Why are there no powerful 8's?

[scottyk 10+ year member]

I searched, but didn't find much. Mostly people discussing current 8's that take decent power. Feel free to direct me to a topic if one exists that answers my question

I'm lovin my 2 1508's, but why is it that there really aren't any out on the market that can take more then around 1k? A kilowatt seems to really be right around where most 8's stand as far as max power and the only woofers that I've heard of that take even that much are the 1508's. Why is it that there 10's like the DC lvl 5 that can take 2 to 3k and there's multiple beefy 10's out there that take just as much, if not custom ones like thors 10's that take even more but when you step down to the next smallest woofer (8's) they don't take much past 1k? I've heard people say that its due to their small coil size...but surely you could make an 8 that would take a 3 or even 4 inch voice coil if you really wanted to push the bill yeah?

When I spoke with TeamPSI about making me a custom 8 that could take 2k, he said it wasn't feasible and that such a thing didn't exist (not throwing him under the bus or degrading his skills, just saying as a reference). Such a thing has never been done?

Just curious, I'd like to n the future experiment with a really high powered 8 just for the fun of it.

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[Buck 5,000+ posts]

1508 are powerful 8"s. If you know what you are doing you can throw over 1k to them a piece.

 

[S.B.C. 10+ year member]

Motors are usually bigger than the basket

But the Warden 8 FTW

 

[loud-n-low 10+ year member]

i believe coil/spider size but thats a guess

 

[x2o 10+ year member]

Motor size becomes a problem, as well as you cannot use a 3" voice coil on an 8" woofer.

Well, I'm sure you can, but the results likely wouldn't be desirable. There just isn't enough spider left after putting a 3" coil on as small of a spider that 8's have to use.

So 8's are usually restricted to 2" coils, which are obviously limited as far as how much power they can take.

 

[DNick454 10+ year member]

8's just have such little cone area, there's not a NEED to handle thousands of watts.

There's a couple reasons why there aren't "powerful" 8's. First off, the 8's out there right now get pretty loud with the power they're rated at (and usually take a bit more). It just doesn't take that much power to get a little 8" cone moving. Why would you WANT it to take more power? That's the real question. Sure, you can slap some stiff spiders on there to get it to handle the power, but there really isn't a point.

Besides the logical limitations as to WHY you'd want an 8 to take that much power, there are other reasons too, many of which are physical limitations. For example... look how small the 8" basket is. You can only fit so big of a spider in there anyways. Most 8's have 2 or 2.5" coils so there is only SO MUCH power you can thermally handle and that's a limitation that can't be broken. 8" is 8" so there's no stepping up in coil size to handle ridiculous amounts of power.

 

[sundownz Pro Seller]

2" coil is about the limit for an 8" with a traditional spider (DD 1508 is 2" as is my new SA-8 coming in February)... if you go to a 2.5" your spider is too small and you are just putting power on the sub for no reason, it's not moving any farther than a 2" with less power... and with a 3" coil you basically have a heat-sink for a coil as you aren't doing much at all *laughs*

You need to remember that the spider cannot be wider than the mounting hole.

 

[snoopysnooper 10+ year member]

8s cant use a bigger coil than 2" with out getting sloppy

spider landing is also an issue, ive brought this up many times to many people who all have said CANNOT be done, lol

so i gave up

why not just get made a 4000 rms 10 like psi did for grimreaper?

 

[sundownz Pro Seller]

It COULD be done... but not with a traditional spider... and therefore it would be fairly expensive. Most folks don't want to pay big bucks for 8s either.

 

[scottyk 10+ year member]

thanks for the awesome responses everyone, makes sense. Didn't really think about the spider issue with larger coils

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

I ran a MA Audio HK 4000D on a pair of DD 1508's in a 37hz tuned box for nearly a year with no problems....should've been about 1800 rms each....I beat the hell out of them trying to blow them and couldn't. The 1508's seem tough as nails to me .....

 

[thxsubwoofers 10+ year member]

Correct me if im wrong, but i think the Eclipse 8808" subwoofer uses a 3" voice coil.

 

[PV Audio 5,000+ posts]

Hey sundownz, instead of increasing the diameter of the coil, why not increase the layers that you wind on the former? I don't know enough about the actual mechanics of how drivers work or are manufactured to know if this is possible, but why not do a thick, multi-layered voice coil (8 layers, more maybe?) then increase the gap width to be able to fit it, then you could either go with a straight pole with a thick copper faraday loop on top to cut out the back EMF from the thicker coil or do a typical undercut pole to keep the fringe fields symmetric with a faraday loop at the bottom near the back plate ? Why wouldn't that raise powerhandling and BL significantly?

 

[sundownz Pro Seller]

You could add more layers -- I used a 12-layer on the Monster prototype. It adds alot of motor force but also adds ALOT of mass... most of the added motor force and power handling gets wasted in heat from all the mass.

 

[galacticmonkey 5,000+ posts]

If the coil is so big that there isnt enough spider, the sub wont be able to excurd the way it needs to.

Maybe if they used something like the old CV Strokers had where there was a spider on the cone... That way you could get a big coil on an 8 and still have the excursion. But when you wouldnt have as much done area as it would be anchored at the center, and cone displacement wouldnt really be linear through the different power levels. Pretty much same problem before.

Maybe focus on more efficiency instead of adding more power.