Subwoofers overpowering highs

[The_Quiet_One 10+ year member]

Im not just talking about the door speakers surviving, I mean how are they playing "music" will being shook to death from 8 15"s in a tunnel with 10,000 watts? But I kind of found the answer when I read how a speaker can reproduce a cymbal clash and a vocal at the same time. Even though I do not understand how a speaker can make two sounds while only being able to cycle at one frequency.

Without going into exhaustive detail.....

You've got to remember that a speaker has it's own motor producing vibration (music). Also think about the surface area of your car whereas a speaker has much less surface area and any ambient energy is much more evenly distributed than in a car. Eventually you do get loud enough to break stuff. At that point *shrug*

Fun experiment. If you got a decently motored junk speaker lying around see if you can stop it from playing music by placing pressure on it with your hand.

 

[fixinit]

This has probably been beat to death, but I was thinking about it when I was looking at a brochure for my home speakers. They a three way cabinets and I wondered how the tweeter and midrange still work when the subwoofer is sharing airspace.
Then I wondered how you guys who have a wall of 15s or 12 12"s have any highs audible at all. It seems the bass from the subs would tear up the cone and surround of the highs. But even if it didnt tear them apart, it at least seems to me that the hard hitting bass would not even allow them to play anywhere near properly.

Im not just talking about the door speakers surviving, I mean how are they playing "music" will being shook to death from 8 15"s in a tunnel with 10,000 watts? But I kind of found the answer when I read how a speaker can reproduce a cymbal clash and a vocal at the same time. Even though I do not understand how a speaker can make two sounds while only being able to cycle at one frequency.

It's great this forum is active just as a preface to my comment. Active and free sign-up like the old days when forums kicked off on the interwebs. The 15 or 12" driver in the 3-way home studio cabinet is wired in conjunction with the mids and highs causing no interference between all three. The larger driver (sub) at the bottom is visibly pounding and exerting air into and out of the cabinet while the mids--less movement, and tweets--no movement, aren't being affected--usually b/c of a cabinet port but not always. The example of the Altec Lansing that El-Camino pointed out makes older school design the staple of what's quality current day. The mahogany wood that Altec used soaked in the bass reverberations then distributed it through a tickling foot massage while the mids and highs sang independently like a chorus in a symphony hall. This was typically powered by something no more than a 400w receiver with an equalizer addition no one knew how to work, dual-sided tape recorder and record player that by the way, has way more dynamic range than most youtube music uploads.

To get to the nitty gritty. If someone wants to overwhelm their system with bass from 26hz-87hz and exclude the 88hz-9 octaves, then there's a problem with my last paragraph.

 

[The_Quiet_One 10+ year member]

It's great this forum is active just as a preface to my comment. Active and free sign-up like the old days when forums kicked off on the interwebs. The 15 or 12" driver in the 3-way home studio cabinet is wired in conjunction with the mids and highs causing no interference between all three. The larger driver (sub) at the bottom is visibly pounding and exerting air into and out of the cabinet while the mids--less movement, and tweets--no movement, aren't being affected--usually b/c of a cabinet port but not always. The example of the Altec Lansing that El-Camino pointed out makes older school design the staple of what's quality current day. The mahogany wood that Altec used soaked in the bass reverberations then distributed it through a tickling foot massage while the mids and highs sang independently like a chorus in a symphony hall. This was typically powered by something no more than a 400w receiver with an equalizer addition no one knew how to work, dual-sided tape recorder and record player that by the way, has way more dynamic range than most youtube music uploads.
To get to the nitty gritty. If someone wants to overwhelm their system with bass from 26hz-87hz and exclude the 88hz-9 octaves, then there's a problem with my last paragraph.

OP can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe he was talking about blending...That's doable at lower SPL levels.

I'm pretty sure he's asking how do door speakers handle the raw physical abuse of an extreme spl vehicle as well as the fundamentals of how a speaker can play several frequencies at once.

 

[BlurredVision 10+ year member]

Now I know in loud trunk, if not sealed, the pressure can make speakers pop and/or blow themselves. I knew a guy that did that. Guessing the pressure knocked the vc outta place. I'm using the foam baffle backing when I install to prevent that