Power to your speakers.

I have just had a conversation with a customer regarding how much power he could put into a bass speaker. Reading over many posts I have discovered that there are people who are always looking to put the most power available into a single speaker.
I wondered how opinions varied. My own thinking has always been that there is a limit regarding what I wanted the speaker to do. For instance, on a reasonable size rig, with say, 2000watts of bass amp available per side, I would sooner have 2 or 4 speakers pushing air than a single speaker doing it. I know this has practical implications, but forget that you only want to push 2 cabs into the gig. For me spreading the sound source for 2k of bass is better than it coming from a single source. What do you think?

I've a five way mono soundsystem, I can't spread the source because of short speakers cables . A simply one stack system at all. So I feed my speakers in 2 ways, the freshly reconed woofers at full power, the older at 2/3. Pretty empiric and "newbiesh"

Tony,
I think that most of the driver manufacturer's are going in the wrong direction. The object just seems to be to get more and more power into the driver and bugger if that is what people actually want. This is leading to drivers with a very large Xmax but lower efficiency due to the amount of copper doing sod all.

I personally would rather have 4 300 watt drivers with 99db sensitivity and say a 5mm Xmax than 2 off 1200 watt drivers with 97db efficiency and 8mm Xmax. All of the research appears to be going in the direction of the latter.

The former would be much easier to power and have much less power compression assuming the same cooling technology was used on both drivers

D & B appear to be one manufacturer that bucks this trend, who makes their drivers?

Tony (the lesser known one) smiley1

I can understand designers doing what they do from a technical advancement point of view, but most designers, whether it's amps or speakers, don't do gigs. I remember years ago, I spoke to mike Harrison, when he brought out his XI 2000. I said very nice, but what on earth do we hook onto the end of it. He told me it wasn't his problem and it was up to speaker manufacturers to catch up.
I personally think that the power ratings have gone as far as they need to. We all want a speaker that doesn't blow up, but thinking back over the years, apart from 30 plus of my JBL 2226 speakers catching fire ( manufacturing fault ) in one hit, I never blew up speakers when they only handled 200 watts. I always looked at the power situation as a scale of diminishing returns. Once you get to a certain size with a system, and then decide to increase the size, baring in mind the 10 to 1 power/ acoustic ratio, you get less and less effect for your money as you get bigger.
The point I am making is when you decide that you want a 1000 watt amp or speaker instead of a 500 watt set, you end up with something that is less than 1db louder. The only advantage would be a little more headroom, and perhaps finding a speaker that was more efficient than the last one. More opinions needed.

This is all advanced discussion stuff. But i look at it like this. If i had a few million knocking around and wished to set up a bespoke transducer manufacturing company. I would look at the best that has been made over the years. For example some weeks back Tony said the best 12" mid range driver he has ever come across was one made by RCF that's decades old, and wasn't replaced when they discontinued it.. I can vouch for that driver as i've heard it in a Concert System. Let's move on to some 15inch drivers. I wish to relaod my Concert System with 15's and i wish to put the best driver in them. Easily available is the PD 1550. But is it the very best for the job? Apparently not! It's good but it's not the best. JBL man who has tested over ten different drivers in the Concert double 15's says he would relaod those cabs with the JBL E 140's. Now here's the rub. They're not made anymore, but loads come up on US Ebay all the time! So a pal in New York will source eight good ones for me, as only the best will do for me. They're 400 watts, yet the PD's 600 watt. But i'm told the JBL's are better. Therefore it is 100% true that one can not judge things by the watt rating of the speaker as to how brilliant it'll be. Obvioulsy other issues mean more such as it's sentsitivity! Thank goodness for the wise senior dudes like JBL man.
My point is this. Personally i'm pretty cheesed off on two counts. Firstly the best drivers for my needs aren't made anymore, and apparently the modern ones are good, but not as good! That's a friggin' step backwards if ever there was one. If i had the wedge and importantly the knowhow i'd be putting my money where my mouth is, as that's the real deal. I would get hold of the best drivers there has ever been, take the f***ers apart, fnd out exactly how they were made and make identical copies and do the world a favour by making available what isn't around anymore, plus knocking on the head in the proces all this apparent cobblers that the bigger the wattage (power consumer) the more boombastic the driver is.
Taking this principle of - one can't top some inventions that have already been taken to their pinnicle one step further, that'sone of the reasons i do not think their are better cab desgins to come. Take my Concert System. You will not come across a better acoustic desgin than that, and it's nearly 30 yrs old.
It seems we shouldn't be looking to the future but the past. And if we lived on a world where wealth wasn't so hard to come by our talk and ideas would be more of a reality.
I may even make the drivers i need in years to come when i have a few million. Anything is possible in life.

