I had 8 and 4 ohm B-1's. I used to run an 8 ohm B-1 with a Clarus, which would be delivering 120w. It was absolutely FINE for DB - plenty of gain on tap! I hardly noticed any difference when I went to the 4 ohm cabinet. Ears, not specs.
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Double Bass LDS 3-way 1x8 and Acme B-1 comparison
- Thread starter Adrian Cho
- Start date
How right you are. And both Andy and Don are really great and interesting people to buy from. Talk about the pleasure of working directly with craftspeople as opposed to mass production...Adrian Cho said:
I agree as well. That aggressiveness to you seems to read as accuracy to me. The B-1 warmth and accuracy to you came across as a muted or covered up sound to me. Maybe it's because my situations require the bass to cut through the mix - I gotta switch band mates with you.Adrian Cho said:
Yet the B-1 is really a great cabinet (I ended up with 4 of them!) I remember when I got the B-1 after having a Coda, the change was heaven on earth - and initially I was driving the B-1 right off the Coda's own head with the internal speaker off!Acme cabinets benefit from increased headroom. I think a lot of guys are getting away from the basic point though....how it sounds!
ditto. I've had a 4ohm B1 for about 4 years now and it's my favorite upright cab for low volume gigs. Since I use it for low volume gigs with a Clarus or Focus, the efficiency isn't very much of an issue and they do sound better pushed. The sound is what sets it apart, to my ears, from most other cabs. For louder upright gigs I use a VL208 but the Acme is almost always the first choice.
ditto. I've had a 4ohm B1 for about 4 years now and it's my favorite upright cab for low volume gigs. Since I use it for low volume gigs with a Clarus or Focus, the efficiency isn't very much of an issue and they do sound better pushed. The sound is what sets it apart, to my ears, from most other cabs. For louder upright gigs I use a VL208 but the Acme is almost always the first choice.
Adrian Cho said:
Adrian,
You mean that when you run the two cabs together in parallel with your Focus, their loudness is balanced, or the one of the two maybe sound more loud?
DRURB said:
DRURB,
What do you think about two cabs with significant different sensitivity driven in parallel both by an amp, let's say one with 90 dB SPL 1W/1M and another with 100 dB SPL 1W/1M?
Is it wrong, or it doesn't make any sense, since propably the one with low sensivity will be hard to heared, while the other will be loud?
If we want to match two cabs together, the ''sensivity'' is the most important factor (has to be the same) for choosing them?
panos said:
I mean that the neither of the them alone is noticeably louder than the other to my ear. But I only did loudness comparison testing by playing bass into the cabs and switching between them. I should really use some other input with less variance such as a recording. One thing to do that wouldn't be too hard is to hook them both up to my computer setup and output the same signal to either and stick a microphone in front to measure the output for each. That's very easy to do with flat EQ.
In all fairness to the LDS, it has been suggested that it will take about 20 hours of playing before it is properly broken-in so I'm planning to do another round of testing in a couple of weeks. Right now, the tone is so different between the two cabs that I don't think it's a fair comparison.
FWIW according to the B&C Speakers web site, both of their Neo 8-inch woofers have a free air resonance of around 70 Hz (give or take a few Hz). When the woofer is installed in a sealed box or a bass reflex box, the frequency of resonance goes up even higher. This is the frequency where LF response begins to rolloff -- typically at about 12dB / octave with a bass reflex design. Unless I'm missing something here, the LDS 8-inch Neo cabs have to start rolling off below perhaps 80 Hz, maybe even higher. No matter how good the design may be, it's just simple physics.
OTOH the Acme Low B-1 is designed to be able to reproduce the open B string on a 5-string bass. (The actual figures for the B-1 are -3dB @ 42 Hz and -6dB @ 30 Hz.) The low efficiency of the Low B-1 is the result of a trade off to get extended low frequency response with a very small box (as well as very flat frequency response across the entire audio band).
In some ways, comparing the LDS cabs and the Acme Low B-1 seems a little like apples and oranges to me. Both designs are good, but have a slightly different approach to what they do. Which one is best for your application is very subjective I think.
Having said that, I think a higher efficiency cab that focuses on more detail in the upper bass and midrange with good presence is probably going to be the best overall choice for many bass players. Just my opinion of course.
OTOH the Acme Low B-1 is designed to be able to reproduce the open B string on a 5-string bass. (The actual figures for the B-1 are -3dB @ 42 Hz and -6dB @ 30 Hz.) The low efficiency of the Low B-1 is the result of a trade off to get extended low frequency response with a very small box (as well as very flat frequency response across the entire audio band).
