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18 inch cab

#101
billfitzmaurice said:
Larger drivers are more cost effective, giving a lower price to displacement ratio.
You can believe anything you wish, but it helps when beliefs are backed up by facts. The fact with respect to driver size is that it affects dispersion only. Every other aspect of driver performance is affected by factors totally independent of cone size.
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well, i'm not a builder or scientist.
however, my opinions are based on over 20 years of touring.
people pay me to use all the best audio gear on the planet- i've toured extensively in 30 countries and made a life and living out of listening and using audio systems. i like to be the foil for scientists. so, as you say, driver size affects dispersion. maybe that's what i'm hearing as the difference in the cabs mostly?
at any rate, thanks for admitting that the driver size affects the sound, even if it is the dispersion pattern.
 
#104
+1 on the $ to dB ratio for big woofers.

Bill is however excluding some relevant (real life) factors. Speakers are not perfectly rigid, linear transducers - the T/S are called "small signal parameters" for a reason... In theory and when used in modest SPL, it will be tough to tell the difference, especially since our ears are highly tolerant to distortion in the lowest frequencies. But in real life there are more factors that come into play once you look at all non-linear behaviours of a speaker.

Some characteristics with audible effects will follow the speaker size. Cone breakup modes (one type of distortion), voice coil inductance (which affects upper limit of usable frequency), size of the dome, outer suspension and spider stiffness etc.

Look at it this way:
If you take 10" woofer and just "increases the scale" on the drawing by 80%, you will get an 18" diameter woofer. But since all physical measurements are now changed (some in two dimensions and some in three) this woofer will not behave anything like its 10" sibling, in terms how it sounds.


On the other hand, if you build a 18" woofer to closely replicate the small signal response of the 10" woofer, it will still not behave in the same way as the 10" once it gets pushed.

What you can expect hear (when you identify a difference between larger and smaller speakers) is the difference between unlinear behaviour in different speakers.


edit:

Bill's last reply was not posted when I wrote the above text.
 
#105
D.A.R.K. said:
well, i'm not a builder or scientist.
however, my opinions are based on over 20 years of touring.
people pay me to use all the best audio gear on the planet- i've toured extensively in 30 countries and made a life and living out of listening and using audio systems. i like to be the foil for scientists. so, as you say, driver size affects dispersion. maybe that's what i'm hearing as the difference in the cabs mostly?
at any rate, thanks for admitting that the driver size affects the sound, even if it is the dispersion pattern.
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funny, he wouldn't do that in my thread...about my theory why 15's are better than 10's...

the basic message I got is that anything can sound like anything...
 
#108
babebambi said:
These are the PJB amps. They don't make a whole lot of sound if not connected with cab(s). :p :hiding:

But if you connect one of those amps with one of these cab(s), and still find it lacking in bass, I don't know what to say. :eyebrow: :confused: For all we know, could be the NAMM SPL police demanding the vendor to keep it quiet.

nope, cranked them up till they crapped out and they sounded like crap with no bottom at all. Very mushy, no punch whatsoever. I've been to NAMM at least 50 times over the last 24 years and tried pretty much every bass and amp that has been displayed.
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#109
I had an 18 when I played British music with my Beatle Bass. Then got a Fender P-Bass and Fender with 6X10. Later a Gibson SG through 4X12. Now I use a Warwick through big PA systems. What I play has changed, and bass amps have changed. I'll go with the advice above. Take your main bass to any store, plug it in, and close your eyes. The amp/speakers you like the best is what you probably should leave with.
 
#110
root fifth said:
Anyone using 18s?I love the sound of a single 15 what do you guys think about a single 18.Carvin has one that is catching my eye!
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I just picked up a pair of PAS 18"subs and they sound GREAT!! Really punchy, quick response and clear low end, not 'woofy' at all. I found them used at guitar center today for cheap, so I figured I couldn't really lose. They are in ported cabs, passive without crossover (small and light designed for PA subs)
They don't have much happening above maybe 800hZ so I will use them with probably a 12' + horn for the high end and bi- amped, though if I was doing a blues gig or some such, I wouldn't hesitate to use 1 by itself, just for fun!
If you find an EV 18", they do have more top end and could possibly be used alone for more styles.
 
#111
The 1X18 catches the extra octave that the 15 misses. I consider a 1X15 more of a rock cab. For years I used a 1X18 and either a 4X10 or 2X10 on top and biamped them. I crossed over from the 1X18 at about 110 hz and that worked well. You won't get by on a 1X18 alone like you can on a 1X15. they ususlly have a high cutoff of around 2000hz and a bass goes well beyond that with overtones and harmonics unless you like mud for your sound.

I still don't know how John Paul Jones got by with that Acoustic 1X18 cab he had with Led Zepplin. I had one 35 years ago and they sound like crap.

