More speakers, more volume anomaly....

[el murdoque]

So when you turn up the amp until the cabinet reaches its limit (or the volume is dimed) which one is louder?

 

[GreyBeard]

Wow--now there's an old warhorse speaker cab! (And howdy there, neighbor. I'm in Huntington.)

Good to hear from you.

 

[retslock]

is the 1x15 4ohm and the 4x10 8 ohm?

Both 8 ohm.

 

[retslock]

The EV is rated for less than 50 watts??? Is it in a ported or sealed cabinet? Sounds low for even an old bass cabinet.

Whoops! A typo, thanks for pointing that out. It’s a 500 watt head. Too late to edit. Damn this 1 hour editing window.

 

[retslock]

So when you turn up the amp until the cabinet reaches its limit (or the volume is dimed) which one is louder?

I didn’t push it. I didn’t want to destroy the EV. It was my extension cabinet for many years with a 130 watt solid state combo that had another EV 15” in it. The set-up was never challenged in all the years I used it in Aussie pubs. It was plenty loud enough those days but not really a working unit with modern high powered amps.

 

[el murdoque]

I didn’t push it. I didn’t want to destroy the EV. It was my extension cabinet for many years with a 130 watt solid state combo that had another EV 15” in it. The set-up was never challenged in all the years I used it in Aussie pubs. It was plenty loud enough those days but not really a working unit with modern high powered amps.

Okay. In my humble opinion it is a mix of speaker sensitivity and power handling that determines how loud a cabinet is. If one is crazy good while the other is not, results can get weird.
If you connected both cabs to a PA power amp with more than enough juice and set the wattage to the maximum the cab can handle, the 410 could be a lot louder than the 115 - because the 410 might make up the lower SPL (dB @ 1W / 1m) with a much higher power handling.