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Show us your large drivers, I went 2 years with 6.5 bass drivers and got very sad after years of living with 10 inch JBLs and Cerwin Vega

High end expensive speakers seem to have large drivers so they must be better. Plus they look better so they must sound better.

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The "only" way is to audition them both on the same amp and bring your fav. music/test tones along with the RTA.

I have a personal opinion that smaller speakers react faster and sound better, but I believe there is a great deal of debate about this. Larger drivers tend to be way more efficient.

Statement like "looks better must sound better" is not as subjective as most like.

Regards

Matt

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I still remember the air that Mondies TAD speakers used to move - I think they had 18inch bass drivers from memory :-) made the plasterboard walls vibrate :--)"""""""

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I like big cones and I can not lie.

I have 15" pro woofers on my "main" system... if I had the room I'd be one of those lucky people with PSE-144 horns sitting on 18" woofers.

Edited by zog
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To move anything Large, it's going to be slower.

The slower it is, the less attack a bass sound has.

That's why you see multiple 8" drivers instead of one 12"/15" etc fitted in cabinets,same goes for Guitar amps as well as Audio speakers.

 

I remember building a hideous bass cabinet back in the 70's with one 24" Etone speaker in it ....it sucked..

I would of got better sound hooking up two wires to a jellyfish.

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Wouldn't a more efficient driver (usually large) indicate that it has a bigger, more powerfull, faster engine?

i.e. it moves more air for less input.

IMO, smaller drivers tend to be slow, dull, compressed and lacking in fine detail.

 

Cheers, Earle.

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Show us your large drivers, I went 2 years with 6.5 bass drivers and got very sad after years of living with 10 inch JBLs and Cerwin Vega

High end expensive speakers seem to have large drivers so they must be better. Plus they look better so they must sound better.

 

Nice idea for a thread Tony!

I think your picture illustrates the main reason small speakers exist. The vast majority of people who buy speakers want a skinny box like the one on the left. Not so long ago it was common to see 10" and 12" woofers in speakers, but then two things happened. Amplifiers became more powerful and speakers became smaller and less efficient. Hifi sales people started saying "you don't need big speakers anymore." Somehow the idea emerged that little woofers are faster.

 

So what do we gain by using small drivers? The smaller the driver, the more potential we have for top end extension. Generally a smaller driver will play higher frequencies before beaming or diaphragm breakup issues become problemmatic. Demand for small drivers is high and so they are manufactured in large quantities at low prices. Their advantages tend to stop there.

 

So what do we lose by using small drivers? Efficiency is the first downside. Smaller drivers require more power for the same output. They also require more excursion. At moderate levels this is not a major concern but when you reach "moderately loud" levels, the two start to part ways. The small bass driver works much harder and they can reach their xmax limits quickly. The voice coil heats up and it's resistance increases, causing power compression. The suspension becomes stiffer and mechanical effects come into play. The motor becomes weaker with excursion. Even the inductance changes with level.

 

Of course, the change from small to large drivers often means a completely different design. Larger drivers can provide greater efficiency and/or greater bass extension. Often when you compare a big speaker to a small speaker, it's very much comparing grapes to oranges. You are generally hearing a group of differences and as such, you can't reliably attribute what you hear to big or small drivers.

 

The difficulty in making a meaningful comparison here is that you are generally comparing too many things at a time.

 

To move anything Large, it's going to be slower.

The slower it is, the less attack a bass sound has.

That's why you see multiple 8" drivers instead of one 12"/15" etc fitted in cabinets,same goes for Guitar amps as well as Audio speakers.

 

I remember building a hideous bass cabinet back in the 70's with one 24" Etone speaker in it ....it sucked..

I would of got better sound hooking up two wires to a jellyfish.

 

Guitar quad boxes use four small drivers because the efficiency and top end extension is greater than a single large driver. If the smaller drivers are faster it is only due to their greater top end extension.

 

Moving a large speaker cone is not like moving a large heavy object. If you look at the rise time of the impulse response peak it is related entirely to the high frequency content. A full range driver with extension up to 20k will be very "fast" due to the high frequency content. If you filter out all the high frequency content with a low pass filter, it becomes "slower" due to the lack of high frequency content. Whether this is achieved with DSP filters, passive crossover parts or a driver that simply behaves this way, the simple fact is that there is no direct connection between driver size and speed. Any link that might be observed is coincidental rather than causal.

 

Coming back to the original idea of this thread ... this is my favourite big woofer:

 

Acoustic Elegance TD18H+

 

PSE-bass-black-gloss.jpgTD18H+front.png

 

If I had to pick one driver as the best you can get at any price, it would be this one. Of course, best always need to be qualified with parameters. Despite its size, this is just a woofer - not a sub.

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To move anything Large, it's going to be slower.

The slower it is, the less attack a bass sound has.

That's why you see multiple 8" drivers instead of one 12"/15" etc fitted in cabinets,same goes for Guitar amps as well as Audio speakers.

