There's a lot more bass in a 6.5" driver than most of you think


One topic of discussion I often see new audiophiles touch on is whether to get larger speakers for more bass.

I usually suggest they tune the room first, then re-evaluate. This is based on listening and measurement in several apartments I’ve lived in. Bigger speakers can be nothing but trouble if the room is not ready.


In particular, I often claim that the right room treatment can make smaller speakers behave much larger. So, to back up my claims I’d like to submit to you my recent blog post here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html


Look at the bass response from those little drivers! :)


I admit for a lot of listeners these speakers won’t seem as punchy as you might like, but for an apartment dweller who does 50/50 music and theater they are ideal for me. If you’d like punchy, talk to Fritz who aligns his drivers with more oomf in the bass.


erik_squires
Schroeder’s frequency does vary from room to room. In general, the larger the room, the lower the Schroeder’s frequency and more directional bass is.

for a typical concert hall, it can be as low into the teens if not lower. So everything is directional, even double bass and the lower/lowest registers in the organ.

And I wonder if that’s why we are never able to reproduce concert hall acoustics in our relatively tiny rooms


@erik_squires apologies if you have mentioned it. back to your original post. I wonder how big is your room? 6.5" may be good enough for a medium room, but might be a bit lacking if there isn't enough travel to move enough air to energize a large room.

     The standard procedure for installing a 4-sub DBA system such as the AK Swarm, includes the final step of inverting the phase (simply by reversing the pos. and neg. connections on the sub) on each of the 4 subs sequentially to determine if any individual sub's phase inversion positively effects the overall bass performance in the room of the 4-sub DBA system as a whole.  
       In my 23'x16'x8' room, currently without any bass room treatments and without the use of any DSP or electronic room control/equalization of any type, I noticed no improvements in the overall bass performance in my room of inverting the phase on any of the 4 individual subs comprising my 4-sub AK Debra DBA system.  
      However, this does not mean that phase inversion on a particular individual sub in other 4-sub DBA systems would not be significantly improved in overall bass performance. I believe only a brief audition of a good quality 4-sub DBA system would be sufficient to convince the most ardent skeptic of this concept's near state of the art effectiveness.
      I have no stake in this concept except the $3K I spent to adopt it, my intention is solely to spread the word of how amazingly well it worked for me and will work for anyone else guaranteed, regardless of room or main speakers utilized.

Tim
@jmpsmash


apologies if you have mentioned it. back to your original post. I wonder how big is your room?


The total acoustic space is about 12.5’ x 30’, divided lengthwise into a living room and a second kitchen/dining area.

6.5" may be good enough for a medium room, but might be a bit lacking if there isn’t enough travel to move enough air to energize a large room.

So, again, the point of the post is not that everyone will be satisfied with a small woofer, but to help buyers understand that even relatively small speakers can put out quite a bit, and that room acoustics matter a great deal. For my modest apartment, with the couch 9’ or so from the speakers this is plenty of high quality bass.  Which brings me to another point:

Good room treatment can make speakers sound BIGGER. Going with larger speakers in a bad room may in fact be a bad idiea.
@erik_squires

"
To appreciate what constitutes a good bass, one needs to experience a distributed subs system like the Swarm
Not at all universally agreed to.
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/are-you-putting-subwoofers-behind-viewer "

The author has no idea how distributed bass works. Both Geddes (PhD thesis on bass) and Welti (Floyd Toole’s Harman lab) found in their research that key to distributed bass is asymmetric placement. Geddes believes three sources is enough: one in the corner, two others haphazardly against other walls. Duke LeJeune, Geddes’s coworker and constructor of the Swarm, adds the fourth source. There is no point adding more sources. Phase switching is not really part of the concept. Digital corrections of the whole system can be applied, but already the haphazard placement does most of the job. Digital corrections using counterwaves, such as those used in Kii3 or D&D, don’t really work below 50-60 Hertz. To battle complex phenomena like room modes, randomness is the most optimal way. Here, one can see easily, what problem room modes can be computationally:
hunecke.de | Room Eigenmodes Calculator