Ok, to push the discussion a little further... In reality, you can design an 8 inch 2 way to be somewhere around 3db down at 35 hz and still go out to 2k to blend with a tweeter. Of course, every 8 cannot do this... Way back, I had a peerless woofer that had enough excursion that when adding enough mass, it could go comfortably down to the mid 20's in a sealed box, but it would loose its mid performance. We did use it occasionally as a sub, never developed or used it in big numbers. So, you can definitely, get an 8 inch woofer to go down. The big deal that has already been discussed is that as the driver gets larger, it can move a substantial amount of air. I have hear 15 inch 2 ways that I could live with, but didn't go down any lower than a decent 8, yet the difference in impact of the air moving along with the added sensitivity was a great experience. |
Tim, My statement re distortion at 85db wasn't loaded, I cited the source - htshack.com. Go look for yourself. However, I neglected to specify one condition and should clarify a second. I was focused on low bass, but didn't mention the frequency at which a purpose built 8" subwoofer distorts "horribly". So, go check distortion at let's say, 55 hz ( or lower). I'll choose 55 hz because it's typically close to the fundamental of a kick drum (no pipe organ needed to demonstrate the shortcomings of an 8" driver). As you go lower in frequency, distortion increases dramatically. I will note that the tests are "quasi anechoic, measured at one meter". Some could argue that this will produce results closer to a large room than a medium sized room. I could make a case either way, but I'll leave that to everyone here to decide on their own. |
Hi Marty, I don't mind going to take a look at whatever that you would like me to read. For this discussion, it isn't necessary. You quoted that Most 8 inch woofers distort Horribly at 85 db output... Well, with most 8 inch woofers that is less than 1 watt of power. Again, I am saying that an 8 inch woofer with a reasonably stiff cone, proper spider tension, good surround and proper xmax will not distort horribly at 55 hz playing at 85 db. Just tested too many..... I'm not saying that you didn't read that or that some woofers won't distort horribly at 85 db.... Just not most... at least certainly not any woofer that we would consider using in the Audiophile world. I hope that this makes sense, Tim |
I have a pair of 6-1/2" 2-ways that fully energize a room, have excellent power response (uniform frequency response curve throughout the room), are linear to 29 Hz and audible to 26 Hz. However, they’re no mini-monitors. They’re bipolars, with 6-1/2" woofers facing both front and back, and 1" titanium dome tweeters also facing front and back. The cabinets are 50" tall by 16’ wide by 8" deep and weigh 85 lbs. each. They are the late lamented Mirage M5si's, a product from around 1995. I bought mine on closeout in Oct. (Halloween, actually) 1996. They have that transparency and purity of a 6-1/2" 2-way minimonitor with the fullness and power of the 85-lb. floorstanders that they are. They just manage to do it in a 2-way configuration. They’re so good at what they do, I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t become the new standard for simple yet effective floorstanders. |
inna Your question regarding the 8" woofer is perhaps more complicated the suggested. If you are talking about a two way speaker then it might be more advisable to find one that has a really involving midrange and nice smooth highs. If you have three drivers, a two and one half way or a three way you are more likely to find better tighter bass. Bass quality to me is far more important the the amount of bass, especially in a small room. |
What i was getting at is i believe two smaller drivers are more accurate then one massive 12" imo. I believe my spkrs produce great bass ,placement is big but better then some 10" ive had .. Moving massive air no .But transmission designs works well my ole dcm time frame 2000ripped they were small multi driver transmission lines too . Jmho if low end is lacking 40hz down let the sub do that hard and specific work respect.. |
@oleschool is right, but I think the issue isn’t small vs. large, it’s more about bass limiting. I can set up 15" subs with any planar speaker and make them sound lightning fast. They will have measurably deeper bass, lower distortion and less compression than small driver alternatives. However, "proper setup" is a really gigantic pain in the ass. It's like the mythical girl next door. Often read about, rarely dated. Speakers with multiple small woofers (which I like) tend to have more dynamic range, but also, less deep bass (i.e. higher -3dB or -10dB points). That keeps them out of trouble where larger speakers would require much more effort to make sound as good. So, goes back to my own reasons for being in the small woofers are beautiful camp. Nothing wrong with giant subs, it’s the setups that tend to fail. Erik |
