The problem here is one many of us know: an office stereo setup that needed more bottom end, with no floor space for a normal subwoofer. The maker's answer was to hide the whole thing inside an IKEA Alex drawer unit, so the bass stays out of sight. It pairs with Genelec 8030C monitors, and the maker reports it sounds great.
The build itself is a proper engineering exercise. The sub is DSP powered with dual drivers: an 8-inch active driver plus a 10-inch passive radiator. The enclosure is airtight and rear-mounted inside the modified drawer unit, with panels made from plywood. Before cutting anything, sealed and ported responses were simulated in WinISD, and both the drawer unit and the enclosure were modeled in SolidWorks. That modeling-first approach seems like a smart way to avoid surprises with a cabinet this constrained.
The details that stand out to me are the finishing touches. Power and signal connections were relocated to recessed panel-mount XLR jacks and an AC receptacle, with internal leads soldered straight to the amplifier's printed circuit board. A Dayton Audio SPA250DSP plate amplifier drives the system. The custom faceplate was cut from 1 mm stainless steel sheet on an xTool MetalFab laser cutter, then sealed with 3D-printed cups and acrylic latex caulk, and the input and output labels were engraved on an xTool F1 Ultra. The plywood panels were broken down with a Festool track saw and machined on an Avid CNC router running Centroid software on an Avid EX controller.
It was not all smooth sailing. The maker describes the project as quite challenging and discusses workflow difficulties with the Avid EX controller, and one toolpath was noted as strange, though it worked, just slowly. I would also love to know whether the drawer contents rattle at high output, since that seems like the one open question with a hidden install like this.
Project by Robert Cowan. Watch it on their YouTube channel: