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

Almarg outlined the issues well I would say.

Sorry to have gotten irritated, I was upset at the idea that many manufactures are only concerned with marketing. I have known many , beginning with Sol Marantz and Stu Hegaman and by and large they were driven by considerations other than the maximum amount of money they could make. Of course there are those like Bose who are all marketing but they are rare. Most designers are trying to produce the best they can at a price they can sell their product for. The optimum size of woofers is a subject that has been debated for years and will not be settled in my lifetime and I respect anyone else's opinion. What I do not respect is unsubstantiated attacks on the motivation of people I like and , in many cases, admire. It has often been said that the way to make a small fortune in HI End audio is to start with a large fortune , sometimes good products are rewarded but often they are not. The lack of marketing skills has been far more prevalent in hi fi than an excess of them. The point I am trying to maintain is that it is possible to disagree about equipment without impugning the motives of those who make products we ourselves do not like. I have never succumbed to the charms of Magnapans but I do not think those that do are somehow defective in some respect. It would be boring in the extreme if everyone liked the same things. The older I get the more I realize that everyone hears things in a different way and what suits one will not work for another.

>In any subwoofer output, how important is the Watt output versus the woofer size?

Speaker efficiency is at best proportional to cabinet size and inversely proportional to the cube of the low frequency cut-off.

So all else equal, it's going to take 4X the power to maintain a given output level and bass extension in a 1 cubic foot box (like a Sunfire sub-woofer) versus a 4 cubic foot box.

You can't compare power without comparing box size.

Stanwal

I didn't attack manufactures at all, I simply stated that the reason they build small subwoofers is marketing. (the wife part was half in jest, and half not). A lot of people want subwoofers, in this day of hometheater. And many of those people can't, or won't buy huge boxes, they want small...and for many reasons.

Manfactures cater to market demands...thats called marketing, in case you didn't know?

I also didn't mention money (although you seem high on that subject...what a snob), didn't mention your $3,000 subwoofers, didn't mention my system...or my subwoofers...you did all that.

I simply stated that your "cone linearity" statement was hogwash, and that the large drivers of old that you mentioned (and implied was the wrong direction), were a product of their time, and of that times technology.

Actually, the two huge drivers you used as examples, saw limited use....smaller 18", 15", 12" drivers were used in most designs as I recall it.

I fully understand that many manufactures make "very fine" small/med/large subwoofers for todays "market" needs....but they don't make the small subs, because they found out they were better than the large subs (although they probably are better than the large subs of years ago, given todays advanced technology).

I may be wrong, but I believe the Sunfire True Sub (I bought mine 2 months after they came on market)was the first "small" sub (12" cube). As Drew posted, it takes a lot of power to produce a FR response down to 16Hz in such a small enclosue (even though a 12" speaker is not "small").

Bob Carver designed the 2700w RMS amp to compensate for the small box. Was Carver motivated by market demand for a small sub? I think so and more power to him.