x2 eric, It's always a preference thing.I have had and was a maggie salesman i had smg 1,2.3a 3c 1,6qr .Biamped ,cj krell,tandbreg,luxman etc all i mean all benefited from a sub or two.I had 3c biamped tube top cj with two sunfires 8" in a treated room it was killer.If i put ac/dc on well not so much again nothing beat my ole' cerwin vegas with 12" pushed with my bridged crown 300s for that when i tryed to break windows as a younger man.My love for smaller drivers came with the ads i had two 8" then DCM (transmission design,highly underated spkr)proac 2c man i loved them with quicksilvers and subs too...(almost always sunfires ) That being said the newer trend toward single driver speakers intrigues me.I am very interested to hear the emerald physics with there 12" the big zu are great too. Again just me but all being eqaul in a great room smaller usually means more acurate thats why planers kick ass but need to be reinforced down low. Until you break out the A.E black card then all bets are off.Unforntunatley my A.E card would be black only if i spray painted it. ;-) |
Yeah, not too many have that card but still quite a number. Don't remember his name, there is a French designer who makes great drivers used in some esoteric speakers. That driver goes down to about 40hz and up as far as you can see or hear. I think, it's 10" driver but not sure. The quality of that driver really impressed many people. I even watched an interview with him. Basically, he is a one man operation. Old world craftsmanship. |
I run dual 15" woofers at home. My room is 17' x 22'; which is about an average size. They sound great in there. I don't have neighbors I can disturb so I play as loud as I want. At work, we use a little monitor with dual 6" high excursion woofers, that are custom built to keep up speed-wise with a very fast (and revealing) tweeter. They are made by High Emotion Audio, the heir of the old Pipedream operation of years ago. The owner of the company told me they are 'honest to 36 cycles' and that sounds correct. I've often been amazed at how well they can play bass. Obviously they are not as efficient as my speakers at home but they do a very passable job (93db, 16 ohms). If you have a smaller room they would work fine. A lot has to do with how much excursion you are forcing the speaker to make in order to play the volume you want. |
Don't remember his name, there is a French designer who makes great drivers used in some esoteric speakers. That driver goes down to about 40hz and up as far as you can see or hear. I think, it's 10" driver but not sure. The quality of that driver really impressed many people. I even watched an interview with him. Basically, he is a one man operation. Old world craftsmanship.I'm pretty sure you are referring to PHY... We had a set of those 10" units in a box, made by an associate of PHY. The boxes were rather large, and built like an acoustic guitar body- designed to resonate as a means of extending the bass of the 10" driver. Overall, the little HEAs we have with the 6" woofers play deeper and more accurate bass. |
I think that most listeners especially older ones like myself understand, there seem to be two types of bass sound, the big woofer sound, fat not deep but move lots of air and seem to fulfill most listeners of that enjoy that genera. The newer style is the smaller woofer that is fast and tight, more accurate, but not as big of a sound. Which sound that you prefer |
Get yourself a pair of these... and... you'll end your search and your questions. Very few speakers sound better at less than 10+ times more money. Truly phenomenal sound, which rivals the best there is. Not my opinion - the opinion of many, many others who've sold their "high-end" speakers and replaced them with these. http://www.wavetouchaudio.com/GT.html http://www.stereotimes.com/post/wavetouch-audio-grand-teton-loudspeaker Though, I agree with them. Would I rather have the top of the line Nola's, or GamuT's - sure... but... not at their lofty prices. Only experiencing them will convince you... but, you will be convinced. |
Inna What is sufficient bass? Will the room vibrate? Will it be lightening fast? will it be fat and slow? For me it just needs to be satisfying, I am not trying to impress anyone I just want to enjoy listening. Bass is so tied into to room response that no full range loudspeaker can provide the maximum amount of bass that room can handle without the danger of going over the top. So a bass that satisfies is what I require to describe a speaker as phenomenal, if it has phenomenal mid-range and highs and is cohesive and fast and disappears. |
I cannot imagine (unless you have a very small room) that a pair of 8" woofers (in a speaker - not a dedicated subwoofer) will be anywhere near enough bass to really create a full range sound. If you have a large 2-way bookshelf or even floorstander with 8" mid-woofers in them, there is no way that they will be hitting down to 25hz or lower in your room. Even adding a dedicated powered 8" subwoofer (or a pair) will still not carry you down to the very low frequencies. Now you may not listen to the types of music that even contain these frequencies, which is a different thing, but when you listen to some of the music that I do, there is A LOT happening down low that I never even knew was there until I bought a subwoofer like the G1. Simple physics... if you want to reach really deep and have control at the same time, you really need a large sealed box, large woofer, and pretty decent amount of power. And an 8" Sunfire subwoofer.... ummmm, no. |
So I listen to 12' full range drivers, open baffles, with a supertweeter. Recently added a sub for last octave re enforcement. I must say I find it amusing when people comment that 8 or 10" drivers dont do well in the midrange. Perhaps some designs dont but there are a lot of respected opinions out there that full range drivers offer the best midrange quality rivaling planars. just my 2 cents. Fwiw, imo, theres no replacement for displacement as far as woofer size goes but 8 ' seems adequate for mid size spaces |
