In Reply to: Why are ported designs ubiquitous? posted by Peter on December 22, 2009 at 18:19:36:
. . . like those originally used by Vilchur and Kloss, seem rare to nonexistent any more. These typically had small magnets and floppy suspensions, relying upon the air spring of the cabinet to maintain control of the cone, and worked well in a sealed enclosure much smaller than the big reflex or horn boxes of the era. They were also way inefficient, and required gutsier SS amplifiers to reach a decent SPL.
Nor are there many drivers available that are optimized for sealed boxes. Audio Concepts used to have a nice line of woofers, ranging from 5" to 12", intended to work well in sealed enclosures with a Qtc from 0.5 to 1.1, but they went out of the DIY supply business over ten years ago. Dynaudio had some, but they likewise are NLA to the hobbyist/small OEM market.
A larger OEM could of course have sealed box drivers made to spec by one of the big manufacturers, but would have to order a minimum run of around 1,000 pieces. And since the whole market these days seems to favor reflex alignments, there is little incentive to do so.
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Follow Ups
- True "acoustic suspension" drivers . . . - caspian@peak.org 09:12:18 12/23/09 (0)