Yeah, I don't have much extreme low end in my sound, either. Enough mid bass/low mid for it to still have some fatness and punch, but mostly it's mids.
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Speaker Cab Design Question
- Thread starter bodan
- Start date
Yeah, I don't have much extreme low end in my sound, either. Enough mid bass/low mid for it to still have some fatness and punch, but mostly it's mids.
You'll get destructive overlap between the two cabinets using mixed speakers like you described. Rarely does mixing speakers and cabs like that get you "the best of both worlds" so to speak.
Best to either use a crossover to split the frequency spectrum between the two cabinets or use a single size cab with identical speakers.
The thing is, the diameter means next to nothing regarding the low or mid characterisics of a particular speaker. You need to look at things like vas, resonant frequency, total Q, parameters you can learn in fairly straight forward detail in the resources section of the Eminence website.
someone around here had a thread not to long ago about an Ampeg V4B with a sealed 4x12 cab loaded with Eminence Basslite S2012s. He seemed pretty happy with it. You might want to search a little for that one.
someone around here had a thread not to long ago about an Ampeg V4B with a sealed 4x12 cab loaded with Eminence Basslite S2012s. He seemed pretty happy with it. You might want to search a little for that one.
I think a ported cab and sealed cab WOULD compliment one another.
My current practice rig is a sealed 2x15 on top of a ported 2x15. Two vastly different sounding cabs with the same size speakers, and they compliment each other great. My full rig (see my sig) is a mess from a scientific point of view but works out great for me.
Mixing speaker sizes doesn't always = disaster like some here make it out to be. You may find you like the results, and of course you may not.
Of course, speaker size alone means nothing. Has everything to do with the box it's in.
Rick Auricchio
Registered Bass Offender
1. I doubt he has the same amplifier applications as you do... and 2. He's building his own cabinets. They may as well make sense from a scientific standpoint, or he'd just be better off buying used commercially-produced cabinets.
We're trying to help the guy make the best decision possible. And a crapshoot is far from the best decision he can make.
OP - download WinISD. It's free and a valuable (necessary?) tool for designing your own cabinets.
This isn't directed at you Metal Matt, but you bring up a point...
Mixing speakers never = disaster. All anyone with knowledge about the topic ever points out, is that although a rig may sound good (then of course it is good) it could sound better.
And that has nothing to do with opinions but rather the facts of physics. Over the years I've mixed various cabs with different speakers and different cab sizes and my rigs never sounded bad. But knowing what I know now just means I can cut through the crap quicker than I did when I based my rig decisions solely on opinion, looks, trial and error, or popularity AND my sound is significantly better now for that knowledge.
So it really is just people with far more knowledge than me simply trying to help by sharing that knowledge. The bottom line is if anyone is happy with their rig, that's all that matters.
But I find it interesting that many people ask for help and then choose to ignore the facts, resist the help offered or just plain turn a deaf ear to what is obvious to those that do know, yet they will listen to someone who only knows what they like.
But isn't "sound better" subjective? Saying a setup will give better low end response or boosted mids or whatever is fact, but saying that the overall sound will be better compared to another setup is very much an opinion, IMO.
Maybe my understanding of things is a little flawed in the cab construction area, but wouldn't a ported 2x15 give him more lows coupled with a sealed 2x10 or 2x12 give him midrange punch and the sound of the two combined give him what he wants? Or is the idea of getting your sound from multiple sources like that just completely out of style or whatever? For whatever reason, that's how I always looked at things, using different sounding cabs together to get a single desired tone.
Of course the science is great to know. It helped me figure out why arranging my cabs one way sounded really inconsistent from different places in front of it and why arranging them another way works perfect (for me) and sounds consistent.
Google is helpful. It's the first result.
Usually on forums, when telling someone to download something, a link to a reputable place to download from is seen as common courtesy.
From the first google result, there are several different downloadable things.
But isn't "sound better" subjective? Saying a setup will give better low end response or boosted mids or whatever is fact, but saying that the overall sound will be better compared to another setup is very much an opinion, IMO.
Your hearing is subjective, the science is not. A nearly deaf man will hear a cabinet differently than a teenager - but the output of the cabinet remains the same. If you want something "good enough", fine. Do whatever looks cool. If you want something qualifiably good, follow the science. Or, at least as close as is reasonable, per your needs for volume/tone. If you're playing Doom, then you need the cabinets that you need, period. But most players don't need that kind of world-shattering volume.
From what I understand, phase cancellation resulting from mixed speaker usage happens in the midrange for the most part. Your idea could work - if he used a properly designed ported 2x15 and combined it with, say, a 1x10, and used a crossover to send the lows to the 2x15 and the upper mids/highs or whatever to the 1x10, there would be no problem because there would be no overlap and it could sound pretty good and would get pretty damn loud with the right cabinet designs and drivers. But he certainly would not need a 2x12 to just handle the highs with a 2x15's lows.
There are two downloadables: WinISD and WinISD Pro. I don't know if there is a huge difference, but whichever you get make sure to read the "How To" in order to learn how to use and understand it properly. And then you're on your way. But you will probably have to enter in your own speaker specs, depending on the driver you would like to use. The "How To" explains it all.
