Kids home sick again today, so this post is subject to the same disclaimers as yesterday.
A couple of general points:
1) The original post said, "Always had 10" speakers, can I expect more bass from a larger speaker or does size not matter as much as number+power?" The very next post said, "[10s]...have more true low end extension than cabs with larger diaphragm speakers..." Which is one of those statements that is so patently and obviously untrue that it makes your eyes cross. (Or should...) Such a partisan comment, without basis in fact, is exactly the sort of thing that led me to coin the terms "Decem" and "Decemite," to cover the fact that there are people who are so blindly attached to their 10s that they ignore reality. Now, if I'm understanding what I'm reading, some people have taken offense about my entirely fictitious religion. If it were a real, established religion, I could understand, but one I made up?
Really?
Crikey!
The Flying Spaghetti Monster might have something to say about that...
2) Any and all comments regarding PA systems are beyond the scope of a "can larger diameter speakers go deeper than 10s" thread. Comments such as "...more than enough low end to cause problems with any FOH..." or "...I can get more than enough low end to get me in trouble with the PA..." are useless. They don't address the OP's central question and are in any event impossible to work with because they introduce myriad unknowns, to wit: Microphone or DI, bandwidth and power of the PA, competence (or lack thereof) of the sound man, and on and on and on... And even if those variables were known, the next poster's PA system would be an apples and oranges comparison.
3) Claims that cabinet X is has lower lows than cabinet Y are subjective; not hard fact. My experience has been that most people are clueless about deep bass...yes, even bass players. Many bass players assume that because the instrument they play goes deep that they are immediate authorities on all things below 100Hz. Note that nearly every post in this thread about 10s going deep falls into this category and the few that advance facts...well...the facts are backfiring.
Posts such as, "I like my [cabinet A]" ARE valid. They seek only to state congruence between the poster's current and desired tone. That's the point. Find a tone you like and that works with the music you're playing.
4) I'm going to say it again, since some people are hard of seeing (that's kinda like being hard of hearing, but since they're reading...). I'm not against 10s. I own 10s. I like 10s for what they can do well. What I'm against is foolish statements like the one quoted above that 10s go deeper than 12s, 15s, 18s, 21s...
The post on the first page with the screen shot from Back To The Future (do I have the right movie?) always makes me laugh. Looks like about 60" or so. Hot diggety-dawg!
5) I reserve the right not to waste my time replying to comments that fall in the above categories--particularly #3. Those who post a #3 comment, then crow that they "won" because I didn't bother to refute their post automatically forfeit the point. Get real, people.
Okay, catch up time:
CL400Peavey,
We are in agreement regarding room-boom. If a bass player gets muddy sound from his rig, then he needs to change hardware or the settings he's using. What works in your bedroom at home is not necessarily going to work in a larger venue capable of supporting longer wavelengths. If the bass is going through the PA, the same applies to the PA. Bass doesn't have to be boomy.
You're not going to get anywhere with the small driver thing--not without major EQ, at which point all bets are off. Real world bass cabinets don't need drastic EQ to produce usable low end. Google "room gain" (roughly 6dB/oct bass boost) and add to that the fact that headphone drivers are essentially direct coupled. I'm not going to waste further time on this point.
Mea culpa on the Xmax driver thing. I plead distraction. However, the fact that you chose a guitar speaker designed to break up (hence the low Xmax and note the driver description re: break up) invalidates your point. There are scads of drivers in the world, designed with various uses in mind--not all of them bass guitar. I'm sure with a little effort we could find a 10" driver that's even less suited than the Legend 1518, then an even worse 15", then an even worse 10", then an even worse 15", then an even worse 10"...
You will search long and hard (and come up empty) before finding a post wherein I said that all 15"/18"/whatever drivers were appropriate for bass use. If you're going to set up a straw man argument using clearly inappropriate drivers, then "prove" me wrong, you lose by default. My goal is to deflate empty statements like the one I quoted in #1 above...and that only. Attempts to put words in my mouth will meet with resistance, time permitting, or be ignored. Please stick to drivers appropriate for live bass guitar use, i.e. drivers labelled as bass drivers or (some) PA/"professional" drivers. If, by some fluke, a guitar driver has cool specs, bring it on. Ditto for car boom-boom, hi-fi, or any other class of driver. It's highly unlikely that you'll find such a thing, but if there's something neat hiding out there in the wilderness, bring it in, I want to see it! Just don't waste my/our time cherry-picking some inappropriate driver, then claim that you've proved something, okay?
What's optimal? Decem save me! This is going to be harder than I thought. Optimal is generally understood to mean a Butterworth "maximally flat," "critically damped" alignment; that is, the Q = 0.707. All of which is techno-speak for getting the best possible flat response from a given driver. Sometimes the best alignment is vented/ported, sometimes it's sealed; depends on the T-S parameters of the driver. Most speaker programs have the ability to sniff out the best alignment automatically. You're free to change things, of course, but it's always a good place to start.
Commercial guitar/bass speakers are not necessarily maximally flat. Only rarely will you find a current-design cabinet that's tuned to less than 0.707. Some people look at it as a way to get more low end because the rolloff is slower, but the tradeoff is that the rolloff begins earlier and the cabinet will sound floppy. By definition, the cabinet will also be larger and somewhat heavier, so that's not a popular option.
A driver/cabinet design with a Q greater than 0.707 is actually a fairly common design solution. They're smaller and lighter, which is always good, and the cabinet helps stiffen the driver suspension which gives tighter sounding transients. The frequency response will hump up a little before the final rolloff, which can be either good or bad, depending on your point of view. The problem is that the cabinet is rolling off earlier than it has to. Although Q figures in the thousands (and higher--theoretically, Q can be infinite) are possible (e.g. radio electronics), bass speaker cabinets will usually have a Q less than 1--around 3dB of hump--quite a bit in practical terms. From a psychoacoustical perspective, that hump is often perceived as deeper bass than the cabinet is actually delivering. This trick is almost always used for cabinets containing 10s, but also shows up with other drivers. It affects the perceived tone of the cabinet and amounts to a slight push with a graphic equalizer somewhere in the 75-150Hz range, depending on the driver and the configuration of the cabinet.
Although I haven't measured them, my Ampeg SVT15Es appear to have a slight hump, rather broad. I happen to like the resulting tone, but can't help wishing that the cabinet was aligned to get that last bit of bass extension. I don't use them as subwoofers, per se, or at least I don't expect them to get the last few Hz as well as my SWR Big Ben. It's all a matter of realistic expectations. I don't ask 10s to deliver low E fundamentals (or B), and I don't ask the Big Ben to do much over, say, 150-200Hz. It's a special purpose beastie--although there are people who like smoother "no-treble" bass tones who swear by them when used full range. It's just not what I'm looking for.
JimmyM,
I don't know as I'd retire, but I'd sure start looking at options for improving what I was hearing.
Gab124,
Hear, hear!
(Although most girls are too shy to ask such questions out loud, at least where guys might overhear...)
Ha! "Only" two hours on this post. However, that's still too much time. Given that a lot of the other posts fell under one of the categories listed above, I'm thinking this is a time sink. I'll be spending less time as a result. People who set up straw man arguments and won't deal with facts are basically trolls. Time wasters. Don't need it.
Grey
