Subwoofer Plug

I am old enough to remember when AR came out with their first speaker, which was the AR1...just a woofer. Then they added a high end driver, and the AR2 was born. It blew away every other speaker on the market.

Maybe it is time for acoustic suspension to be reborn. Most present-day audiophiles have never heard true AS, and their reaction might be similar to what happened back in the day.

To Johnyb53 and Eldarford, I have Harbeth and Spendor LS3/5 type two way monitors with sealed woofers. The bass reminds me of the older AS speakers from years ago. Are these considered AS?
Thanks
Yogiboy

JohnnyB

Your are describing the properties of a driver optimized for a AS design. The OP does not have that. He has a ported design he wishes to convert with a plug. I only mentioned that he can get SOME of the benefits of the AS design (not all of them) by plugging his ports. He will also give up some of the low end frequency response he gets with a ported design.

Telling him to buy another speaker entirely is not that helpful IMHO.

There are numerous manufacturers (like B&W for example) that supply port plugs for their vented speakers. No one says this will convert their ported cabinets to an optimized AS design, but it may provide benefits. I myself do this to tighten overall bass response when using my HSU sub (which is also sealed) and adjust the crossover to compensate for the higher CP of the plugged B&Ws.

You can also find numerous speaker design guides that mention the use of the same driver in either AS or ported cabinets. Does not mean that using these mulipurpose drivers in a sealed cabinet is a bad thing. The driver does not have to optimized for AS to be called AS. That's nitpicking.

Dhl93449... For true AS the driver must be quite specialized, and completely useless in a ported enclosure.

Just curious, but have you ever held in your hand a 10inch driver with free air resonance of 13 Hz? Such were in my KLH12 and KLH5 systems. Question 2... can you find such a driver on the market today?

09-11-12: Dhl93449
JohnnyB

Your are describing the properties of a driver optimized for a AS design. The OP does not have that. He has a ported design he wishes to convert with a plug. I only mentioned that he can get SOME of the benefits of the AS design (not all of them) by plugging his ports. He will also give up some of the low end frequency response he gets with a ported design.

Telling him to buy another speaker entirely is not that helpful IMHO.

I never told him to do any such thing. I was addressing Dhl93449's assertion that acoustic suspension and sealed enclosures are the same thing. They are not. I *know* the OP has a ported enclosure. Acoustic suspension isn't really any part of the OP's discussion. But plugging the ports changes the damping, causes the bass rolloff to happen at a higher frequency, *but* makes the rolloff occur at a gentler slope. I'm all for him trying it.

I was just trying to address the misconception that sealing the enclosure turns the sub into an acoustic suspension design. It does not; but it turns it into a sealed enclosure, or at least raises the damping significantly.