I tend to oversimplify this one in order to make it easy to grasp the concept and discuss. Otherwise, the discussion will never go smoothly.
Look at a free-air frequency response graph and study the low end rollof on the left side, and the inductance rolloff on the right side (often this side is flat because the inductance is not accounted for but there is rolloff, rest assured). Now turn that graph clockwise just a bit until you have some symmetry with the rollof. This is how to visualize Qts.
Qts is total Q product (shape) at Fs. We're simply describing bandwidth with a shape that has a center frequency. The shape is either narrow or wide. Narrow describes HIGH Q and wide describes LOW Q. The driver is resonant and has output on either side of that resonance. In overly-simple terms, Qes describes the control the magnet/coil exerts with a given value, and Qms describes the control the spider/surround exerts, but this is a partnership that leads to Qts. And it changes the moment you put the driver in an enclosure, as was already indicated. If implemented incorrectly, high Q can get "ringy" and low Q can suffer from seemingly not much bass output.
Again, this is a very general approach to the subject but drivers are different today so some of what used to be hard lines for how to implement them has changed a great deal and left us with very blurred lines for which people are producing some very good results with very unorthodox methods. Myself, included. Sometimes you can rely on the motor, sometimes you can rely on the enclosure, but at all times use EQ. That's my advice.
Look at a free-air frequency response graph and study the low end rollof on the left side, and the inductance rolloff on the right side (often this side is flat because the inductance is not accounted for but there is rolloff, rest assured). Now turn that graph clockwise just a bit until you have some symmetry with the rollof. This is how to visualize Qts.
Qts is total Q product (shape) at Fs. We're simply describing bandwidth with a shape that has a center frequency. The shape is either narrow or wide. Narrow describes HIGH Q and wide describes LOW Q. The driver is resonant and has output on either side of that resonance. In overly-simple terms, Qes describes the control the magnet/coil exerts with a given value, and Qms describes the control the spider/surround exerts, but this is a partnership that leads to Qts. And it changes the moment you put the driver in an enclosure, as was already indicated. If implemented incorrectly, high Q can get "ringy" and low Q can suffer from seemingly not much bass output.
Again, this is a very general approach to the subject but drivers are different today so some of what used to be hard lines for how to implement them has changed a great deal and left us with very blurred lines for which people are producing some very good results with very unorthodox methods. Myself, included. Sometimes you can rely on the motor, sometimes you can rely on the enclosure, but at all times use EQ. That's my advice.
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