Specialists > Audiologists

And she's got a great personality

<< < (2/4) > >>

P.I.:

--- Quote from: Jack on July 19, 2021, 08:28:25 PM ---If your plan is to still "start from scratch" with new speakers as you said in an earlier thread you either have to get extremely lucky on the used market to find a floor stander that will fit your bass wants and not drive you out of the room or find a monitor that delivers for you from the mid 40's and up then fill that it with a pair of subs.  I use Rythmik F-12's but there are others that will fit the bill. For a change of pace in my Main system I replaced the full range Verity Otello's with a pair of $2500 Reynaud Bliss Jubillee's. They are a transmission line book shelf speaker that will reach the low 40's on their own.  I then dialed up the crossover on the Rythmiks from the 35hz point used with the Verity's to 60hz and I still have great sound with all the LF response I need.  The most important thing is to find a speaker whose sound you can live with for long periods and then deal with the low frequencies by other means.

--- End quote ---
Rythmik subs are amazing for a sealed sub.  Brian's sensing coil servo control is orders of magnitude better than accelerometer based subs.  The apparent speed and impact is only challenged (@less than $3K) by GR open baffle subs.  Those are still my favorite for tuneful, easily integrated LF.  -3dB in-room in the 'teens.  :thumb:  Yowza! There is a reason GR rooms were chosen every year at RMAF when we (GR, P.I., TWL, Dodd Audio, dB Audio Lans) were exhibiting back a few years ago for "Best bass."  Steven Stone's Best Sound of Show a couple of times was pretty cool  :thumb:

Barry (NJ):
Nothing beats a good pair of speakers with a well integrated sub-woofer...

dflee:
I guess I misspoke somehow.
The question was is can you have both, clean tight fast LF and still have
the authoritative bass. Wouldn't it have to linger in the room and thus be slow(er)
and not as clean?

Thanks
Don

tmazz:

--- Quote from: Barry (NJ) on July 20, 2021, 05:32:24 AM ---Nothing beats a good pair of speakers with a well integrated sub-woofer...

--- End quote ---

.... except perhaps a pair of good speakers that doesn't need a sub? 

Of course then you are probably talking $$$$.

tmazz:

--- Quote from: dflee on July 20, 2021, 04:28:44 PM ---I guess I misspoke somehow.
The question was is can you have both, clean tight fast LF and still have
the authoritative bass. Wouldn't it have to linger in the room and thus be slow(er)
and not as clean?

Thanks
Don

--- End quote ---

To get what you are calling authoritative bass you need to move a lot of air. The most common way to do this is to use a big driver with a long throw. But this comes with its own set of problems. A big driver adds comes with a lot of moving mass. When you apply a + signal to that drive  it will move forward gaining inertia as it travel. When the signal switches polarity to _ the driver should immediately reverse direction and start traveling backwards. But because of the inertia gained by the cone the first few milliseconds of negative signal ends up acting as a brake and slowing the driver to a stop before it can begin traveling in the opposite directions. What you are sensing as the bass lingering in the room is actually the sound of the cones inertia. causing it to overshoot the point where it is supposed to change direction. This can be address in several ways, unfortunately all of which involve added costs.
 
You can make the cones out of some exotic (i.ie. expensive) lightweight material to lower the moving mass. This will help, but only get you so far.

You can employ some kind of feedback system that measures the speed and direction of the cone, compares it to the signal driving it and modifies that signal to add some extra "braking voltage" to counteract the inertia. This is commonly referred to as a servo system and while it can be effective it also adds extra circuitry to the system hat increases the cost.

And you can also lower the inertia by employing multiple driver. With multiple drivers the cones do not need to travel as far because each driver needs to move less air. The shorter throw means the cone builds up less speed and is easier to "turn around".   The easier turnaround leads to less overshoot and therefore a tighter sounding bass. Taking this one step further, using multiple driver also gives you the opportunity to use smaller driver which have less mass and therefore less inertia and less overshoot. But more driver means not only more parts, but bigger cabinets and once again more cost. The best subs I ever heard were a pair of towers that each had if I remember correctly 6 five in drivers. Bass that kicked you right in the chest and as tight as I have ever heard. The dealer told me that the six drivers working together has the same air moving capacity as a 15 inch woofer but they only moved back and forth about 1/2 inch in either direction. But of course the price tag on then was $4500 in 1988.

So Don you were correct in that good bass is not cheap, but at least I hope you have a little better understanding of the hows and whys.

And I know there are others in our little circle that have more speaker design experience that me, so if anyone wants to jump in and add more detail or even correct something that I may have misspoken about, feel free, no offense take, I'm here to learn too.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page