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

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.

Sogood, it is strange to see me called a snob because I pointed out that not all subs that used small drivers were cheap. The idea that marketing was behind sub design implicitly assumes that it is money that drives the market. I will point out to you that Wilson has just replaced 2 18" drivers with ONE 12" in their latest sub, the Watchdog, which runs $10,000. Do you really thing that this is to make it more paltable to wives? The top REL sub, at the same price, uses 2 10" and is widely regarded , IN THE AUDIOPHILE COMMUNITY, as being possibly the best sub available. I am becoming aware that the HT community has a completely different set of priorities. When REL brought out the T series for HT use they were quite different from the S series designed for music reproduction. The T series has no real bass below 30hz ( as opposed to below 20hz for the bigger S series) and the lowest filter setting is 60hz. With my subs I start rolling them off at 22hz. The idea that cone linearity and speed are irrelevant can be instantly falsified by looking at the speaker compliment of large speakers. The new Snell Illusion , which is their best speaker, uses 2 10" magnesium cones and is specified to be -3db at 27hz. Do you think that when a company is trying to get $50,000 for a speaker they will not use the best possible driver combination? The Avalon Eidolon Diamonds , which are specified to be 1.5db down at 24hz use 2 11" woofers. They are about $34,000. Why do I mention money? Because I am a snob? No, it is to point out to you that at this price range the only consideration has to be performance. All of these are far out of my own price range, the $2600 I paid for the Duettas is my high water mark. Ah, you say, but these speakers are not subs; while smaller cones may have an advantage at the range these speakers operate in they do not at the low end. This assumes that there is some magic frequency at which physical law inverts itself and what was true at 100hz is no longer true at 50hz. Someone mentioned that smaller cones have no advantage in the range 20-80hz. If this were true why do the speakers mentioned above not use larger drivers? I have never heard anyone suggest that the B&W 800d needs subs, yet it uses 2 10" woofers. The less mass something has the quicker it can react. The smaller it is the more linear is the movement. this is simple physics. But, you say, speed in subs is unimportant/nonexistant. There we differ. The search for a sub that will mate with Quad electrostatics is over 30 years old. As they react much faster than cones most subs are hopelessly slow. But some do work; i.e. those with smaller drivers. It is also important in matching the main speakers, larger drivers have more momentum, they do not keep up as well as those 12" and below. All of this is regarded as self evident in the music reproduction community. The HT community obviously has different ideas. As I am not a member of the community, even though I do have a video system, I will refrain from deriding the ideas of its members if they will extend me the same courtesy,