In some ways, comparing the LDS cabs and the Acme Low B-1 seems a little like apples and oranges to me. Both designs are good, but have a slightly different approach to what they do. Which one is best for your application is very subjective I think.
Having said that, I think a higher efficiency cab that focuses on more detail in the upper bass and midrange with good presence is probably going to be the best overall choice for many bass players. Just my opinion of course.
I think the other thing that complicates this is the volume level. If you don't have the amp very loud and you're mostly supplementing your acoustic sound then whether or not you want lots of bass from the amp depends on whether or not you're getting lots of bass from the instrument. If you are playing at really loud volumes where the acoustic sound of the bass is somewhat hidden then it's a different story.
Got the 1x8 today and except for the port chuffing on the E string (Which I really would like to find a way to eliminate) I think all of this parsing of minutia is over kill. This is THE solution for the micro cab. It has the sound and footprint for my needs. The WW with the 1x8 and (most importantly the Vektor) is a dream rig.
I Don't think I need to spend $700 on an AMT now. The clarity of the Vektor into the LDS is outta sight.
Will the break in eliminte the chuffing problem?
I Don't think I need to spend $700 on an AMT now. The clarity of the Vektor into the LDS is outta sight.
Will the break in eliminte the chuffing problem?
Going easy on the cab for the first few hours then working up in volume and attack is good for the woofer but does little for the 'fuzz sound' or port chuffing on that lowest couple of notes. I've heard that sound on every cab I've owned if I looked for it - but no matter, it's only on louder solo playing and never heard with a group.
On my cab I was getting the port chuffing sound initially from the D string all the way down. I haven't really noticed in the last few testing sessions whether it is still there.
robgrow said:
Just for fun I plugged some of this driver's parameters into Winisd. With a port tuned box you can get -3db at around 56hz. It also doesn't create a lot of SPL's so it's going to need some power.
For double-bass maybe you just don't need to amplify the fundamental to get a good but colored sound.
seamonkey said:
I think that's going to depend on the volume level. For example if you're playing in a really noisy room where the acoustic sound of the bass can't be heard or if you're playing in a huge hall with a twenty-piece band at forte or double forte. And in some of those cases you have to play what's written and the notes are written low. I think there are just certainly times when the fundamental needs to be heard. It's also a stronger part of some bass sounds (e.g. gut strings) than others.
One thing I just discovered with my LDS cabinet is the difference a good speaker cable makes. Finally a few days ago I thought to myself, "Why would I be cheap about a cable after spending so much money on the amp and cab?" So I bought a nice 3' Monster cable for $25 off zzsounds. I don't mean to exaggerate but it made a huge difference. In particular the low end feels a bit fatter now. So in a way I think we all owe it to ourselves to make sure we're using all nice components. That way we can isolate whether the cab is good or bad.
jmain said:
Well, the thing is that you would be running the cabinets in parallel. In such a configuration, each cabinet would receive the same voltage drop. I'm not sure what changes are made when these designers alter the impedance of the cabinet. Sorry I can't be more definitive. I just don't have enough specific info on the designs.
Right on. From all accounts, sounds like a great little cabinet. Given the trial period offered by Andy at Acme, I think the best thing to do would be to just order one and check it out; if and when I decide I need one. I think I'll have a good rig with the new addition coming (soon I hope). Just thought I'd ask for the sake of discussion.DRURB said:
Thanks
Tbeers said:
Oh goodness! Cable differences. What matters in terms of sound for speaker wire is the gague of the wire. This has been demonstrated time and time again. With all due respect, Tbeers, unless you were using something like 20-gague wire before, switching cables will not alter the response-- especially at low frequencies -- in any meaningful (audible) way. There are reasons to have good cables. They usually have solid, reliable connectors, good insulation, and sufficient gague.
Designer cables, in the hi-fi world, are products that make companies tons of $$$ and most of the claims they make are just ridiculous. When the gague of the wire is too small, the resistance over a given distance is higher, leading to losses (heating) within the wire. Spectral effects (frequency effects) result from increased capacitance and usually affect high-frequencies. This is all solved by using heavy-gague cables. There are other effects often cited by the engineers at cable companies (e.g., the Miller effect, "skin" effects) and these all have their basis in fact. The problem is that they can be expected to affect the transmission of signals at, say, 1 MHz. When one considers that the highest audible frequencies are in the range of 20 kHz (and only then for very young women), these effects can be seen as irrelevant.
In terms of the cables used for line-level (i.e., those between the instrument/pre-amp and the amplfier), it is, again, important to have reliable solid connections. Here, other factors such as shielding (against hum and noise) come into play as well as cable capacitance. Again, there are high-frequency effects.
