Acrylic, PVC, ABS or HDPE Plastic? Which for CAR AUDIO? 

Ooooh yea.. this man.. know his sh*t... 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I find 4x8 sheets of cellular pvc around me for 35 all day long

not any more. I think all plastic prices have gone nuts @@ElectroG33k

And just to reiterate, good ole Oatey PVC primer and cement works fine on PVC trim boards, you will just have to sand off the purple stain if you want to paint it...or just wrap it in vinyl.

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Corian is just an acrylic polymer with alumina trihydrate, it also comes in roughly quarter, half, and three quarter inch, as it's actually sold in metric thicknesses. In the end, it's just another acrylic. Can you make acrylic denser than MDF? Possibly, but I doubt it'd have the same acoustic "deadness" to it like MDF does. Strength is also questionable. Without scientific evidence to back his claims, he's just selling snake oil. As for colors, it can basically come in anything, including patterns, DuPont/Corian also sells color-matched acrylic glue for 'seamless' installations. Corian is also the original brand name for acrylic-alumina trihydrate, and similar, plastics. It's also common in signage and is easily thermoformed. This also makes me wonder how other counter top materials would fair as enclosures. I don't think I've ever seen the acoustic qualities of stone tested.

There are epoxies that will bond HDPE (TAP Poly-Weld), but it's bonding it to other materials that'll be difficult. More than likely, I'd go with mechanical, gasketed fastening for simplicity's sake. :)

Tldr: MDF is dense and acoustically 'dead', making it a superior material. There's more to it, but doesn't really matter to anyone outside of audio engineers. Acoustic qualities and material qualities factor into how an enclosure is manufactured. In enclosures for anything but subs, this doesn't really matter, as those speakers aren't designed to push a large amount of air; subs, however, push a lot of air with a lot of force, meaning you need stronger materials to avoid enclosure flex. Desirable material qualities are having the material be as thin, light, and cost effective as possible; for a rough comparison compare MDF to cardboard, you'd need an exponential amount of cardboard to match what MDF can do, so MDF is better in this case. As for acoustic properties, each material will produce a different sound, the material itself has it's own resonance where it'll produce noise at certain frequencies, this is caused by material flexing, and there's also the issue of how a material reflects and absorbs sound. It gets more complicated, with surface area vs volume (a sphere would technically be the best enclosure), complexity of surface area (internal bracing, stuffing, etc.), and the physics of soundwaves themselves, both inside and outside the enclosure. In MDF vs ply, you have to remember that ply is natural wood and MDF is basically sawdust and glue, MDF is much denser and more acoustically 'dead'. Between both qualities, and the price, MDF is the best, and is why the loudspeaker industry uses it as much as it does; if a better material existed, you'd see the industry switch to it. There's also the choice of SQ vs SPL. In SPL you don't care about sound reproduction, but you care about how loud it is, so material choice isn't as important; SQ is the opposite where material choice does matter. Fiberglass is a tricky subject. Its less of a comparison of material choice, but more of how it's used; typically it's a very complex shape made to fit a complex space. It can be made to sound decent, but, in a 1:1 comparison to a MDF enclosure of the same properties, it won't sound as good, but will be cheaper and easier to manufacture.

I was thinking the same thing. Home Depot does not seem to carry the wider sheets anymore. They only have narrower pieces for trim. And they are WAY expensive.

dpgoverride I’d imagine it would work if it was thick enough... but hella costly.

@@joshuas1767 Good point, I imagine it wouldn't be cost effective. I'm planning my sealed box build for a Hotel Series 12, down-firing box, for my sisters system. Maybe I will just do an acrylic side window, I'd like the sub's movement to be visible.

​@@dpgoverride just use MDF, it'll be cheaper and have better audio characteristics.

dpgoverride when you start pricing 1” or even 3/4” acrylic you’ll agree that a window will work just fine. Acme Plastics has pretty good pricing but I’ve heard tale of somewhere else that was even cheaper. Siber Plastics maybe... good luck!

yep

There are specialty epoxies for HDPE, similar to something for King Starboard. I found a JB Weld plastics epoxy off the shelf works well. Check my RU-vid out for the video.

You need a product that'll work on a low surface energy plastic, like what HPDE is. 3M and Loctite both make a variety of products for these kinds of plastics.

PsychoFish 💲💲💲💲💲

Sc1Z AudioControl LC2i will accept speaker (hi level) inputs and convert to an RCA output to send to your amplifier for a sub with the added bonus of AccuBass. Alternatively, all underseat/compact active subs (ones with an internal amp) will accept speaker level inputs and add bass to a stock system without overpowering the car speakers

@@phizzle24 oh nice! I was looking them up at work and the videos I watched used a $17 part. Now, granted there are amazingly good cheap parts but, this seemed a little on the LOW side. I have always had a custom head unit, so my exp with high power outs is lacking. This is exactly what I needed, the GTO will also let me turn the amp on.

and that is .220 of an inch... that is not thick enough. I think plastics must have went up 5 fold in the last few years.

Find it on their website and ship to store.

I can’t either. Any luck?

You can use PVC for an enclosure, but other materials will have better characteristics. Compare a box made from 3/4" of layered cardboard to 3/4" MDF, and see which is better; clearly the mdf would be better, and it's the same when comparing plastics, though the change isn't as drastic as cardboard vs MDF. The only reason people get away with using PVC pipe enclosures is the same reason people get away with using cylindrical concrete forms, tubes are structurally stronger and require less material, and the lower, more complex surface area produces less box noise, which means better audio; with equal volumes and equal area of the end caps, a cylinder has less surface area than a rectangular prism. This, however, does not apply to cubic boxes, sheets of PVC are much more porous than extruded tubes, and has worse audio quality when compared to other plastics. Plastics aren't even recommended for enclosures, MDF is the best material for audio quality while not being unreasonably expensive. Compare your setup in PVC and MDF, you'll see that MDF is far superior. Even in tube setups, layering MDF is superior than cardboard tubes and PVC tubes.

Company by the name Tap Plastic... You can order

@@thefirst12lickit If they can ship to canada, tank you so much ! Ill be using for sure in the next project !

@@lucdallaire9047 did not find any on google when i was searching !

My thumbs are raw just reading this!

Use a new, sharp wood blade on slow speed and you'll change your mind.