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Bill Fitzmaurice

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Posts posted by Bill Fitzmaurice

  1. 3 hours ago, warwickhunt said:

    Another (identical) cab is the correct answer... regardless of which amp you use.

    Absolutely correct. The second cab will increase both sensitivity and maximum output by 6dB. That's the equivalent of quadrupling power. Chances are the 350 watt amp will deliver all the power the drivers can handle. It's the rare twelve that can make use of more than 175w before running out of excursion capacity. OTOH the number of twelves that can take 500w without exceeding their excursion capacity is small, and they're PA subwoofer drivers, not electric bass drivers.

    • Like 1
  2. This is a proper tweeter for electric bass: https://eminence.com/collections/bass-guitar/products/bgh25_8

     

    Don't be thrown by the 25 watt rating. That's for the actual power in its passband, which is on average only 8% of the full system power. All tweeters used to be so rated, but it became too difficult for people to comprehend that of a 300 watt program perhaps 25 watts goes to the tweeter. In the cabs where I specify this tweeter I use a 4th order high pass filter that doubles its power handling.

    • Like 2
  3. You can't do that. BTW, the usual reason for blown tweeters is that the crossover is dodgy, and does not provide adequate protection from low frequencies. They also tend to use cheap tweeters. You may be able to upgrade it, but no one can say how without knowing what's in there for both the tweeter and crossover.

    • Like 2
  4. Not really.

     

    The product of cone area (Sd) and excursion (Xmax) is displacement (Vd), which combines with sensitivity to give SPL. To further complicate matters driver size, and in the case of multiple drivers layout, affects dispersion. There are no short and sweet rules of thumb, other than always use the same drivers in a grouping, and always have that grouping vertically aligned.

    • Like 6
  5. 1 hour ago, itu said:

    Measuring the whole frequency bandwidth needs quite a system.

    Not really. You can get by with a C weighted meter, for instance:  https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Backlight-Accuracy-Measuring-30dB-130dB/dp/B01MZ0IUGY/ref=asc_df_B01MZ0IUGY/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312357852128&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7748314164138405611&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002322&hvtargid=pla-348660547600&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62539486699&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312357852128&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7748314164138405611&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002322&hvtargid=pla-348660547600

     

    I was hired by a major outdoor concert venue that was being threatened with imminent shutdown because of noise complaints from the neighbors, despite having already paid a 'professional' sound control company $50k for a sound metering system. The complaints were about excessive bass up to two miles away. It took me all of five minutes to see what their problem was. The system was 'A' weighted. According to it the levels off-site never exceeded 75dB. But it didn't measure bass, so the actual off-site levels were routinely hitting 105dB and more below 100Hz. I wrote a new sound control protocol for them, then attended their concerts for three years to ensure compliance. It paid me better than playing, so I had no complaint. The noise complaints went away as well.

     

     

    • Like 3
  6. 56 minutes ago, agedhorse said:

     The old way of defining Xmax would often result in THD numbers even greater.

    In the case of under-hung voice coils the calculated xmax was zero. That caused more than a bit of consternation for loudspeaker designers.

    Eminence was one of the first to adopt Klippel. Circa 2004 they had to switch voice coil former suppliers, as DuPont stopped supplying Kapton to the industry. Changing the formers changed the driver specs, so they had to measure them all with the new formers to update their data sheets. They had recently acquired a Klippel analysis rig, so from that point used it to measure xmax dynamically. Most manufacturers have since followed suit. 

    • Like 2
  7. 3 hours ago, chyc said:

     

    This may be true in an abstract sense, but my TV shares a room with my bass amp and my hifi, neither of which exhibit this phenomenon.

    All drivers exhibit this behavior if sufficient power is applied to push the cone past xmax. However, at higher frequencies the voice coil may burn out first. Even when present one might not be aware of it when it's not severe. The fact that speakers have a point beyond which more power applied only creates higher THD has been employed by Klippel GmbH in redefining how xmax is measured. It used to be calculated by comparing the voice coil length and magnet top plate thickness. It's now the excursion at which THD reaches 10%.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  8. 3 hours ago, Nebadon2000 said:

     

    Thanks for clarification; I was only conveying what I have experienced and my uneducated guess at what was happening.

    That's not only not unusual, it's common. How sound waves work isn't the least bit intuitive, so it's a field where you must be taught. Figuring it out on your own isn't impossible, somebody was the first to do so, but it's not easy.

    • Like 3
  9. 11 hours ago, paul_c2 said:

    How does the room limit volume?

    Boundary reflection sourced cancellation. It can boost it as well, via cabin gain.

    Quote

    Rooms can only hold so much sound pressure/Volume and it dissipates itself out sorta like water.

    I'm afraid not. What is happening is that the cancellation modes that exist within the walls don't exist outside of them. It's the exact same reason why volume on or near the stage can be less than at the back of a room. That phenomenon gave rise to the myth of wave propagation.

    Quote

    Sometimes volume is limited by speaker and/or room; So after a certain point on Volume Control and power delivery Speaker and/or room is putting out their max volume so continuing to crank volume knob will do nothing

    Running out of driver excursion will do that, but not the room. Continuing to crank the volume results in increased compression and THD. It won't hurt an amp, and may not hurt the speaker. It's how guitar amps get a sweet cranked sound. Guitar drivers are made with a short excursion, xmax, to make it happen with as little power as possible. Bass drivers have long excursion to prevent it from happening to the greatest extent possible.

    • Like 1
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