Sub output: Is it the woofer size or the rated RMS

"And they simply wouldn’t be able to respond to transient peaks as quickly as our tens.""

Smaller dynamic drivers do have an inherent advantage in regards to transients over larger drivers even if disadvantaged in regards to reproducing the lowest octaves.

I've always leaned towards smaller drivers in conventional dynamic speaker designs in general as a result.

For subs, I've heard it done well with both larger and smaller drivers, again depending on the robustness of the overall design more so than just pure driver size.

Sometimes it's simply a matter of Proportion, like sticking a babies head, on a 250# man. Or building a huge state of the art hometheater sound system, and then watching the movie on a 27" screen....it's just not right.

The design is of the utmost importance for a sub it's true. It's just easier as the driver size increases. That being said a system with multiple small drivers would probably be the best but would require a lot a of equalization and power to have real low bass.

"Why do we use eight 10” speakers? Because we learned early on that 10” speakers work much more efficiently than fifteens or eighteens—and if you put eight 10” speakers together, you can move a much larger column of air."

Mmarvin19 - excellent point. Bass players know that 10" speakers provide the best compromise between power and bass definition and use arrays of many 10" speakers.

Speakers in array made in the same enclosure work better. (Acoustic impedance lowers, resonance frequency drops down) Making simple reasoning 18" speaker moves 3.24 times more air than 10" speaker. To avoid membrane bending (cone breakup), that Almarg mentioned, membrane has to be 3.24 time thicker and in order to keeps everything proportional coil and magnet have to be 3.24 times larger to move 3.24x heavier membrane with 3.24x more air pressure. Am I right? Speaker people - are you there?

One correction - membrane of 18" speaker should be 10.5 times heavier because it should be 3.24 times thicker and the area is 3.24 times larger. That is probably why definition is getting poor (too heavy).