 

I remember building a hideous bass cabinet back in the 70's with one 24" Etone speaker in it ....it sucked..

I would of got better sound hooking up two wires to a jellyfish.

 

What do you mean by slower or less attack? The speed of sound is generally a constant independent of frequency so obviously you don't mean this 'speed'. Perhaps you are referring to the 'perception' of speed in your hearing, or some form of 'rise time' in a sound pulse that you hear. 

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It seems like smaller speakers are being pushed onto us by the manufacturers then backed by the salesman selling them

They are easier to make, easier to handle, easier to ship, easier to drive and easier on the eye to those without acorns

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The ability to reproduce the first initial transients of a sound.

 

You gain extension with a large driver, but the same large driver will be slower to move quickly and reproduce these initial transients.

 

People perceive the Tone of a instrument/voice from the first initial transients [mil sec] they hear, the quicker a speaker can reproduce this, the better it's perceived sound as the ear finds it easier to process and recognize.

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To move anything Large, it's going to be slower.

The slower it is, the less attack a bass sound has.

That's why you see multiple 8" drivers instead of one 12"/15" etc fitted in cabinets,same goes for Guitar amps as well as Audio speakers.

 

I remember building a hideous bass cabinet back in the 70's with one 24" Etone speaker in it ....it sucked..

I would of got better sound hooking up two wires to a jellyfish.

 

Paul has nailed most of the furpys around the large vs. small debate.

 

True low hz bass can only be done by large drivers, its simple physics. The smaller the diameter of the cone, the less width the originating sound wave has and the less effective it is in travelling through the air to the listener. Small drivers can do low bass but don't have the same impact as a result and can naver replicate a true large high efficiency cone. Marketing rules audio these days hence the belief around small drivers being faster etc. Its all about packaging and profits not good acoustics.

 

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To demonstrate my point, here is a system where the design goal was to reach 18hz in room. The owner commissioned the system as he predominately listened to pipe organ. 21' high efficiency drivers (99dB from memory) with a tiny xmax. Nothing with multiple 8' or whatever drivers will ever touch them despite what the marketing men say.

 

opal_home.jpg

Edited by mondie
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@@Paul Spencer are you going to make my sub with one of those?

 

It's actually a woofer not a sub driver. It's an exceptional driver for bass and midrange but it doesn't have the extension capability most want in a sub.

 

It seems like smaller speakers are being pushed onto us by the manufacturers then backed by the salesman selling them

They are easier to make, easier to handle, easier to ship, easier to drive and easier on the eye to those without acorns

 

That's a pretty good summary.

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The other issue that can happen once you start using speakers with more extension, larger area you can start hearing room modes that your smaller counter part didn't excite . This could give the perceived slownest in sound/bass .  Any driver with a weeak motor design is going to be sh1te , be it a 4" or a 21" .

 

Or I could be wrong ?

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The ability to reproduce the first initial transients of a sound.

 

You gain extension with a large driver, but the same large driver will be slower to move quickly and reproduce these initial transients.

 

People perceive the Tone of a instrument/voice from the first initial transients [mil sec] they hear, the quicker a speaker can reproduce this, the better it's perceived sound as the ear finds it easier to process and recognize.

 

Here is a video of an 18" driver at work. In room at the listening pos ~120db.

A typical 86db 6" woofer would need to be able to handle over 5000 watts to produce the same sound pressure levels. Even running four drivers won't ease the load much.

 

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I love my 18" mid bass

 

post-112425-0-11918100-1426216096_thumb.

 

in Paul's boxes with a custom layer on top as a shelf for PSE to sit on

 

post-112425-0-26680700-1426216097_thumb.

 

if I had the room I'd be one of those lucky people with PSE-144 horns sitting on 18" woofers.

 

TD18 + PSE144 - but as Paul says a sub is required

post-112425-0-97957000-1426216076_thumb.

 

To move anything Large, it's going to be slower.

The slower it is, the less attack a bass sound has.

 

The inductance of the driver has the biggest impact on the transient capability of a driver, not size (or mass)

http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/WooferSpeed.pdf

The inductance of the Acoustic Elegance TD18 is 0.41mH.

Just as examples:

  • my old speakers ran an 8" Vifa (P21) - inductance of 0.9mH
  • the ScanSpeak Revelator 26W/8867T 10" Woofer has an inductance of 0.4mH, so the same inductance with more than 3.5 times the cone area

The transient response of my 18s in sealed boxes is staggering, and the massively reduced excursion compared with my old 8" Vifa drivers means way lower distortion.

 

Provided you stay away from beaming or cone breakup, IMHO bigger is better

 

 

cheers

Mike

 

 

 


 

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I have noticed with my new speakers that I don't need it as loud as I was pushing with the smaller speakers.

I don't know if that is the design but all that I changed was the speakers and the sound is larger , bigger more oomph at the same volume level

I was told three 6.5 inch drivers match one 12 inch but I doesn't seem to. And the bass seems tighter if that's the word but that might be cause its a sealed design

Even in the DIY world there isn't to many large driver designs

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