Never said they all sound the same. There is a signature sound or characteristic to a 15" or 10". That doesn't mean you can't design them to sound different, but the signature is still there.
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18 inch cab
- Thread starter root fifth
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Never said they all sound the same. There is a signature sound or characteristic to a 15" or 10". That doesn't mean you can't design them to sound different, but the signature is still there.
ok, so if there is a signature sound, what is it? if there is a signature sound, i should be able to take a 10" car sub and use them in a bass cab without it sounding like crap. or i could buy the very cheapest 10" i could find and it will sound like the most expensive 10".
billfitzmaurice
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No, there isn't. The lows and low mids are determined by over a dozen T/S specs. Cone area (spec Sd) is but one of them, and in the overall scheme a relatively insignificant one at that. The upper midrange and high end is defined by break up modes, and they have no relation with cone size.
If said 'signature sound' existed the audio engineering community would certainly be aware of it. It doesn't.
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there's definitely NOT a 'signature sound' regarding the size of the cone.
a while back, i made my small 2x12 3012LF / 6.5" cab duplicate the sound of my big 2x15 JBL K140 cab by tuning the ports and cossover frequency and adding an adjustable attenuator for the 6.5 mid driver. on top of that, the JBL's have alnico magnets while the 3012's are neos. the biggest difference is that the 2x12 cab can play a bit louder before distortion.
a while back, i made my small 2x12 3012LF / 6.5" cab duplicate the sound of my big 2x15 JBL K140 cab by tuning the ports and cossover frequency and adding an adjustable attenuator for the 6.5 mid driver. on top of that, the JBL's have alnico magnets while the 3012's are neos. the biggest difference is that the 2x12 cab can play a bit louder before distortion.
I know what it is and I think most experienced bass players know what it is too.
I'm talking bass guitar cabs, not car subs. They are not relevant since they are designed for a different function. Meaning I'm assuming they are dedicated subs in which case it would be much harder for the human ear to differentiate between driver size contributions. With a modern bass speaker that goes up to 2KHz, you can hear a lot more mid range, and therefore detail.
Every 10" I have plugged into has sounded like a 10" and every 15" has sounded like a 15"
You have probably answered this before but please enlighten me: Why make different driver sizes if any one them can be designed to have a specific sound?
billfitzmaurice
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Cost versus displacement. Displacement is what limits low frequency output, and it's far less expensive to use one larger driver that has the displacement of two or more smaller drivers. But the larger the driver the narrower the dispersion at higher frequencies, so to have adequate dispersion at higher frequencies a smaller driver must be used for those frequencies. Or you can live with beaming, like guitar'd players do.
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So... either you're being talked to here by a bunch of inexperienced bass players...
or your hearing with your eyes. Or more accurately, attributing differences in tone to speaker size without accounting for other aspects of the rigs you are comparing.
But if you check the resumes of the folks who are posting that there simply is no "signature sound" for all bass drivers of a particular size - you'll find that "inexperienced" just does not fit the bill.
Yeah OK...
Until someone designs a 18" and 10" that sound exactly the same, I'm not a believer. I do use my ears. That's why I don't just believe what someone on TB tells me.
There are reasons that people believe there is a signature sound for a given speaker size, good reasons. Mostly because of poorly designed cabs driven by profit margins, weight concerns, laziness, etc.. Some experts are here trying to educate the community on what's really going on, and people are completely closed minded. Ignorance is bliss; old dogs/new tricks. You know, there were some experts that claimed the earth was round, but until I sail all the way and see it with my own eyes, I wont believe it for a second.
And there you have it. They had to prove to those ignorant people that the earth was indeed round. So I'm begging you for the proof. Where is it? Surely someone could build a 18" and 10" (Bass Guitar Cab) with an identical sound / tone? Is there a video clip you can point me to? Maybe I can't prove my assertion, but if you can't prove yours, at the end of the day they are equally valid.
billfitzmaurice
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If you knew how speakers work you wouldn't even be posing the question. You don't, and since you aren't interested in the explanations of those who do there's no point in beating this dead horse any further.
If you knew how speakers work you wouldn't even be posing the question. You don't, and since you aren't interested in the explanations of those who do there's no point in beating this dead horse any further.
