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Want some really 'true' sounding cabinets

#61
JimmyM said:
I think that's absolutely true. I also believe that a lot of folks who believe they want "neutral" voicing really don't, and I believe a lot of folks who claim to want it wouldn't know it if it bit them in the face ;) Learned that lesson the hard way my own self.


Duke, I'm telling you...if you marketed some of your designs as PA and studio cabs, they would sell.
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I agree. For live use, they should at least be marketed as all-purpose bass/keys/horns/vocals, etc., speaker systems instead of specific to the bass guitar.

In the PA world, all the customers would buy them in pairs. :)
 
#62
In my cabs it's about the interaction of the room being one of the biggest obstacles to getting "flat" response. You can measure as flat as you want but when you get in the real world with room interaction that all goes out the window.

I played two gigs this weekend. Same bass, amp/speaker, different rooms. Same band and volume level. ENTIRELY different sound. feel, function. On Friday I had to really thin things out. If I were to play at a medium volume in my living room with that eq setting it would sound anything but flat. Thin and edgy. Rather than saying "flat" I'll instead say "my sound" After using only the bridge pickup and removing a lot of bass I was able to get closer to my sound. On Saturday it was neck pickup only and relatively flat amp settings. To get closer to "my sound".

It's all about "perceived sound" and function. One person's concept of a "flat" sound differs from another's. And that perception is also based on their bass. Which ain't flat either.

In developing a new line of speakers I moved to a speaker with "multiple voicings" Meaning that various switches change padding, crossover point and phase. You know what was likely my least favorite voicing?Measured ruler flat.(well close, anyway) With my bass it wasn't the "flat sound" that I was looking for. With a different bass it might be. My personal concept of a flat sound is similar to an Anthony Jackson "piano string" type of sound. The setting that measured "flat" didn't get me there. It's nice to be able to do that at your speaker.

And again---in the real world---interaction with the room is likely the most profound influence on your sound. And there are cabs that do better in not influencing room interaction.
 
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#63
It's very interesting seeing how these discussions have progressed on talkbass. As some of you will know we've been making cabs that aim to be honest for a while now and a few years back I started work on some new stuff - which has meant I've been 1) too busy to join in these discussions and 2) keeping certain things under my hat! ;)

Anyway, rather than repeat myself, here's some of my thoughts:

Link Removed

http://barefacedbass.com/technical-information/LF-sensitivity.htm

http://barefacedbass.com/technical-information/3-way-to-2-way.htm

http://barefacedbass.com/technical-information/Real-world-sensitivity.htm

There's a bunch of other stuff up there but this is what's most pertinent to the discussion. Not looking to sell any cabs to you guys, just nice to share with other people who might care/understand what I'm talking about (my wife has finite tolerance... ;) )
 
#64
I need to write another document on the four dimensional nature of sound reproduction:

1. Frequency response
2. Polar response
3. Transient response
4. Dynamic response

A human's perception of the quality (ie accuracy) of any loudspeaker will be dominated by the weakest link in this four link chain, not the strongest!
 
#65
I prefer the coloration that an SVT 810 cabs provides. another one I really like is the Marshall 1960B guitar cab, when augmented with an 810 or 2x15.
I consider them to be tone modifiers, just like a pedal, preamp or pickup.
I like full range tone as well, but only if I'm playing clean and with no effects at all, witch is basically never these days.
Sting used/uses a Claire Bros or Meyer pa cabs (can't remember which) for his bass rig. a couple 12/horn tops and a couple 2x18's if memory serves.
that's the route I'd take or these "accurately" voiced bass cabs that are popular on this site.
 
#66
It's funny---I talk about Anthony Jackson's sound as being a flatter, more hifi sound.

I heard him in a small club (55) in NYC. He was using his full Meyer Sound rig. The sound was a bunch of moosh. It was loud alright but the low end articulation was terrible. A huge bunch of excited room nodes. I'm sure that when you play the Meyers at home or in a studio they're great. (well to be perfectly candid I don't believe that)

I've never found uber high end PA cabs effective at amplifying bass. Especially the subs. Electric bass is a different animal with different rules.
 
#67
1958Bassman said:
How do you know the "true tone" of your bass? ALl you can do is find a sound you like because there's no reference system to play through. If you're referring to the acoustic sound, you'll NEVER achieve that with any pickup.
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Amen. Find a rig you like... and don't think you have to spend boutique money to get good tone.
 
#68
Mike Arnopol said:
It's funny---I talk about Anthony Jackson's sound as being a flatter, more hifi sound.

I heard him in a small club (55) in NYC. He was using his full Meyer Sound rig. The sound was a bunch of moosh. It was loud alright but the low end articulation was terrible. A huge bunch of excited room nodes. I'm sure that when you play the Meyers at home or in a studio they're great. (well to be perfectly candid I don't believe that)

I've never found uber high end PA cabs effective at amplifying bass. Especially the subs. Electric bass is a different animal with different rules.
Click to expand...

+1 I recently heard Anthony at a relatively small club in Chicago (can't remember the name, but you would know it Mike..... in Lincoln Park). He had one of the house Bag End monitors for a stage amp with his little class D power amp that he carries around, and was cranking through the Bag End PA (not particularly hi fi). It was friggin' GLORIOUS.... growly, grindy, mid present with CUTTING upper midrange growl and lower midrange grind.

