Will, I actually think the 4x10 with the 32ohms would be 96db and the series paralled 4x10 would be 99db. I asked BFM this question once and I think thats what he said. I was just asking for other peoples thought on it.
As I understand it, amplifiers multiply voltage. If it can swing say some arbitrary number like 40 volts, then it can swing 40 volts. That's what makes the speaker move back and forth, voltage swinging positive to negative and back again.
When you extrapolate it to watts, then things change, but not really. The 40 volts would be more "watts" at 4ohms than it is at 8ohms and very much less at 32 ohms. So, you use the watts to figure how much voltage to swing to put you at 1 watt for testing at all the different impedances.
This would mean you'd have to turn the amp up much higher on the 32 ohm speaker than you do on the 8ohm speaker to get to the same place. I think that is more a deal with amplifier output/speaker power input than it is with actual speaker sensitivity. Not trying to argue about it, more to better understand it.
As always...I am not the expert on this. I stand to be corrected when need be, and if BFM came to a different conclusion, I would certainly defer to that, whatever it is.
Anyway, about the magic hump and high f3's....+1 to it all. There is no question the old SVT's slot themselves in a sweet spot in a mix, and it is specifically because they don't have deep, subwoofy type bass, and strong output in the highbass/lowmids, and a sweet middle/topend that gets a nice musical sound when you push it. I don't know when bass players in general became obsessed with rediculously low, physically impossible, stupidly useless low frequency numbers but the whole thing is an excersize in futility. I think advertising to the uninformed has a lot to do with it. 30hz "reads" like it's more bass than 70hz, even though it's useless. Likewise "400 watts" reads a lot more impressive than "56 volts" or whatever, even though they're the same thing.
Caveat: numbers arbitrarily thrown out there as examples, didn't actually take the time to calculate it all, but folks should get the idea.
