Smaller speaker - bigger Woofer?

Larry

I know exactly what you mean. Years ago I thought if you didn't have a 12 inch woofer you weren't going to get the sound. I actually had disco speakers with two 12" woofers they really kicked on low end but couldn't handle classical. Wife made me get rid of them so I went B&W N802's. Not bad with a lot of power pushing them, but no where near what I use to get out of my GLI's as far as slam. I've heard Vandersteens, I don't remember the top model # but it had a seperate built in amp for the woofer not bad. I recently audition the N800's with two 10" woofers it made a difference. Either of those two are in my future. I guess what I trying to say is that you can't V8 performance from a 4 cylinder speaker.
Ps: I have the B&W Nautlis ASW4000 sub with a built in 450 watts amp and a 15" woofer. Shakes the floor on movies but not the same when listening to music. Wish you the best in your search, but the N804's sounds like they are too light for your taste.

Any thoughts on auditioning the Gallo Ref 3s?With their bass augmentation,you may get what you are looking for.The "warmth factor" can be adjusted with their 3-position tweeter switch.Just a thought-my two cents.

I don't know how diffrent the newer N804's are vs the Matrix 804's that I have, but I'm guessing it's not major bass difference.

I'd love to hear the Gallo's if I could just find a dealer anywhere near me.

I'll bet there's a market out there for a higher end aspiring speaker with larger bass drivers. Sure some imaging, soundstaging, etc. might be lost (though not necessarily), but there's just something you get with larger drivers that can't be duplicated with rows of smaller drivers or powered subs. It affects the whole presentation - and for me, in a good way.

You would need to go into a 3-way design at a point...another X-over. Eldartford has the right idea for small box design, I've listened to a pair of these years ago and they were stunning in their bass quality.

Dave

Bass is about moving air. Moving air is about the size of the driver.

I am using a pair of 12" Shiva woofers on each side: in open baffle design and push-pull configuration, located on the side walls near the main panels which are several feet from the wall behind.

Now let's talk about accuracy as opposed to distortion. Accurate bass in the lower frequencies is not heard that much because there isn't that much in the recordings. Due to either inferior producing and/or engineering, or simply because the musicaians do not necessarily provide it. It is not as though that was their goal :-)

Anyway, when it is there, the specific instrument, and its location in the soundstage should be identifiable.

A boom-box for instance provides a lot of bass (low frequency noise) but usually you cannot identify any instrument in the band making that 'noise'. It is magnified reinforced distortion. The 'sound' you get when woofers are located too close to the corner: exciting those pesky room modes all the more.

The 'bass reinforcment' you get by locating speakers close to the wall behind, or especially in the corner, is a euphamism for 'distortion'. That distortion then tends to smear the entire frequency range in the room, leaving the system little chance for any kind of realism in playback.

To each his own, I suppose.