Extra box volume, lower tuning

[woodsracer]

I've been looking at the Markbass 102 XL (energy) cabs and am wondering what you could expect with the additional box volume. With a lower tuning frequency I am guessing you'd get a fatter low end, but does less air spring in the box make the 10s less tight? I'm a 15 guy but had to play through a CMD 102p combo a while back and was thoroughly impressed with how tight and punchy it was while also having a deep low end I don't usually associate with 10s. With a larger box in the XL it seems like it could get even fatter than that combo but will that also result in a loss of tightness? I could imagine stacking two of these cabs might sound great and get the top box closer to my ears which would also be a positive.

 

[agedhorse]

Maybe, maybe and maybe.

It depends, some drivers perform better in larger boxes and some can perform worse.

 

[Derek Kay]

I'm also a 15" guy (for BG) and I found a virtue for the reverse concept.

I used a small ported 15" wedge monitor and I think the reduced internal capacity limited the low end. Wattage was never a problem for me and I used more volume and got more high & low mids, without too much rumble or boom. No tweeter required. Good for a medium room or a stage with FOH.

My experience was quite unexpected and yet surprisingly fortuitious. It took some time for me to realise my advantage.
A wedge-shaped cab Is also smaller/lighter, and far easier to carry.

Perhaps 10" cabs need a lower tuning frequency than 15" cabs, using more internal volume. As said, many variables, but I think the 15"/small cab combination has more to be had by deliberately designing a cab with reduced low end, rather than the opposite.

 

[agedhorse]

I'm also a 15" guy (for BG) and I found a virtue for the reverse concept.

I used a small ported 15" wedge monitor and I think the reduced internal capacity limited the low end. Wattage was never a problem for me and I used more volume and got more high & low mids, without too much rumble or boom. No tweeter required. Good for a medium room or a stage with FOH.

My experience was quite unexpected and yet surprisingly fortuitious. It took some time for me to realise my advantage.
A wedge-shaped cab Is also smaller/lighter, and far easier to carry.

Perhaps 10" cabs need a lower tuning frequency than 15" cabs, using more internal volume. As said, many variables, but I think the 15"/small cab combination has more to be had by deliberately designing a cab with reduced low end, rather than the opposite.

Your amp's tone controls, and especially if your amp has a HPF, can do the same thing but more tuneable on a gig by gig basis.

 

[woodsracer]

So it looks like MB is using the same cabinet for their 102 XL, 103, and 104. This makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint but I wonder what effects this might have on the tuning and overall sound. Seems like more of a cost saving measure than engineering related. If I had any nearby I'd go try them but I don't. No idea what the internal volume is but external is 5.76 ft^3 to get an idea. So without knowing the intimate design details of the speakers, will comparing the volume per speaker tell us nothing about the different characteristics you'd expect from them? Seems like we can glean a few things here but I am still learning about tuning a ported system.

A somewhat related question is if you were to vertically stack two of the cabs (that is, 2x102 or 2x103), how would dispersion and filtering effects compare? I'm assuming those would be better with the 102s because they are not packed as tight. The 102 speakers are positioned on a diagonal and the 103 makes an equilateral triangle with two of them making a vertical stack. Let me see if I can attach some pics.

 

[B-string]

If you are wanting to learn about speakers and their enclosures, kudos! It is an interesting and extensive field of study and you will learn that aesthetics over rules function with many brands. Port tuning adjusts the cabinet size with limitations and trade offs to the needs of the speaker (driver). The extremes are loss of power handling to ports that add noise (chuffing) with changes to frequency response along the way. Cabs really need to be designed for a specific driver not the other way around. You can achieve some compromise, but the best "sound", power handling and acoustic output are the goals that are under attack.
Adjustments to port size and length are not a "cure", they are the compromise.

 

[agedhorse]

Again, it depends on the driver.

Everything about speaker design is a compromise.

 

[Derek Kay]

I'm wondering if skewing the response data towards undersized 15" cabs, (and conversely, oversized 10" cabs) might improve a compromise still further..

 

[agedhorse]

I'm wondering if skewing the response data towards undersized 15" cabs, (and conversely, oversized 10" cabs) might improve a compromise still further..

Again, it depends.

 

[B-string]

I'm wondering if skewing the response data towards undersized 15" cabs, (and conversely, oversized 10" cabs) might improve a compromise still further..

Download this freeware program and you can play with box "size", port size, number of ports and length. They have a database of drivers with T/S parameters already loaded. A place to start.
[This invalid link has been removed]

 

[woodsracer]

That's some pretty cool software, I'll definitely take a look at it.

So no one has offered much of any information in this thread. Has no one tried these cabs?

 

[agedhorse]

Actually, you have received a lot of information. You just need to read and understand it.

 

[woodsracer]

Actually, you have received a lot of information. You just need to read and understand it.

Actually, I was asking specific questions about the Markbass line, how effective their "lower tuning" was on the 102 XL for low end and if that might detract from the tightness their smaller CMD 102 gives. I was also asking about dispersion/filtering effects between a 2x210 XL vs a 2x310 vertical stack given the diagonal speaker configurations they use instead of the square configuration in a 410.

Not sure if you're post was meant to be confrontational, but I reread every post here again and am still failing to see the plethora of information you're referring to that are addressing these questions. That's why I came back asking if anyone had actually played through these, because up until now it doesn't seem like anyone has and direct experience to share.

