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,
