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Speaker with the highest sensitivity?

#22
Derek Balonek said:
Yeah, that's why I was thinking multi-way might help out a bit. Deep at decent volume and a mid driver that the LF response is less important to. The JBL mentioned earlier goes low enough for the 2nd harmonic of C1 which is as low as my bass is tuned. I'd probably want to highpass it above that though. Actually, to avoid concerns about matching sensitivity, biamping might be a better idea for this.
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There's also dispersion issues with the larger cone carrying the high stuff, and xmax/Vd issues in the E-130's lowend. It may respond deep enough for you in a 1 watt chart, but it won't be able to take a lot of power down there and turn it into sound.

I agree that using an E130 and then padding it back defeats the purspose of using one in the first place. Let it run uninhibited, and you're pretty much commited to using a horn sub, and a fairly large one at that, to keep up in the lows if you want as much output below 100hz as you'd have above.

There's a guy on Bills forum who runs a Genz 112 combo amp with a Titan39 sub as a bass rig. It thunders. A 1 speaker combo can get very loud if you take the pressure of producing bass away from it and hand that off to something that excells at it.

As to whether you need all that loud low bass in your tone is a matter of personal taste. Fearful guys love it, myself, if I had a rig with a ton of sub 60-70hz output, I'd end up dialing back a lot of it.

This whole thing is a juggling act. Balancing a bunch of different compromises in an effort to land in the spot you want to be. There really is no one right way.
 
#23
will33 said:
There's also dispersion issues with the larger cone carrying the high stuff, and xmax/Vd issues in the E-130's lowend. It may respond deep enough for you in a 1 watt chart, but it won't be able to take a lot of power down there and turn it into sound.

I agree that using an E130 and then padding it back defeats the purspose of using one in the first place. Let it run uninhibited, and you're pretty much commited to using a horn sub, and a fairly large one at that, to keep up in the lows if you want as much output below 100hz as you'd have above.

There's a guy on Bills forum who runs a Genz 112 combo amp with a Titan39 sub as a bass rig. It thunders. A 1 speaker combo can get very loud if you take the pressure of producing bass away from it and hand that off to something that excells at it.

As to whether you need all that loud low bass in your tone is a matter of personal taste. Fearful guys love it, myself, if I had a rig with a ton of sub 60-70hz output, I'd end up dialing back a lot of it.

This whole thing is a juggling act. Balancing a bunch of different compromises in an effort to land in the spot you want to be. There really is no one right way.
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The 130 being a 15 will limit the highs significantly. May need a tweeter or I can decide to ignore the highs. My tone usually has less highs, though a 15 seems like it may limit articulation as well.

I think in a biamp setup, putting more power into the lows may help even it out. Horn loading does seem like it would still be a necessity though, considering lows need more energy. Biamping does significantly increase available power to each band though, so a sub may be able to keep up with around 2x the power, assuming a decently sensitive speaker like the Eminence ones mentioned. Adding a second sub (vertical of course) may help, though that would make things a bit awkward to move around. 3 15s aren't light. Just speculation, though fun to think about.

I'd probably need to make a few different rigs for various tonal goals. One can't do it all, as close as some get.
 
#24
Your highend extension won't be limited just because that speaker is a 15. Plenty of very bright sounding 15" guitar speakers. But, the dispersion of those highs will be focused in a narrow beam in front of the rig and not be spread widely about the room. That much is a function of cone size.

Conversely, because of the very low frequencies subwoofers operate at, those can be placed side by side and not affect dispersion. You run into problems with them when you split them left and right on small stages instead of clustering them together in the middle. They put out long wavelengths (low frequencies) that will cancel out instead of enhance when they are split with less than a wavelengths distance between them.


The "go vertical" thing with bass rigs is to maintain horizontal dispersion and keep comb filtering out of the horizontal plane in the mids and highs. The low frequencies that's not an issue, but separating sources in smaller places and room placement with relation to boundries (walls) is. The ceiling is one boundry you can't get away from, and unfortunately, some of them are low enough to cause cancellations within the low frequency bandwidth.....and cause a boomy enhancement an octave above that.

One thing you can do, if you have enough subs, is like what they do in hifi. TBer Duke Lejeune is a master at this, and that is to purposely scatter your subs around the room and purposely give each of them strong spots and weak spots in relation to the boundries, with each subs strong spot filling in anothers weak zone, the end result being even bass everywhere.

Sounds much easier to say than it is to do. As far as bass rigs, just keep it all in one spot with anything that puts out mids or highs stacked as vertically as you practically can. As far as PA for our little band, just keep all your low frequency sources clustered together in one spot as much as is practical. Don't worry about splitting subs and all that other stuff until you're playing 30-40 wide stages.:)
 
#25
One more note as far as the specification for speaker sensitivity: the sensitivity of the driver itself is very frequency-dependent. Eminence used to publish the chart of sensitivity vs frequency for their drivers, don't know if they still do. I do however have their old Delta 15 chart handy: it peaks at over 100 dbSPL but only at 2500 Hz (and in a very sharp peak). From 50 to 600 Hz it's only 94 dB.
 
#27
nashvillebill said:
One more note as far as the specification for speaker sensitivity: the sensitivity of the driver itself is very frequency-dependent. Eminence used to publish the chart of sensitivity vs frequency for their drivers, don't know if they still do. I do however have their old Delta 15 chart handy: it peaks at over 100 dbSPL but only at 2500 Hz (and in a very sharp peak). From 50 to 600 Hz it's only 94 dB.
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An excellent point made here^^

One number sensitivity doesn't tell you much. In the case of most driver manufacturerw, Eminence, Faital, Caire, B&C, et al, they are an average of the useable bandwidth of the driver in question and don't tske into account peaks and valleys in the response. In the case of commercial bass cab makers, they're oftentimes "stretched" and sometimes just made up out of thin air....kinda like federal reserve notes.:smug:

Couple cases I'm familair with personally.....