 

[agedhorse]

Sorry you can’t recognize the information you have received.

 

[B-string]

Actually, I was asking specific questions about the Markbass line, how effective their "lower tuning" was on the 102 XL for low end and if that might detract from the tightness their smaller CMD 102 gives. I was also asking about dispersion/filtering effects between a 2x210 XL vs a 2x310 vertical stack given the diagonal speaker configurations they use instead of the square configuration in a 410.

Not sure if you're post was meant to be confrontational, but I reread every post here again and am still failing to see the plethora of information you're referring to that are addressing these questions. That's why I came back asking if anyone had actually played through these, because up until now it doesn't seem like anyone has and direct experience to share.

agedhorse is not confrontational by nature. The info without doing a mom bird thing can serve well to suss out marketing hype which this cab series seems ripe with.
You are correct in that no first hand information has been given with these specific cabs. I guess no one has fallen for the hype? You can not run the 102 and 103 cabs together as Markbass amp head offerings that I have seen will not allow operation below 4ohms (an 8ohm 102 and the 6ohm 102 goes below 4ohms in parallel), so running the cabs stacked is a moot point as is a stacked 2X310 as that is a 3ohm load. Adding an extra driver to the same cabinent internal volume (speaker cab emulation programs can demontrate the negative effects of adding drivers to existing cabs without compensation of internal "volume" size) drasically affects frequency response and possibly power handling.
Manufactures can offer anything they want of course and then refuse warranty repairs from exceeding minimum amp loading (2 310 cabs=3 ohms on a 4ohm min amp head) it is up to the buyer to be savvy.
I hope this helps a little even if just to say never "tried it in person" and I would likely just pass by the offering as being unsound on the face of it.

 

[woodsracer]

Thanks @B-string now I feel like we're getting somewhere! To clarify, I was not saying running a 210 and a 310 together, but two 210s or two 310s. I don't use Markbass heads, I have an amp that runs 2 ohms and another at 2.67 ohms which could both drive a 3 ohm load (two 310s) can they not?

The condition we're looking at with this particular example is that they are removing speakers but keeping the volume the same, which is the opposite of what you tend to see, which is cramming more speakers into a small volume to decrease weight and make the cabs more portable. There seems so be a lot of info on what the disadvantages are of that are (although @Derek Kay seems to have gotten something he liked) but not so much on disadvantages of having slightly larger volumes per speaker. I get it that the box needs to be tuned to the speaker(s) but it seems like there's more than a single "correct" volume for a speaker, it's more of a range that offers different ways to tune the system, right? Anyway, from all this I would guess that the 102 XL box is likely too big and not ideal for those speakers because it's the same they use for their 410, but like horse said it depends on the particular speaker how it might respond to that so I guess we don't know without playing it. The other point was looking at the non-rectangular speaker layouts of the 102 XL and 103 as there may be an advantage of this in terms of dispersion/filtering compared to a 410, but maybe I'm wrong.

On the Markbass brand thing, to be honest I really haven't liked the interviews I saw on the guy, I don't like the flashy colors, and I didn't know about there being hype but it makes sense because of their seemingly strong marketing. These questions were not coming from any of that, the only thing I know is that I was blown away by that little 210 combo amp so I started looking at their cabs. Maybe it's not a Markbass vibe thing, maybe I just realized I miss those punchy 10s. So I've been also looking at Mesa's 10s, Aguilar, and a few others too but there's seriously slim pickings in the music stores in New Mexico.

 

[agedhorse]

Less volume per driver but more drivers tend to resolve to a more similar performance solution. It’s not about one scenario or the other. There is a great swath of middle ground between the two extremes.

 

[B-string]

@woodsracer, There is absolutely a single "correct" or to be more exact an optimum box "size". Think of that ported or sealed size as the center point of a teeter-totter, from there you can adjust port size and length for different size box to satisfy your wants, the ends are power handling and efficiency with wide changes to frequency response and smooth response curve . Fall off either end and you crash. Some drivers have a wide margin you can "play" with and some don't like to be messed with much. This is a good era with many manufacturers that actually work on proper functional designs with some still stuck in the 1960's of "we like this look, I hope it will sound okay". As far as that "triangle" arrangement I can only guess a widened dispersion with the trade off of lost combined efficiency, maybe why the gain of a single db over the 210. They publish the same frequency response, with even the smallest of learning about speaker building this is complete hype for either cab. Sure if you can hear those frequencies "at all" you can claim it, whether you can easily hear them is the real story.

 

[woodsracer]

Well, I "borrowed" both 102 and 102 XL cabs and did a quick recording for comparison. The XL absolutely has a deeper, thicker, more powerful low end. The 102 is pretty mid forward and it seems like perhaps that whole mid bump shifts down to a lower frequency in the XL, as the high mids seem to be less prominent as well. Once the speakers start to break up a little, both seem to have the same level of distortion, and as far as I can tell both cabs seem to start breaking up at around the same volume output. They each have their own character but both sound good and feel tight.

MB58R "Energy" 8 ohm for both, tweeters on -15 dB
German made Warwick Corvette Proline 5, running slight bass boost
Genzler Magellan 800, set flat
AT2020 mic offset 24"
DR Sunbeams