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Why so few speakers with Passive Radiators?

Folks,

What are your thoughts on Passive Radiators in speaker design?

I've had many different speakers (and like many here, have heard countless varieties outside my home), from ported, to sealed, to passive radiator, to transmission line.

In my experience by far the best bass has come from the Thiels I've owned - CS6, 3.7, 2.7 which use passive radiators.  The bass in these designs are punchy yet as tonally controlled, or more, than any other speaker design I've heard.  So I figure the choice of a passive radiator must be involved somehow, and it makes me wonder why more speaker designers don't use this method.  It seems to give some of both worlds: extended bass, no port noise, tonally correct.

And yet, it seems a relatively rare design choice for speaker manufacturers.

Thoughts?
prof

Showing 1 response by davide_845

davide_845
1 posts
 
A passive radiator is expensive compared to a tube.
It could be a reason why it is rarely used.

With a passive radiator you don't have port noise, but it's not true that there aren't sound at mid frequency that go out from passive radiator.
At mid frequency, passive radiator cone interacts with a woofer cone.
If you use a low pass filter at low frequency you will not have any problems.

With a passive radiator or port you can choose damping of your system and you can get the same result in the listen experience...with an ideal passive radiator!

I don't like passive radiator due to non linearity of the suspension.
Speakers is a really complex non linear system, if we add another non linear component you can loose some performace.

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