What does Q mean in speaker specifications?


I have never seen that listed before on any speaker. Can you explain what the Q means on these Falcon speakers? THX

 

 

Falcon Acoustics is pleased to announce the re-introduction of the Falcon Acoustics Q7 “Complete@Home” Loudspeaker system. Designed by Malcolm Jones and sold by Falcon for many years, the updated Q7 features the same Falcon B110 and T27 drive units as used in the Falcon LS3/5a in a specially extended LS3/5a-type cabinet to produce an optimum Q=0.7 system with extra bass compared to the LSA3/5a (+2dB @ 50 Hz). Factory built options supplied built by Falcon, fully checked and tested are available.

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Showing 2 responses by petaluman

The system Q of driver & cabinet has been used as an essential guide to a speaker's bass quality since the seminal work in modeling bass alignments using filter theory was done in the late 50s-early 70s by several people.  The parameters identified are typically called the Thiele/Small parameters,  Q itself is unitless and represents the damping factor (tendency to return to rest).  There are several Q values (speaker electrical, speaker mechanical, box) in modeling a driver & enclosure, but speaker makers (as opposed to driver makers) will typically only use the Qtc of the bottom end, which includes the speaker and enclosure.

In general, a Q of .5 is critically damped, with no resonance & ideal transient response.  A Q of .707 is considered maximally flat, with a 3 db rise at the system resonance.  Higher Q values result in progressively more boost & poorer transient response.  Note that I'm only talking about closed boxes here.  All I can tell you about bass reflex is that transient response is always worse and the roll-off below resonance is 24 db/octave vs 12 for closed boxes.  And don't get me started on those port plugs!

This is the measured response of the LS3/5A, according to Hi-Fi World.  As speakers go, it doesn't look bad at all.  The bass alignment can be seen in the steady climb to the left below 300 hz & peaking around 100.

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@erik_squires 

It's been a long time since I read the original papers, and it's possible the nomenclature has changed or I misremember.  What I recall is that the total (electrical & mechanical) Q of the speaker was called Qts and the final damping factor when mounted in a cabinet was Qtc.  I do prefer simply Q for everything.  I never liked c representing both driver and box and would even less for just the driver.