Unfortunately, htshack.com seems to have removed most of its subwoofer test database. By memory, I wanna say that the 8" subwoofers typically produced about 4 or 5% THD at 50hz at 85 DB (in a quasi-aechoic set up that effectively removes room nodes). At 95 DB, that number more than tripled. At lower frequencies, performance is much worse. Subs with larger drivers fared much better. I switched from a pair of 8" Velodyne SPL(?) subs to a pair of Rythmik 12" subs and the A-B comparison was pretty compelling to me. The ear is pretty insensitive to THD at these frequencies, but the sound "cleans up" in a very nice way with bigger drivers IME. I'm pretty sure that there's a database out there somewhere with more detailed info, but I couldn't find it on a first search and I'm too lazy to do another. |
Don, Most two-way, 8" woofer models that I’ve seen cross at 2200hz or higher, well above the middle of the mid-range. OTOH, lots of three way speakers cross to the woofer between 300 and 400 hz which is lower than middle of the mids, but closer. Maybe you’re just looking at a different set of examples than I did, but if you want your crossover out of the mids, I’d think you’d have a better shot choosing a random two way 8" over a random three-way model. OTOH, lots of people think a x-over in that lowest part of the treble/presence region is worse than one in the midrange. I’d say that it’s Personal taste on that one. |
I think that the idea that you want to keep the crossover out of a certain region has more to do with the quality of integration. It's fair to call it a dangerous, but not impossible task. Looking at the crossover frequency alone is not a definite indicator of quality or seamless integration. I'm not sure how much of this also has to do with horn speakers, where a conventional speaker cabinet was used for the low-mids and a horn in the treble. This type of avoidance may have made more sense. Still, not all speakers do this as well. One truth is adding a midrange can really add dynamic range in the mid-treble region. A midrange can be used with an 8" woofer just as well as a 12". :) |
I guess this is more of a designers thread than listeners thread. All I know is - I’m sitting here listening to some of the biggest, best sound I’ve ever heard coming from the diminutive Wavetouch Audio GT’s with a 5+ in. bass driver... and... the bass is superb - big, bold, fast, tight, textured - that you can feel. The wife says it sounds as good, or better than all my other high-end speakers - her comments precisely were - "how do those little speakers create such a huge sound?" "They sound as good as any of your others." And that’s in a room about 22’ x 15’ - though it’s lively. This is my "Giant Killer" system: Cost about $3500 - the GT’s, the Class D Audio amp, Creek OBH-21 passive pre, Sony SA5400es SACD. Just unbelievably, phenomenal sound - as good as my multi-thousand dollar setups. No - it’s not "earthquake, house-shaking bass"... just the sound of a live upright bass, which is all I want - as a listener... not a designer. |
This is a very good question indeed. I think it all depends on the type of speaker, the room and what you want to use it for. To answer the question, i think it might be all you need. It depends on the speaker you buy. I have a pair of Wilson audio Duette series 1 speakers that can be very bassy depending on where they are in the room. They dont have sub bass but quality bass. I use them for both music and movies ( just 2 channel no surround sound) in my room and im happy. The room is a bedroom though so that might not qualify as a medium sized room though. It all depends on how far back and how close the speakers are to the side walls. Too far back and far apart they can be boomy!! But bring them out into the room and put them closer together then they will have good bass but not boomy and airy treble with 3d imaging. Thats perfect for music! For movies yea a sub could help out for shure but i dont feel the need to buy a sub. They have an 8 inch woofer and 1 inch soft dome tweeter. The sensitivity rating is 89db. 4ohm speakers. Now lets say they had a 10 inch woofer. That extra 2 inches might make them 6 db’s louder and thats alot! but yes deeper too. I dont want them to be any louder then they are because they are very loud lol. Do i think all speakers with an 8 inch woofer can go as deep as the wilsons? no because of the design of the cabinet, the woofers they use and the crossover design. So listen before you buy. A more affordable speaker with a 10 inch woofer might do what these are doing with an 8 so who knows lol. Also everything matters. The equipment they are connected to can make a difference so choose wisely. |
Again, I think it depends on the type of music you normally listen to. If you came over and sat in front of my system with the Tektons and REL G1 and I played you some Muse and Volbeat at loud levels, then you transport back to your system with what you think is "full range" sound and listen to the same tracks, it wouldn't even be close to the same experience... just not possible. But that type of music may not be your cup of tea either, which I understand. If I always only listened to Norah Jones, Mary Black, James Taylor, Michael Buble, etc., then my system would be totally different. |
