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Newbie Q: How do small woofer speakers reach 32Hz?


I starting thinking about this after reading several Totem Hawk and Forest reviews and after seeing their specifications on the Totem website.

How on Earth do those speakers dig down to 32Hz? It just doesn't seem possible, especially with the 5.5" woofer in the Hawk. I suppose speaker design and driver selection has a lot to do with the overall frequency response, but those are such small woofers.

I own a set of Snell Type J/IV's that are very close in size to the Totems (full spec's of both the Hawks and J/IV's below). They have an 8" woofer and I'd say the bass response is quite good, maybe better than the manufacturer's specifications indicate. But why is there such a huge difference in the manufacturer specifications? Maybe Snell is conservative and Totem liberal with their measurements? Do the Hawks really get down to 32Hz?

Anyway, here are the specifications;

Totem Hawk
<32 Hz - 21 kHz ± 3 dB (with proper room positioning)
6 ohms
88dB sensitivity
30 - 120 watt recommended power
5.5" woofer, 1" tweeter
6.8" wide x 34.3" high x 9.6" deep

Snell Type J/IV
48 Hz - 20 kHz ± 2 dB
8 ohms
90dB sensitivity
15 - 150 watt recommended power
8" woofer, 1" tweeter
10.5" wide x 32.5" high x 9" deep
alpha220

Showing 1 response by newbee

newbee
4,794 posts
 
An 8" woofer can certainly do 48hz with no difficulty whatsoever, in fact it can do 28hz or lower but to get it +/- 3db at 28 hz you'd probably need 2 of them. (I've speakers down 3db at 28hz using 2 8" woofers). Unless it is rolled off the single speaker in the Snell might be down as little as 8db(?) at 32hz which would certainly be usable. A WAG, not a calculation.

The spec's for the other speaker are kind of interesting because of the caveat that the 32hz +/- 3db is "
obtainable with proper room placement". Where would you have to put it, in a corner? But, seriously speaking, I've had two sub woofers that put out fair volume of good tight bass using small woofers. Fair volume for audio down to 32Hz but not with much HT potential.

Good to be cynical when reading equipment spec's.
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