I really like the way an Eminence Alpha6 sound carrying the tooend of my bass over a good woofer. Looking at the average sensitivity, one would think these are fairly quiet playing 92-93db drivers and aren't that impressive. If you look at the response chart and just worry about the slice of bandwidth I actually use, roughly 1khz - 5khz, they run more like 95db and play pretty smooth.

Another is my 12" Deltalites I like so much. They're average sensitivity is listed as 99.9, pretty much 100db. If you look at the slice of bandwidth I actually use, pretty much below 1khz, they are more like 97, maybe rising to 98 before they get cutoff. As a fullrange driver, their response climbs the further you go up in their useable bandwidth rising to well over 100db in the upper mids (as it relates to a bass guitar), thus the average of 99.9.

More information is always better.
 
#29
A sensitivity number is almost useless (actually it really IS useless) in designing a speaker system without knowing the specified bandwidth that the sensitivity is measured at, what the response curve is under the specific conditions that it will be used, and the mechanical displacement versus power under the conditions it will be used. These will give you an idea as to the suitability of the driver to that particular application.
 
#31
Derek Balonek said:
Interesting... I was unaware that it was frequency dependent. I probably should have thought of that, but it is a very important consideration. Would it be reasonable to assume it also varies based on operating temperature and therefore power put in?
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It can be. What you are hinting at (perhaps without realizing it) is that there are two different sensitivity models.

The first is a small signal sensitvity (which is what most measured and published numbers are based on), at some value based on maybe 1 watt continuous, or 1/8 of rated continuous power, or something that may be in between these. For the most par these ignore the non-linearities that are related to high power operation.

The second is a large signal model which measures sensitivity at a high power (often we will make meaurements at 50%, 100%, and 200% of rated power) to reveal how significant the specific nonlinearities are. This would identify power compression that may be either thermally OR mechanically based. Often, these tests become destructive in nature but are quite revealing in how a speaker handles high power and high SPL events. One thing that these tests show is that often there is a point of diminishing returns once you approach the continuous rating of many speakers. What happens is that the thermal power compression as well as electro-magnetic and mechanical non-linearities cause a much smaller increase in SPL as the power doubles as the theory predicts. So for example if you double the power from the continuous to program rating (for those speakers that choose to rate this way), instead of 3dB increase in SPL you get only 0.75dB. What this means is that risk of damage increases much faster than any useable results.

Hope this helps (and causes some pondering).
 
#34
The old alnico magnet James B Lansing d130 is very efficient but quite limited in very low frequency performance.
A speaker that has really amazed me for efficiency is the old Altec Lansing 418 series II, while it won't hold a candle to the Eminence
3015 in power handling at very low frequency, the stepped alnico magneted old Altec makes the 3015 sound rather pathetic compared directly if the power comes limited like from an old 100 watt tube amp like an Ampeg V4B.
Be prepared though, it's aluminium voice coil cap propels high mid clarity that will show off your technique or point out the flaws.
Of course if you attempt to hide technique problems in a heavily scooped eq (You know the one:spit: that ubiquitous modern sound:bawl: the one you hear in music shops the world over:help:, thats it!, two ends of feck all by the time you show it a real live rock or metal mix in a decent sized venue or worse still this boom and dink stuff pumps the sish out of a quality master buss compressor without even being audible in a decent studio mix.....till the engineer overrides your taste and reverses the scoop exposing everything:rollno:) you will have defeated the efficient frequencies and run headlong into the drivers displacement limited power handling.:bassist:
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#37
bassdude51 said:
Always a point to consider! The "trade-off". A loud db speaker/woofer has weak bottom end. A nice bottom end speaker/woofer has low db.

The old "quanity vs quality" dilemma.
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Them's the laws of physics right there! If you want superb agility with great tone and smooth bright midrange go with the old school alnico magnet super efficient full range drivers of yore, however note.
You are going to have to drive approximately twice the speakers with half the watts to match the available output of one Eminence 3015 at 50 Hz.:bassist:
 
#38
chadds said:
The D-130 was a guitar speaker. You want to talk about D-140s.
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I think the distinction between guitar and bass speakers is tone expectation and tuning dependant.
Saying that though I think for live use with higher power tube amps
and five string the D140 is a lot better than the D130 but the K140 is just a hair better than that.
The K145 is a bit less efficient but lower frequency loaded.
The E140 is ceramic and sounds a bit harder in the midrange, not bad but bloody heavy magnets.:bassist:
 
#39
will33 said:
A sort of rule of thumb is "loud, low and small, pick any 2".
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^^^This. Friend of mine has one of these in his home hi-fi system:
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101 dB/1w@1m sensetivity, capable of putting out 130dB SPL @ 20Hz (!!!) ...but it's the size of a walk-in closet.

I keep asking him if I can borrow it for my bass rig, but so far he hasn't given in.
 
#40
Here…

http://www.usspeaker.com/homepage.htm

1st you need to decide on the basic frequency range you're looking for. Do you want full range? Are you going to use a mid driver and/or tweeter?

Then you need to consider 3 things from my perspective when considering loudness. Sensitivity is one. The other two are Xmax & cone surface area.

Then, of course, after driver selection, a box needs to be constructed around the driver(s). A quality box will allow the driver(s) to perform at the top of their ability. An inferior one will limit that performance.

Happy hunting.
 

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