@89grand (if you’re still here) thanks for this thread and sticking around as long as you did. I fell for the "internet wisdom" and bought the Speaker Pods. They sound like garbage to me, though others might enjoy what they gain from them more than they dislike what they sacrifice In terms of sound.
The general problem, in my opinion, is that audio is so subjective and everyone’s "ears" are different. And it’s not actual "ears," there are just different things that people enjoy. The pods might make a certain mid-bass frequency peak so it sounds "fuller" or like there’s more bass, and some people might like that. Or it might just fill the hole in the sound that person felt was missing. Others might hear a certain frequency that’s pronounced, and also realize certain frequencies are now more subdued.
As I’ve learned more about this, full-range car speakers aren’t designed primarily to go in a sealed box. They’re certainly not designed or tuned with any particular box in mind. If you look at, for example, Infinity Kappa instructions they give you the numbers you’d need if you wanted to use a sealed box. And those numbers say that anything smaller than 7 liters (almost 2 gallons) will damp the speaker cone. In other words, any box smaller than a 2 gallon container is reducing the amount the speaker cone deflects. For a Sound engineer, this could be useful if he wanted to run much higher power than the speaker was rated for, but it would require careful calculation of a bunch of factors To calculate the right amount of power and box volume. Then people say "fill it with polyfil" but how much you need, how much will damage your speaker, and whether or not it makes enough difference is another whole topic.
So a few years ago, before knowing this, I bought the Sound Pods. They change the sound, there’s more of a certain frequency of bass, but there’s less deeper bass. And my "ears" hear it sounding less smooth, like certain frequencies are missing. The stock speaker upgrades come in a box, but it’s worth noting the speaker cone travels so little (plus other parameters) that its minimum required volume is going to be way, way smaller. And maybe the engineers decided that overall sound and bass output was lower, but the frequency spike from the box filled in a gap they felt was needed.
Have you ever heard someone blast a stereo and comment about how good it sounded, while you thought it sounded like crap? I have, plenty of times. Maybe my "ears" suck to them, maybe there’s do to me, or maybe we just value different audible sensations in our free time.
I have 5.25 JBL studio monitors at similar power levels to my 5.25 Jeep speakers. The monitors get loud enough to annoy neighbors a block away and there’s enough bass to make movies quite exciting. So this whole thing that 5.25 speakers will never have volume bass is also BS, whether they’re pointed at your or not. There are 2 issues: one is similar to what ultra d wrote about, is all the other crap and gaps behind the dash. 5.25" speakers in a sealed door (that’s volume is close to or bigger than 2 gallons) will sound plenty loud and full.
The other thing that 89grand addressed but didn’t discuss is placement of the tweeters. High frequencies are directional, so tweeters pointing at your knees will lose things like the upper end of a cymbal splash. Using bright metal dome tweeters, or an EQ boost can help a lot.
Last, arguing that chasing sound in a Jeep is also BS. I’m not saying it will ever be as good as something else, but attacking someone for trying to just have the most amount of good, clean music they can get is BS. On the highway i obviously loose a shot ton of music detail, but what I do hear is something that’s as pleasing as possible to my ears. If it were tinny, over-powered mid range with no treble or bass, I’d never crank it on the highway to begin with.
Anyway, in the original post I certainly heard more ringing/vibrations in the un-affected speaker, and the modded side sounded better. It certainly wasn’t studio quality sound - nobody’s saying it is - but for a small amount of money and time it was better, to my ears.
It’s funny, most people here would support a TJ owner wanting a 1" lift, but getting 1" of better sound quality seems like heresy to some people.
