subwoofer question

Bob, Marty,

thanks for your answers!

We may be down to hair splitting now but if we take two similar subs like a JL Audio Fathom F113 and F112, these are very similar, do you guys still think the F113 ar faster?

Off my memmory of comparing these two at audition the sound quality was virtually indistinguishable to my ear. Both sounded very, very good (set up 2 channel with Maggies at a local hi-fi shop). I'm pretty confident that most listeners would find (provided that both are operated within their respective limits and without HT style effects info to distinguish performance below 20hz.) that they sound very much alike. The bigger sub will (presumably) play louder without distortion.

Marty

In the price range that you are looking at, I would go with a small driver sub that doesn't necessarily go really low. I think you will end up rolling it off at 30 hz anyway to take the room out of the equation. I would much much rather have a to little bass than to much bass.

Bob,

I prefer to treat the use of the word "faster" as merely a semantic issue, albeit a widespread one. An underdamped woofer settles less quickly ("slower")and produces a bass character that people (I think) call "slow". I suspect that people intuitively use the word because they correctly relate the quality in question - whatever you choose to call it - with inertia/momentum problems. The false, though understandable, leap is to the causal connection between increased mass and increased momentum/inertia. So, I accept the idea of "fast" bass, I just don't equate it to small drivers.

I might personally choose a different word in describing the phenomenon, but it seems that "fast" bass is usually (although I'm sure not always) understood to mean tight bass. So why fight it?

Marty