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In Reply to: RE: Wow where do you get this from? posted by tubesforever on May 05, 2008 at 00:13:47
If you want to know what diameter drivers subwoofer engineers choose, you can just look at the highly regarded subwoofers available for home audio.
It would be rare to find one whose engineers selected drivers under 10" in diameter.
Vandersteen with three 8" drivers is the only exception I can think of.
The attack of a bass note (the pluck of a bass guitar string or the slap of a kick drum), usually comes from a mid-range driver in a three-way speaker, or from a bass-mid driver in a two-way speaker.
The rate of acceleration of the cone depends mainly on the driver inductance.
Coils resists changes in direction.
Therefore a lower inductance voice COIL driver can change direction faster.
But if the two or three different drivers in each channel reproducing a bass note are all different distances from the listeners ears, then that fact will be much more important than inductance differences among bass drivers.
The rest of the bass note usually comes from a different driver(s):
- The bass driver, with three-way full-range main speakers
- The subwoofer driver with two-way speakers used with a subwoofer.
Sometimes the entire bass note comes from one bass-mid-driver in a two-way speaker.
Your post implies a small driver two-way speaker would be best for bass notes.
You are wrong THREE times:
(1) Small drivers usually have weak, if any, bass in the lowest octave
(30Hz. is SO FAST you can't hear it at all!)
(2) Small drivers produce significantly higher bass harmonic distortion, which may be audible at higher volumes.
(3) Small bass-mid drivers that have to reproduce all the way up to 2000Hz will have significantly higher levels of intermodulation distortion when bass and mid-range frequencies are present at the same time (particularly audible at higher volumes)
The decay of a bass note is almost always what audiophiles describe when
they hear "slow bass".
While the bass driver and enclosure have a small effect (the best choice for a fast decay would be a low inductance driver in a sealed 0.5qtc enclosure)
Much more important is the effect of standing waves in the room that can make the fundamental frequency of a bass note linger for 200 milliseconds (1/5 second) after the sound is supposed to stop.
There will usually be three or four -3dB to +6dB bass peaks at the primary listening position caused by standing waves roughly 5Hz. wide (measured by -3dB points) in a typical home listening room under 80Hz.
Eliminating those bass peaks with a parametric equalizer will eliminate most of the "slow bass" effect at one seating position.
Adding bass traps will help even more, and will affect all seating positions.
Not many people here care about what equipment is used in professional sound reinforcement -- the primary attribute of that equipment is reliability at high volumes.
At home, the primary attribute we desire is high sound quality.
There is a good reason almost all subwoofers use large diameter drivers, and the best subwoofers in world tend to use multiple large drivers.
You seem to think that you are right about "smaller driver" (although you never define what you mean by "smaller") ... so virtually all subwoofers engineers in the world must be wrong for you to be right?
That's a tough position to be in.
For professional sound reinforcement, 40Hz. is often the lower limit -- at home we prefer 20Hz. (25Hz. for weenies).
The frequency range that interests us (down to 20Hz.or 25Hz.) leads to the choice of larger diameter drivers with lower FS specifications.
A 6" or 8" pro woofer with an FS of 40Hz. would not be useful for our desired bass requency range.
A 10", 12" or 15" home bass driver with an FS of 20Hz. would fit our frequency range specifications.
(Multiple 8" drivers per speaker could work too -- but the trade offs would be less bass extension, and higher harmonic distortion under 80Hz., versus a larger diameter driver, all other things equal).
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Richard BassNut Greene
"The Floyd R. Turbo of Bingham Farms Michigan"
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