To Mix Or Not To Mix-That Is The Question

My main rig is a EA combo amp with an EA extension cab.

I just bought a GK 800RB that I plan to use with an EA CXL-112 and an LDS 1x12/1x6.

So I believe you should either mix.... or not. Hope that helps

Mixing brands doesn't matter, but generally speakers aren't designed to be mixed and there is no advantage to do doing so. There is, however, a definite advantage to using two of the exact same cab. Of course you may prefer mixing different cabs for subjective reasons. Also, by "the same" I don't just mean speaker size, I mean the exact same cab.
Also, there is no difference in using a 4ohm cab and two 8 ohm cabs in terms of operation, although using two 8 ohm cabs may be more practical for some people (Having two small cabs vs one big one; being able to use one cab by itself; etc).



edit: To go into more detail. Generally, your average 115 will have a lesser bass response to your average 410. This means the 115 to cater for lows idea is generally pointless. This combination is born through advertising, tradition, and the myth that speak size affects tone - specifically that 15s hadle lows better.
Of course there are exceptions to this, but mixing is rarely useful as to do this properly you need cabs with a similar phase response. See the Barefaced Compact and Midget for an example of a mell designed mixed cab rig.

Using two of the same cab will generally be better as the cabs will work together better as it were, as they both react the same to each note that's played.



edit 2: Using more than one speaker will also get you a boost in sensitivity, meaning you'll need less power to get to the same volume as you would with just one speaker.



edit the third: See the TB Amp FAQ for more details on stuff: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=166225
The speaker size discussions may contain some salient information.



edit 4; edit harder: Also, if anyone can correct me please do.

Oh, you got the GAS. Mixing is too fun not to! Unless you are getting free gear as an endorsement. Who the F has that on here though? I went from all GK to all Ampeg, and am beginning to prefer the GK heads and Ampeg cabs. I got the GAS too lately.

I love my GK head and Ampeg Cab, but I if I could afford it, I would switch either my cab or my head to match (probably getting an Ampeg head).


Mixing speaker sizes in my opinion makes your sound.... "fuller." But the uniformity or the same speakers (from the same cabs) can make your bass sound.... "huge."


Those are really the best words I can use to describe it. Maybe someone else has a better idea.

somedumbguy said:

I love my GK head and Ampeg Cab, but I if I could afford it, I would switch either my cab or my head to match (probably getting an Ampeg head).


Mixing speaker sizes in my opinion makes your sound.... "fuller." But the uniformity or the same speakers (from the same cabs) can make your bass sound.... "huge."

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Right. Adding a second cab will almost always result in a fuller sound just from adding extra speaker count. But if you mix them, you run the risk of phasing issues, where some notes pop out like crazy and some notes disappear. Doesn't always happen to a noticeable degree, but the idea that you want a bigger speaker to go along with a cab full of 10"s is an idea rooted in looks more than actual function.

If you like your SWR head, I'd strongly advise against getting rid of it just to have another one with the same logo as your cab. That head can sound dynamite plugged into just about any half-decent box out there (yeah, I still miss mine a little bit).

I personally play through a pair of 8 ohm 2x10 cabs now just because my old 4x10 - also 8 ohms - wouldn't fit in the new car. The upside was that my big rig went from an 8 ohm to a 4 ohm load. I have plenty of power now, but if I was still using that SM-400, I'd want to be running it into 4 ohms instead of 8, regardless of whether I was using two smaller cabs or a single larger alternative. I think that as long as it can cool off - I ran a little fan across the back of mine at shows - I think that head will perform better at its minimum impedance.

Until Jim Bergantino starts making stand alone amps guess I am stuck mixing brands.

electronics don't care what name is on the case. neither do transducers (although technically speakers fall within the purview of electronics).

There is zippo issue with "mixing" amp brand A with speaker brand B. It all depends upon how the different units are voiced and what you like.