You could have condensed that down to "I don't have an proof."
I know how it sound. I don't need to know the science behind it to know how it sounds. Do you have to know the chemical breakdown of a bowl soup to know how it tastes?
Is hearing one example too much to ask?
I'm not interested in the specs sheets. I want to hear it. So far I haven't seen example one.
Thanks.
This continually comes up and Im not stupid enough to argue with the smart people on this but when it comes to all of the the cabs I have owned Aguilar,Eden,Avatar,Carvin,Bergantino,Trace Elliot,Genz Benz,Peavy,Hughes Kettner and Ampeg they ALL had similar characteristics when it comes to speaker size.
The 18 cabs tend to be more for reinforcment,the 15s tend to give you a good standalone tone that pairs well with 10s.
The 12 inch speakers have a sound of there own that works well as standalone but 12s don't really seem to pair well with other speaker sizes.
Then there are 10's that punch very hard and seem to fill that upper register that the larger cones don't fill even though I have had cabs with 10's that were tuned lower than my 15 cabs they don't seem to project or fill the room with that low bass that the 15s do or a 18 used as support.
I dont think that I am the only one that feels this way.
I also help my son with his DJ buissness and I do the sound for both bands Im in and I allways get compliments on my sound even though I know very little other than I FOLLOW MY EARS and adjust Gear and EQ accordingly.
The 18 cabs tend to be more for reinforcment,the 15s tend to give you a good standalone tone that pairs well with 10s.
The 12 inch speakers have a sound of there own that works well as standalone but 12s don't really seem to pair well with other speaker sizes.
Then there are 10's that punch very hard and seem to fill that upper register that the larger cones don't fill even though I have had cabs with 10's that were tuned lower than my 15 cabs they don't seem to project or fill the room with that low bass that the 15s do or a 18 used as support.
I dont think that I am the only one that feels this way.
I also help my son with his DJ buissness and I do the sound for both bands Im in and I allways get compliments on my sound even though I know very little other than I FOLLOW MY EARS and adjust Gear and EQ accordingly.
You don't, and since you aren't interested in the explanations of those who do there's no point in beating this dead horse any further.
I'd certainly be interested. To me, saying that
is counter-intuitive. If I were trying to work this out from first principles, I'd start by scribbling on the back of a convenient envelope "Mass increases with the cube of linear dimension, hmm, probably closer to square in this case b/c the cone is so thin. Call it ^2.5. So, going 10->18 would approximately mean a 4.3x increase in mass, so the resonant frequency is now slightly less than half."
But there's obviously some other factors at work to compensate. Electrical resonance? or is the cone mass just insignificant?
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Yeah OK...
Until someone designs a 18" and 10" that sound exactly the same, I'm not a believer. I do use my ears. That's why I don't just believe what someone on TB tells me.
That's a lot of work to convince a random guy on the internet.
What you're really saying, though, is that someone can post 10 samples of speaker cabinets and you can say which ones are 10's, which are 12's, which are 15's, and which are 18's. Or at least that you can distinguish the 10's and the 18's. Correct?
That's a lot less effort, and someone *might* have enough interest to do so.
I'm interested in the explanations and have read many posts on this subject at TB. But I'm more interested in examples.
To make an analogy: If I make an assertion to a student, I back it up with examples (i.e. I play it, or I play an mp3). If a student asks me for an example I don't say "You don't understand the subject and aren't interested in explanations, therefore I give up. Besides, if you already knew, you wouldn't ask the question."
What kind of sense does that make?
To make an analogy: If I make an assertion to a student, I back it up with examples (i.e. I play it, or I play an mp3). If a student asks me for an example I don't say "You don't understand the subject and aren't interested in explanations, therefore I give up. Besides, if you already knew, you wouldn't ask the question."
What kind of sense does that make?
Maybe... but mp3s on the net aren't the same thing as standing next to amp while you are playing through it. But that's a start.
billfitzmaurice
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Cone mass alone is only semi-significant, so there's no spec for it. Total moving mass is significant, so there is a spec for that, Mms. You can find eights through eighteens with the same Mms.
