB Quart products with the exception of our subwoofers. If a midrange/midbass driver is put into a small sealed enclosure, it will alter the speaker’s response characteristics and you will not get the full amount of bass or midbass that the speaker is capable of producing."

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New Project: 2003 Pathfinder

Thanks guys , that's exactly what I was looking for!

I have a 98 civic that I have built door pods onto, let me know if you would like pics, yes I sealed the back, I was finding that the vocals were slightly lacking with a open back giving it free air, and also the water coming in throught the window seal scared me.   I am much happier now that I have sealed them

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2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place

Would building a door pod with a ported enclosure have the same effect as free spacing the 6.5" or 5.25" driver?

I wouldnt reccomend it,     those little speakers are realy not meant to be ported

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2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place