Evaluating Subwoofers

[LiveAudio911 10+ year member]

Maybee I missed something.. I think your meaning to say Sensitivity.. even though they are the same thing.. with any speaker the Sensitivity rating is how well it can turn energy (Signal) into audible sound..aka efficiency Higher the number the better... but the fact that most people miss though is when dealing with a higher Efficiency sub vs a lower one.. the lower sub concentrates on the main notes.. often time missing some minute transitional notes... where as the higher Efficiency sub/speaker having the ability to correctly reproduce these minute transitional notes with in a certain limitation..

But this is only really that important to those wanting Quality sound.. and a daily driver.. often time the xover's are tuned higher than what someone pushing for SPL would be set too.. and in most cases the higher the low pass filter the less able a sub is able to produce the lower freq. because its busy tring to reproduce not only a short wave, but at the same time the lower..

For those only wanting to be loud and sacrifice some SQ for Volume produced a lower Sensitivity would be the choice.. but in the end.. it depends on what the end user hears and likes.. Most of these people on here that are new are just looking for something thats loud, hits hard and sounds good.. we should focus our attention on that.. because in the right enclosure and in the right installation, you can more than likely make the lower rated sub sound just as good as the higher...

Its not all about the driver.. the driver is only as good as the install.

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

911, you seem to be contradicting many of the things said earlier about sensitivity being measured at a far too high frequency to be useful in a sub setup.

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

Maybee I missed something.. I think your meaning to say Sensitivity.. even though they are the same thing.. with any speaker the Sensitivity rating is how well it can turn energy (Signal) into audible sound..aka efficiency Higher the number the better... but the fact that most people miss though is when dealing with a higher Efficiency sub vs a lower one.. the lower sub concentrates on the main notes.. often time missing some minute transitional notes... where as the higher Efficiency sub/speaker having the ability to correctly reproduce these minute transitional notes with in a certain limitation..
But this is only really that important to those wanting Quality sound.. and a daily driver.. often time the xover's are tuned higher than what someone pushing for SPL would be set too.. and in most cases the higher the low pass filter the less able a sub is able to produce the lower freq. because its busy tring to reproduce not only a short wave, but at the same time the lower..

For those only wanting to be loud and sacrifice some SQ for Volume produced a lower Sensitivity would be the choice.. but in the end.. it depends on what the end user hears and likes.. Most of these people on here that are new are just looking for something thats loud, hits hard and sounds good.. we should focus our attention on that.. because in the right enclosure and in the right installation, you can more than likely make the lower rated sub sound just as good as the higher...

Its not all about the driver.. the driver is only as good as the install.

Driver efficiency and sensitivity are not correlative. Neither is your argument that a driver with a lower efficiency would have a difficult time reproducing music accurately.

 

[LiveAudio911 10+ year member]

Driver efficiency and sensitivity are not correlative. Neither is your argument that a driver with a lower efficiency would have a difficult time reproducing music accurately.

How is it not.. if the sens. is the measurement of how well the product can turn source power into audible sound thus is part of the efficiency... efficiency is how well the product performs.. and efficiency in this case would mean how the sub can actually use of the signal given to it.. so it is directly in relation with each other.. I cant see how you can say its not..

Technically it would.. but the end user would not notice it... he would only notice very slight difference.. if at all any but I dought it unless he has his ear right next to the unit.

My main point here was simply to say that the argument over which is better is one of opinion.. technically supported or not.. and should not be one of the biggest factors for these people to select a product. As each small difference technically has a difference,.. but to the end user is not that big of a deal. So why even point it out.. its like saying the biggest factor to look for in a radio is the color of the display..

Or maybe I yet to see the point in it to begin with..

 

[LiveAudio911 10+ year member]

I know this thread is dead now but for ppl that look at this.. I stand slightly corrected..

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The Sensitivity or Efficiency of a speaker tells how loud the speaker will play under standardized conditions. You will see a specification that may read "90dB SPL 1Watt @ 1meter". This means that when 1 Watt of power, usually a 1kHz tone, is fed to the speaker, the resulting output is 90 decibels measured at 1 meter from the speaker. The lower the dB rating, the more power needed to reproduce at the same volume as a speaker with a higher Sensitivity rating.

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[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

i laffed

thrice

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

Maybee I missed something.. I think your meaning to say Sensitivity.. even though they are the same thing.. with any speaker the Sensitivity rating is how well it can turn energy (Signal) into audible sound..aka efficiency Higher the number the better... but the fact that most people miss though is when dealing with a higher Efficiency sub vs a lower one.. the lower sub concentrates on the main notes.. often time missing some minute transitional notes... where as the higher Efficiency sub/speaker having the ability to correctly reproduce these minute transitional notes with in a certain limitation..
But this is only really that important to those wanting Quality sound.. and a daily driver.. often time the xover's are tuned higher than what someone pushing for SPL would be set too.. and in most cases the higher the low pass filter the less able a sub is able to produce the lower freq. because its busy tring to reproduce not only a short wave, but at the same time the lower..

For those only wanting to be loud and sacrifice some SQ for Volume produced a lower Sensitivity would be the choice.. but in the end.. it depends on what the end user hears and likes.. Most of these people on here that are new are just looking for something thats loud, hits hard and sounds good.. we should focus our attention on that.. because in the right enclosure and in the right installation, you can more than likely make the lower rated sub sound just as good as the higher...

Its not all about the driver.. the driver is only as good as the install.

Efficiency does not correlate with transient response. And efficiency only plays a role in freq response (the passband) so far as hoffman's iron law dictates. Your theories on how efficiency affects the sub's ability to handle rapid transitional bass, or upper bass, are complete incorrect.
Efficiency at 1khz does not correlate with a passband the subwoofer will ever see, making comparisons based on that spec questionable at best. This has been said repeatedly now, read the thread.