I don't use 18's or 15's anymore. I pretty much stick to 4X10's or 2X12's now. Think of it with this basic method, though not done with engineering specs you'll get the basic idea.

A single 4X10 cab has 40 inches or cone area radiating.

A 1X18 has 18 inches of cone radiating.

What will move more air?

The 4X10 of course and if ported correctly it'll easily handle a low B on a five string.

I recommend the new DNA (expensive but WOW!) Eden 4X10 XLT or one of the SWR cabs. I also fell in love with the Avatar cabs. They blow away everything else in the $400-$500 price range for a 4X10 cab.

Good luck in your quest! Steve
 
#112
low2groove said:
Think of it with this basic method, though not done with engineering specs you'll get the basic idea.

A single 4X10 cab has 40 inches or cone area radiating.

A 1X18 has 18 inches of cone radiating.

What will move more air?
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Important to use area rather than diameter for the comparison -- a better approximation (assuming you don't know the depth of the cone) is to use the area of the circular "face" of the speaker, i.e. ~254 sq in for the 18" and ~314 sq in for the 4 x 10". If you compared a 15" with a 2 x 10" in the manner suggested by low2groove, you might think the 2 x 10 had more area, but it's about 20 sq in smaller.
 
#113
Played some 10s today found some that sounded real good but keep finding my self traveling to the bigger speakers.Dont know why i dont completely under stand all the tech stuff but have read alot of the suggested material and see the point that smaller speakers can prouduce the lows also.So is it like i said before on a budget of 500 bucks just seems like the 15s prouduce more lows.Can you not get 10s at this price range to sing that low?
 
#115
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This is one of my Bagend 1x18 cabs. I have 4. As you can see they are really small. They go really low, are extremely fast (they sound much clearer then a peavey 2x15) and I can use them all by themselves. Each Bagend 1x18 is 400w RMS so with two I have 800 RMS and 1600 watt peak. They are smaller together then a single 4x12.

My point is, with the current fast drivers 1x18 cabs are space savers though giving you enough punch and clarity.
 
#118
Muziekschuur said:
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This is one of my Bagend 1x18 cabs. I have 4. As you can see they are really small. They go really low, are extremely fast (they sound much clearer then a peavey 2x15) and I can use them all by themselves. Each Bagend 1x18 is 400w RMS so with two I have 800 RMS and 1600 watt peak. They are smaller together then a single 4x12.
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don't count on that. in that small a box i don't see how it could handle anywhere near 400w real world. doesn't mean it's a bad cab, but power handling ratings are pretty much useless because they use the wattage the voice coil melts for their power handling quote and not the wattage it will really take in the field without sounding like a wet fart.

My point is, with the current fast drivers 1x18 cabs are space savers though giving you enough punch and clarity.
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all speakers react at the same speed. it's a myth that there are slow and fast speakers. it sounds that way, yes, but it's the dispersion pattern of the speaker that makes it sound that way, not the speaker itself.

as for the part about beaming with different driver sizes, that is the ONLY thing you can say about driver size affecting cab performance, and still doesn't tell you anything else about how a particular speaker sounds. and really, since so many bass cabs with 10"s are made with two columns of 10"s, beaming will actually be slightly worse in those types of cabs since two 10"s side by side beam at the equivalent of a 20" driver.
 
#119
billfitzmaurice said:
Larger drivers are more cost effective, giving a lower price to displacement ratio.
You can believe anything you wish, but it helps when beliefs are backed up by facts. The fact with respect to driver size is that it affects dispersion only. Every other aspect of driver performance is affected by factors totally independent of cone size.
Click to expand...

If what you say is the deal, show me the audio or video clip of a 15" or 18" rig that sounds like what we know as the 10" sound. For example" A nice punchy, modern slap sound that you might associate with a GK or Eden amp and a 410 cab without a hint of what people think of as the sound of 10's. If you say "that's just the design of the cabinet / speaker," the point is moot (for me)as I've never heard a 15" with that sound.
 
#120
raymondl3 said:
If what you say is the deal, show me the audio or video clip of a 15" or 18" rig that sounds like what we know as the 10" sound. For example" A nice punchy, modern slap sound that you might associate with a GK or Eden amp and a 410 cab without a hint of what people think of as the sound of 10's. If you say "that's just the design of the cabinet / speaker," the point is moot (for me)as I've never heard a 15" with that sound.
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so all cabs with 10's sound alike then, eh? that will come as news to a company like ampeg that makes several cabs using 10"s and none of them sound the same. in order for your request to make sense, then ALL cabs with 10"s would have to sound the same. but they don't. neither do all cabs with 15"s or 18"s.

and that is what bill's point is...it's not that you can make a 115 cab sound like a 210...it's that if there was a signature sound from a given speaker size, then all cabs using those speakers would sound the same, which any dope can tell you that they don't.
 

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