I also don't see the issue with mixing brands of speakers (or types). Run full range, many speakers have peaks and valleys in the signal response, sometimes using two speakers with different voicings can sound better than running two of the same. it all depends upon the individual speakers. what brand name gets affixed to the front matters about as much as what color they are.

Listen with your ears. i bet if we all listened to our rigs while blindfolded and chose/assembled them that way, we would be surprised at what we liked.

IvanMike said:

Listen with your ears. i bet if we all listened to our rigs while blindfolded and chose/assembled them that way, we would be surprised at what we liked.

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+1...
I'm betting there's as many bassist that will swear by, "mixing speaker sizes" as being the only way to get their sound, as there are bassist that will swear by only running the same size drivers in a rig.
You'll have to try each way to see what your ears tell you is right for you.

Not to be cliche, but the answer to almost any situation like this is play what sounds right. If you're mixing cabs/speakers and encountering phasing issues, chances are something is going to sound off. The only downfall there is that you might end up buying something that's not going to work out in the long run.

Personally, I like the aesthetics of matching heads/cabs, but I'll take sound over looks any day. I tend to stick with one cab set ups, because it's just easier. I did the 2x10/1x15 thing when I was first starting up, but it didn't sound right, so I moved onto a 4x10 and I've gravitated towards 10s ever since. I've tried other cabs, but always come back to 10s. Some of the mixed speaker size cabs have interested me - like the SWR triad - but I feel like that is going to be a much different set up than running two cabs with different speakers because they're actually crossed over to optimize the conditions for each speaker, where as two separate cabs will be seeing the same signal and responding differently.

I would say the same about mixing speaker brands within a cab, that having them in the same cabinet, receiving the same signal, while potentially having much different response characteristics could cause an issue, but I've seen it work before. TBer JohnK_10 had good luck mixing in some Jensen Mod10s with his ampeg 8x10, but that may not be equivalent to what you're talking about, since they were within the same cab. Then again, those speakers were optimized to work well with that cabinet, so that could be the only reason it worked.

coreyfyfe said:

Not to be cliche, but the answer to almost any situation like this is play what sounds right. If you're mixing cabs/speakers and encountering phasing issues, chances are something is going to sound off.

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Not sure what is meant by "phasing issues" here.....

In any case, problems with mixing different speaker types/brands, etc., is generally folklore - truth is there's nothing wrong with using different speakers with different characteristics (this is done by design practically all the time in hi-fi for example). And the tone shaping you can get by doing so can be useful. I.e. a 4x10 with a 1x15 or 1x18 can give an overall good response over a wide frequency range. The 18" may have better freq. response at the very low freqs which can supplement the sound down there but the 4x10 shores up the mids. And etc.

Sometimes you run into slightly squirrely product-specific situations, like the GK RB biamp heads, which require you to use GK's speakon cable if you actually want to use the seperate amps (or wire up your own, etc). But other than that there's no issue beyond the standard ones like impedance matching and power handling capability.

Long as the cab presents the correct impedance to the amp and has enough power handling capacity, it'll work. Getting the sound you want may take some experimentation with different speakers, but there isn't any problem with doing this.

LS

unclejane said:

Not sure what is meant by "phasing issues" here.....

In any case, problems with mixing different speaker types/brands, etc., is generally folklore - truth is there's nothing wrong with using different speakers with different characteristics (this is done by design practically all the time in hi-fi for example). And the tone shaping you can get by doing so can be useful. I.e. a 4x10 with a 1x15 or 1x18 can give an overall good response over a wide frequency range. The 18" may have better freq. response at the very low freqs which can supplement the sound down there but the 4x10 shores up the mids. And etc.

Sometimes you run into slightly squirrely product-specific situations, like the GK RB biamp heads, which require you to use GK's speakon cable if you actually want to use the seperate amps (or wire up your own, etc). But other than that there's no issue beyond the standard ones like impedance matching and power handling capability.

Long as the cab presents the correct impedance to the amp and has enough power handling capacity, it'll work. Getting the sound you want may take some experimentation with different speakers, but there isn't any problem with doing this.

