More wattage to speakers means?

[Hydrastas 10+ year member]

For comparisons im going to use the Oz Audio Power 15.1 4000 watt rms sub compared to an american bass DX15 350 watt rms sub... I understand that the DX15 has a 100 oz magnet with paper cone and the 15.1 has a 230 oz magnet with glass fiber/pmi cone, but what the hell is the difference in the sound produced in speakers that have a 3650 watt rms difference? Let say you use the same amplifier, just when you run the DX15 you have the gain set very low. With which speaker would you be able to "feel" the bass better? I'm almost certain that the 15.1 would have much more sound intensity, but would it have more bass that you can feel and not so much just hear?

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[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

not necessarily....you may only need 350 watts to get the low power sub moving but generally if you have a 4000wrms sub you will definately need more than 350 watts to get it moving as good as the 350 watt rated sub.

 

[Hydrastas 10+ year member]

yes, but if the 4000 rms sub was getting 4000 watts, would it make more vibrations throughout the car compared to the 350 rms sub? Or would all the extra wattage go towards sound intensity? Just because a sound is louder, doesn't mean that it makes the car shake as much. The main question i have is if you were to play both subs at their rms level and in simple closed enclosures and both at 100 hertz, if you were to sound proof the car, which speaker would make the car shake more?

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

its pretty obvious that 4000wrms will make the car shake quite a bit more than 350 wrms. I'm not just saying that because of the numbers either. i had a single W3 at 400 watts playing and it vibrated my car slightly, then i put my 15 XXX in at 1400 wrms and it literally rocked the whole car.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

For spl speakers, for the speaker to have a higher potential for loudness, it's built with beefier parts, which need more power to move, so the higher the potential of the sub, the less efficient it is.

Also sq speakers are generally inefficient, because they're designed to have the best possible damping, for the purpose of time accuracy, and just plain not moving when they're not supposed to.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

Also sq speakers are generally inefficient,

Tell that to Lowther or Fostex...

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Tell that to Lowther or Fostex...

...or jbl or JL or Audax or a ton of others. It has only been a relatively recent occurance that SQ drivers have gone over to being really inefficient with a lot of moving mass and a huge motor capable of taking the ton of power that it takes to get the heavy speaker moving.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

Probably because it's only been recently that power has gotten really, really cheap for mainstream SS designs.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

The efficient vs. inefficient speaker debate, actually, has been going on for excess of 30 years. It seems the current trend is definitely back to inefficient speakers.

The camp for inefficient speakers says that low power speakers reproduce unintentional artifacts, such as line noise, or interference, and also have less damping potential for steep contrasts between loud/soft sounds, or rapid frequency changes, while proponents of efficient speakers say inefficient speakers require so much amplification that subtle differences in sounds are difficult to reproduce, and some of the underlying tones are lost.

This IS car audio, tho, where i would say noise rejection is of prime importance, not to mention putting a car audio system in a metal can needs to have exellent physical damping power, and the current inefficient trend reflects that. If this were home audio, and the usage of a power-conditioners, and insanely discrete amplification were commonly used, and all component drivers were housed in a tuned wooden cabinet, then the argument might sway the other way.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

I wasn't even making a car/home audio distinction, just correcting the statement that inefficient speakers are better for SQ //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

High efficiency is hard to come by in a vehicle, but it's more of a problem with the installation - you simply can't fit backloaded horns for midbass in a door. You can, however, fit HLCD's for high frequencies, and I doubt anyone that runs them experiences noise issues because of it.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Noise within a car is most always a result of a poor ground rather than insufficient power. There is nothing in a car that is typically close enough to a speaker wire capable of creating a strong enough fluctuating mag field to cause noise issues in a low power situation. This is different in a home install where you have transformer hum line hum etc...

The current driving force behind ineffient speakers is twofold. As Jim mentioned, power is cheap these days. Really, stupidly cheap. As such the need for efficient drivers isn't a matter of money anymore. Secondly, designers are using new technologies to eliminate the sources of distortion that originate in the loudspeaker itself. The two biggies are cone flex and motor nonlinearity. XBL^2 and similar concepts addressed the motor linearity issue. The result was a motor that was very constant in its power over a large range of excursions, the trade off was a lack of power around the center of the suspension travel. This is the area where efficiency comes from. The ability to get the cone of the driver to move away from the center with minimal power is pretty much the definition of efficiency. By lowering the motor strength in this area the efficiency was reduced. A side effect of the flattened BL curve was that the motor now had more power out away from the center point and could drive the cone further than before. To keep the added Xmag from exceeding the capability of the suspension heavier, larger and stiffer surrounds and spiders were incorporated. This extra damping further reduced the efficiency of the speaker. The final design trade off was that since the speaker needed more power to get moving, it needed to be able to handle more power. This dictated a heavier voicecoil, further decreasing efficiency. The solutions for the other cause of distortion, cone breakup, led to stiffer but heavier cones. The added beef of the suspension required to maintain control of such a heavy cone further reduced efficiency.

The final result is a very linear driver over a wide range of excursions and volume levels. The tradeoff is that it NEEDS a ton of power to produce much of any output. If you don't really need the extra excursion or volume, a more conventional low excursion and more efficient driver will probably suit your needs just find. Since you won't be driving the hell out of it, the motor will remain in its linear range and the cone won't be subjected to the stresses of high excursion and will be less likely to break up.