Many things are considered awful by lots of people, often without any real reason.
All communities are to some extent echo chambers (for example, people believe tonewood is a thing in electrics because Gibson transferred that piece of marketing over from their acoustics and people believed it and spread it to others) this doesn't NECESSARILY mean that the common consensus is true, that's why I'm interested in the physics of soundwaves colliding/crossing.
The only cab I labeled as awful was the Fender Pyramid. The OEM driver in this cab was a low-powered guitar speaker that was very easy to blow with a 100W Bassman. If you put more robust drivers in the cab that can safely handle more power, the pyramid baffle tends to come apart at the seams. There are plenty of other things to not like about it. But feel free to try one and judge for yourself. If you love it
, but most people will think it sucks.
Interaction of the soundwaves is only part of the equation. You may find this interesting and informative.
With respect to bass, you also have to consider how the crossfire array effects the internal volume of the cab. Actual performance would depend on available internal volume and the Thiele Small characteristics of the drivers. For the most part, old school drivers, like those in old Sunn and Fender cabs, tend to require more internal volume to produce extended lows.
Modern drivers can be designed to work well with less internal volume, but there are trade offs. The Apogee subwoofer I showed you puts out a lot of bass, but it does not play super low. The designers would have chosen drivers that work well in a relatively small amount of volume. This tends to result in a driver with a low sensitivity rating. The AE-15 overcomes the low sensitivity of one driver by leveraging the mutual summing of 4 drivers with fairly high power handling.
The Sensitivity of the AE-15 is 101dB 1W/1m. Two of the 15s would be 98dB 1W/1m. One of the 15s would be 95dB 1W/1m. I would call this sort of medium efficiency for a bass cab.
The power rating for this cab is 2000W continuous and 9600W peak. SPL is 134dB continuous/140dB peak. -3dB is at 40hz.
The response plot with the required processor looks like this:
If you loaded one of the 15s in a cab that tunes exactly the same as the AE-15 and feed it 500W continuous/2400W peak, SPL is 122dB continuous/128dB peak.
...UNSUB. Good luck.