LS

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This. Well said. Mix and match to taste. Just watch your ohm ratings and the power ratings also.

no-logic said:

This. Well said. Mix and match to taste. Just watch your ohm ratings and the power ratings also.

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+1

Just don't make tonal presumptions due to speaker size when doing it.

unclejane said:

Not sure what is meant by "phasing issues" here.....

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"The major role of the enclosure is to prevent the out-of-phase sound waves from the rear of the speaker from combining with the in-phase sound waves from the front of the speaker. Such mixing results in interference patterns and cancellation, causing the efficiency of the speaker to be reduced, particularly in the low frequencies where the wavelengths are large enough that interference will affect the entire listening area."

Taken from the source of all sources, wikipedia. It's not speaking about the same situation, but I was trying to find a source that could say it more succinctly than I could.

My point was that, as several before me had said, combining multiple speaker cabinets with different output/response/etc can potentially lead to the speakers being aligned out of phase with each other and thus phase cancellation.

I can almost always tell the difference between a mixed cab setup and an unmixed cab setup. Blindfolded. That isn't to say that there aren't good sounding mixed cab rigs out there. But in 32 years of playing pro, I've played a lot of them, and none of them have rang my bell, even before I knew it caused phasing. And science is definitely on the non-mixing side as well. So if I ever get a mixed rig, I always unplug the quietest cab.

Don't be set on specific speaker sizes - it makes little appreciable difference (only to dispersion). Find something you like the sound of and as it loud enough for your needs.

Most 4 ohm multi speaker setups tend to be sufficient for most people. So, a 4ohm 410 or 212 would be a good bet, although you could probably manage with less.

coreyfyfe said:

"The major role of the enclosure is to prevent the out-of-phase sound waves from the rear of the speaker from combining with the in-phase sound waves from the front of the speaker. Such mixing results in interference patterns and cancellation, causing the efficiency of the speaker to be reduced, particularly in the low frequencies where the wavelengths are large enough that interference will affect the entire listening area."

Taken from the source of all sources, wikipedia. It's not speaking about the same situation, but I was trying to find a source that could say it more succinctly than I could.

My point was that, as several before me had said, combining multiple speaker cabinets with different output/response/etc can potentially lead to the speakers being aligned out of phase with each other and thus phase cancellation.

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Er, no .

The wiki is just describing the behavior of bass-reflex cabinet designs (actually it's not clear if it's talking about bass-reflex or infinite baffle), and actually the description is confused (a bass-reflex cabinet, at and above resonance, _inverts_ the phase of the wave from the rear of the speaker cone, so that it and the wave from the front of the cone are _in_ phase and thus are _additive_ when combined, which they are via the port on the front or back of the cabinet. An infinite baffle/sealed cabinet simply _isolates_ the radiation of the rear of the cone from the front, preventing the two from coming into contact with the subtractive result. It leaves only the radiation from the front of the cone).

This condition has nothing to do with the phasing of separate _drivers_. The only operative conditions here are if the polarity of 2 (or more) drivers is reversed (i.e. if the cone moves out on one with positive voltage but the cone moves in on another) or if the positions of the voice coils of seperate drivers aren't in the same vertical plane (you'll never ever detect any problem with this with low frequency drivers unless they a loooooong ways away from each other).
Even if you mix different drivers in the _same cabinet_ - the likelihood of a bad outcome is greatly increased for other reasons but the issue with phase there is going to be miniscule.

The only differences that are going to come into effect here are the distortion and frequency response characteristics of each driver. And like I said, you generally just have to experiment with different combinations to get the sound you want, tho there are rules of thumb (large drivers in large cabs == good very low freq response, small drivers in small cabs or in arrays in large cabs == usually better midbass response, etc).

LS

unclejane said:

The only differences that are going to come into effect here are the distortion and frequency response characteristics of each driver.

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Each driver has different phase response too - in other words the frequency response has both magnitude and phase, so cabs that work well together tend to have similar phase response so they reinforce rather than cancel across their usable range.

Alex