Drivers are drivers. There are good ones for your application and bad ones for your application. The watts rating thing is mostly a marketing thing, a way for unenlightened souls to compare size.

If I set up a bespoke transducer company, I'd look at the speaker it was going in and design the transducer around that.

JBL are quite funny - they produced loads and loads of transducers with little difference...and recone kits to match. You can get some quite odd/wonderful combos - I've seen Franken-D-series that have been 'uprated', an E145 based '2225 smasher' (E145 has got a better magnet than it's newer cousin) among things

hmmm...

For me I think the aim of the game is sensitivity first, then power handling and X-max... but over all by combining the 3 I want to find the single driver that can produce to the most (SAFE) SPL... because, after all if each cab is louder then it's only getting to get better as you add more.

by safe I mean a driver that produces the most SPL within its comfortable operating limits.

Power ratings are 90% marketing... but in certain circles it can be about just getting the absolute maximum out of each cab.. no matter how many they are running... it's not for comfortable listening levels within H/S guide lines with perfect flat line rta response... it's about pressuring the airspace to the max and rattling internal organs... and like it or not (the traditional live sound engineer might not) there is a growing scene around this (dubstep being the prime example today & of course the ever popular father of sub-bass the dub sessions / dances).

So 2 different worlds... one to make music louder.. the other music that is made to be loud.

oh, and of course... arnt these new fangled neo-21"-dual coiled-helecex-super-woofer things super efficient & able to take stupid power? or am i wrong??

So 2 different worlds... one to make music louder.. the other music that is made to be loud.

I like this.

A big reason for doubts about high powered woofers is that they use super-high temperature glues and plastics that can operate up to virtually red hot now. But temperature causes thermal compression, so thermal compression at rated power went from about 3dB to at least 6dB. I often think in terms of "old school wattage" which is my estimate of when a driver will get too compressed and is usually below rated power.

Big heavy voice coils can be compensated for with bigger magnets to get back to a decent sensitivity (eg PD1850) but then you have an overdamped driver with a low Q and high upper knee - such drivers won't work well in certain cabinets. Big horns and bandpasses are OK though.

jsg wrote:

So 2 different worlds... one to make music louder.. the other music that is made to be loud.

I like this.

A big reason for doubts about high powered woofers is that they use super-high temperature glues and plastics that can operate up to virtually red hot now. But temperature causes thermal compression, so thermal compression at rated power went from about 3dB to at least 6dB. I often think in terms of "old school wattage" which is my estimate of when a driver will get too compressed and is usually below rated power.

Big heavy voice coils can be compensated for with bigger magnets to get back to a decent sensitivity (eg PD1850) but then you have an overdamped driver with a low Q and high upper knee - such drivers won't work well in certain cabinets. Big horns and bandpasses are OK though.

Totally agree, is the actual output between an old school 300w driver and a new 1000w driver actually that great, especially if you could apply the new cooling techniques.

Just looking at data sheets the typical 300w driver would have been 99db/watt and the newer 1000w driver would be around 97db/watt.

Tony

p.s. Mind you my box has got 1000w drivers in sounds a lot better than its only got 300w drivers in sic.

Stop getting all nostalgic. Loudspeakers are much better today than they were 30 years ago. The increase in power handling has come about largely because of material and adhesive improvements. If you built a loudspeaker similar to one designed 25 years ago with modern materials, it would inevitably have a higher power rating. Manufacturers are in the business of selling so they will promote the positive aspects of their products while ignoring or covering up the negative aspects. Power compression is bad and no one else owns up so why should we. Power handling is good ours will handle 1002 watts compared with your 1001. That is what consumers want.

Even when you consider Meyer, EAW, Turbosound, Nexo, etc, only a small percentage of loudspeaker transducers manufactured end up in professional (PA) sound systems. I wouldn't expect designs optimised for scoops and dubstep to be at the top end of many manufacturers to do lists. It might be a growing scene, but it is a bit like saying that the pimple caused by a gnat bite on an elephants backside is growing. It may be true but in the grand scheme of things it is still a pimple on an elephant's arse.