good quality bass - are bigger drivers an advantage?

[Jim85IROC]

I already know this is a flawed question because I'm stereotyping large drivers and small drivers, but stick with me here.

With the trend of small speakers that create a lot of bass, there are a lot of designs out there that use multiple 8" or smaller woofers. I've listened to a lot of them, and plenty of them seem to sound very nice. From one to the next, the bass I hear doesn't really seem to be all that different sounding, except for obvious things like extention, and various frequency response variations.

I use an 8" subwoofer (dayton shielded DVC sub) in my system, and it sounds just like most towers that have similarly sized woofers. Extention is fully adequate for my music tastes, and output far exceeds what I consider necessary.

Then there's larger stuff like the Peerless XLS subs that I've heard a few times, and the 10" Adire koda that I use in my car. These subs have a sound that's similar to each other, but different than the sound I hear from smaller woofers, even though the bass extention may be similar, or at least extend below the range that's necessary for the type of music that I listen to.

I've seen discussion about distortion climbing at lower frequencies in smaller woofers, and I'm wondering if that's contributing to what I'm hearing. I don't often see distortion tests on larger woofers and subwoofers like I see on smaller units. When is zaph going to do the 12" subwoofer roundup?

Any comments on my fairly stupid question?

[jdybnis]

First forget about inches. Look at the linear swept volume of the driver; that's sd * xmax. That's how much air a subwoofer can move without excessive distortion. That is the main factor in subs 95% of the time.

The other thing is that a tower might be using the 8" drivers as midwoofers and the difference you are hearing is coloration in the midrange that happens when the same driver is tasked with bass duty too.

[dawg1161]

Hello there, I also have a Dayton sub the same as yours sitting around unused. I have tried it in the reccomended box on P.E. website but i didn't like the sound? I have a 100watt plate amp to use with it was wondering if you could share what you did with yours and maybe i can try something different? Sealed or Ported?

[SteveCallas]

First forget about inches. Look at the linear swept volume of the driver; that's sd * xmax. That's how much air a subwoofer can move without excessive distortion. That is the main factor in subs 95% of the time

Ehh, but if excursion gets too high, the Bl linearity of the driver's motor can come into play, and more power is typically needed. Would you rather achieve desired output with an 18" driver moving 5mm using 20 watts or an 8" driver moving 35mm using 1500 watts? Excursion used and heat in the voice coil contribute quite a bit to THD from measurements I have seen.

[jdybnis]

Bl linearity is one of the primary determinants of the xmax.

[Jim85IROC]

Hello there, I also have a Dayton sub the same as yours sitting around unused. I have tried it in the reccomended box on P.E. website but i didn't like the sound? I have a 100watt plate amp to use with it was wondering if you could share what you did with yours and maybe i can try something different? Sealed or Ported?

I built the box to the PE ported specifications, and powered it with their 100 watt plate amp also. It must be the cherry veneer that makes mine sound so good. This plate amp comes with a 6dB bass boost somewhere around the 30hz range, so if you didn't modify the resistors to eliminate that, it might come across as being a bit thick sounding. I confess that I like the added body from boosting the lower octave, so I left it.

I wouldn't say that this sub offers the last word in detail, but I think it easily betters any commercial subwoofer in the $300-400 range.