Getting good sound quality below 200Hz


I run open baffles with currently 15" Eminence Alpha bass drivers with their dedicated Rotel amp and crossed over at 200Hz with 24db slope.

This underpins the upper driver beautifully but by contrast if I play it on its own its not at all impressive, lacking primarily in both definition around the sounds and also impact.

My first question "is this typical of what sound is like below 200Hz"

Secondly looking to improve this should I concentrate on improving the 15"drivers or the amp?

 

Please don’t recommend a powered sub as I have one already which will eventually underpin the 15"drivers when I have that bit right.

Thanks

bumpy48

Ivan_nosnibor   "That makes them good for lower powered amps, but high sensitivity woofers IME tend to not exactly plumb the bass depths"

Is there a reason why this may be, and are there any lower sensitivity 15" drivers that I could think about. Power is not an issue as I have a 1000Wpc Ice amp available.

@bumpy48, I'm taking it that your listening experience is related to playing full range music but without the higher frequency drivers connnected. If that is the case, then I'm not sure that the listening experience will be that useful since the majority of bass instruments have harmonics way above the 200hz. That's precisely why there is a disjunction between what you hear when playing the bass drivers alone and then playing full range. You could get a synthesiser and play some sinewaves in the chosen frequency range but that won't be particularly educational either, I think.

Yoyoyaya  Looks like you are right about this, but it was a surprise to me and I needed a reality check.

 

I tend to agree. It’s as if you’re trying to fix what may not be broken. Without hearing the range of frequencies the instrument produces, it will never sound right. A bassist plucking the lowest note on the instrument cannot be reproduced if frequencies above 200 are excluded. 

The frequency response chart is from a test infinite baffle.  It is not as good an indicator as the response for the speaker in cabinets so please look at the fr in the PDF.

Having said that, the example cabinets say if you try to use this in the home you are going to need a lot of EQ to get to neutral, and that brings us back to measurements. This is a speaker with a lot of tone for stage performance.