Interestingly, with that passive Fodera with the pickup in 'pseudo P position', that probably really was the 'true sound of his bass':D Sounded like a pushed SVT/Fridge.

I've heard him before with a hi fi PA type rig, and it was all low end, a little click up top, and not much else in the room (as you experienced.
 
#72
Bag Ends. I used a Q10BXD for about 12 years or so before downsizing. Great cabs, but they can be a bear to lug around. Mine was 96 pounds. Very good-sounding cab though.

When I bought it (at Corner Music in Nashville), their bass guru (J.D. Williamson) warned me that it's a very "unforgiving" cabinet. Meaning that if you make a mistake, everybody will hear it because they're so clear. ;)
 
#73
DukeLeJeune said:
A sealed box with a maximally flat (Butterworth) alignment of Qtc = .707 rolls off at 12 dB per octave. There's a widely used instructional car audio site that says 6 dB per octave, which is apparently a typo, but unfortunately people are being misinformed by that. The accompanying graph on that page on the car audio site is correct, here's the link, scroll down and look at the entry under "Qtc":

http://www.bcae1.com/spboxad2.htm

EDIT: I wrote to the owner of that site about the typo, and he corrected it, so I guess he agreed with me.
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I wrote to him also. He replied and mentioned two people writing him so I guess that was us. :)

I just pointed out the numbers on the graph which clearly showed 12dB per octave.
 
#74
...I suppose starting with raw frame speakers that have less deviation throughout their frequency response would be something to consider -modeling amps use these types of speakers due to their lack of coloration, from what you described it kind of seems you're looking for the 'instruments' tonal characteristics to come out instead of a particular speakers sonic traits. Bi-amping is a great starting point to achieve flatter response, especially if your 'low' cab and 'mid/high' cab are both relatively flat. ...Although 15's are typically considered low frequency speakers I noticed the Eminence Kappa Pro 15A would make a great choice for mid and upper mid band repoduction since it would accurately reproduce whatever is being put into it without adding too much of its own flavor, since it would be used primarily as a mid driver the cabinets dimensions would be less of an issue however as far as low frequency cabs & speakers there is much to be considered -it would seem a speaker with a tighter suspension in a sealed cab might have less overall bass then a ported design but may also exhibit smoother bass over a larger region, either way I'm sure you're going to get excellent advice from many of the members here, just keep in mind that in your situation 'flatter' may be better then louder.
 
#75
Arjank said:
What you do then is lower the baffle-step which works actually pretty much the same as the cut-off frequency of an open-baffle system.
You would need very large wings to get the baflle-step down to e.g. 70hz.
Click to expand...

Or, corner-load it.

Have you worked with folded horns? Granted, they can be pretty large, but I have seen some that were smaller and very potent.
 
#77
My bass sounds like a LIE !!!1!!11!!one!!

I might never understand the draw toward hifi in instrument amplification - after all, our job is sound production, not reproduction.

I'd far rather leave it to the guys at McIntosh to sort out how to make a flat freq response and 80kHz' worth of ultrasonic bandwidth sound like me & my rig than try to make me sound like I'm playing through a hifi.
 
#80
Mike Arnopol said:
In my cabs it's about the interaction of the room being one of the biggest obstacles to getting "flat" response. You can measure as flat as you want but when you get in the real world with room interaction that all goes out the window.

I played two gigs this weekend. Same bass, amp/speaker, different rooms. Same band and volume level. ENTIRELY different sound. feel, function. On Friday I had to really thin things out. If I were to play at a medium volume in my living room with that eq setting it would sound anything but flat. Thin and edgy. Rather than saying "flat" I'll instead say "my sound" After using only the bridge pickup and removing a lot of bass I was able to get closer to my sound. On Saturday it was neck pickup only and relatively flat amp settings. To get closer to "my sound".

It's all about "perceived sound" and function. One person's concept of a "flat" sound differs from another's. And that perception is also based on their bass. Which ain't flat either.

In developing a new line of speakers I moved to a speaker with "multiple voicings" Meaning that various switches change padding, crossover point and phase. You know what was likely my least favorite voicing?Measured ruler flat.(well close, anyway) With my bass it wasn't the "flat sound" that I was looking for. With a different bass it might be. My personal concept of a flat sound is similar to an Anthony Jackson "piano string" type of sound. The setting that measured "flat" didn't get me there. It's nice to be able to do that at your speaker.

And again---in the real world---interaction with the room is likely the most profound influence on your sound. And there are cabs that do better in not influencing room interaction.
Click to expand...

I'm in complete agreement and earlier comments re: room interaction are based in attempting to get people to do something about bad acoustics, with varying degrees of success. If I were to remove the panels in my listening room, which I won't because I didn't like the sound before, my bass would sound completely different from the way it does now. When I measured the room response, it had terrible reflections & cancellations, the sound was annoying and I could barely find a good place to sit in order to listen without feeling like my ears were being sucked out of my head. The graph was typical comb-filtering and I watched the response smooth out as I placed one, then the other panels in/near the corners. I built the speakers I use and was happy to see that the response with the panels is very smooth, down to 38Hz and I haven't used my subwoofer since April of last year.

If using acoustical treatments was recommended to club owners, I'm sure most would ask "Will I make more money?" and it's a valid point but going to see a band would be a lot less annoying, that's for sure.
 

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