Bill Fitzmaurice

All things considered if I had to settle for store bought I'd have a pair of 8 ohm 210, stacked with the drivers vertical. When two aren't required leave one at home.

51 minutes ago, Gwilym said:

mm or cm? Stonehenge! 

Whatever. I still use real measurements that we got from good King Henry VII, not that latecomer Napoleon.

Neo cabs aren't necessarily lighter. For instance, one of the most common tens is the Eminence Beta 10. It weighs 3.1 kg. The neo Deltalite II 2510 weighs 2.1 kg. In a 410 the driver weight difference is only 4 kg. Neos are quite a bit lighter when you're talking about premium drivers, but most bass cabs don't use premium drivers. It's a different story with the cab material. A 120 mm x 240mm sheet of 18mm Italian Poplar weighs 21 kg, the same size of MDF in 15mm thickness weighs twice that. You have to look at the weight of the finished cab, not just the driver magnet material.

On 14/07/2022 at 11:07, fleabag said:

I wonder what on earth a J curve line array is. Did Yamaha invent this as marketing BS and it means nowt. ?

 

Well, we will know if Fitzy laughs at it, whether it's a real thing or not 

 

 

@Bill Fitzmaurice   ?

It's a real thing, in concert sound applications, with arrays that are at least 3 meters high, either stacked or hung so that the lowermost cabs in the array are well over the heads of the close in audience. The lower cabs are tilted down to aim at that close in audience. Doing so with an array the size of that Yamaha is as useful as the inclusion of mammary glands on a male bovine. They're obviously trying to cash in on a buzzword that potential buyers may have heard but don't understand. I'd expect that from Bose, but not Yamaha. 🙄

As for ten 1.5 inch drivers delivering high quality sound over long distances, clearly their definition of long distances isn't the same as mine.

2 hours ago, pete.young said:

Buy the 410 and ditch the single 15!

The 410 is a classic example of how not to build a speaker. Placing drivers side by side halves the midrange dispersion compared to vertical placement, while creating comb filtering in the highs.

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Or 2 2x10”s and stack them vertically 😉

That. It gives maximum horizontal dispersion, no comb filtering, and places the upper drivers high enough so that you can hear the mids and highs without having to stand 3 meters out.

Diversity is just what you don't want. The two cabs would be both augmenting and detracting from each other, depending on frequency, while the 410 would likely be cruising comfortably while the 115 is stressed. Mixing different size drivers to take advantage of the main difference in how they work, which isn't response, it's dispersion, is SOP with hi-fi and PA. But in hi-fi and PA crossovers are employed so that the different sized drivers are not operating within the same frequency bandwidth. They've done that since the 1920s. Electric bass cab manufacturers as a whole are just a wee bit behind the curve. 🙄

+1. Get another identical 115. Not only will it work, it will work better than mixing cabs.

On 07/07/2022 at 15:11, fretmeister said:

I've always wondered why some bass cabs go to 20kHz.

That goes to the history of tweeters in bass cabs. They were added to enhance high frequency response at the lowest possible cost. Midrange drivers would have been a better choice, but they were much more expensive, so tweeters were employed instead and the die was cast.

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My Super Twin tops out at 4kHz and that's plenty for anything other than really cutting Marcus Miller top end - which I don't like anyway.

4kHz is fine if your style works with that. I prefer at least 8kHz myself. But even Marcus doesn't need anything above 10kHz.

Most look pedestrian, other than the two fifteens to the right and the EVM 12 next to them.

4x1300 watt should have tipped you off. Yes, such amps exist, but only from the likes of Powersoft, and only for mucho dinero.

Way back when 25 watts was a big amp bi-amping was employed to give more power to the system, and to save HF drivers. When a full range amp was pushed to clipping, which was common when the power available was so low, that clipping resulted in harmonic levels far above normal, and that would toast high frequency drivers. That's no longer an issue today, but modern digital crossovers allow very high filter slopes. 24dB/octave is the practical limit with passives, while 48dB/octave is common with digital signal processing. Very high slopes allow running high frequency drivers to lower frequencies, for better system dispersion, and much better driver protection.

Your example is one where b-amping is worthwhile. Effects, be they time based or distortion based, work in the mids and highs, so ideally they go though their own amp and speaker, with the lows remaining unprocessed through their own amp and speaker. Chris Squire more or less invented this technique, using a bass amp for clean lows and a cranked Fender Twin for the distorted mids and highs.

46 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

For a 1kW+ system you'll need to run your crossover for the bass and mid-range drivers before the power amps.

Not necessarily. For one thing you'd need at least two premium fifteens to handle even 800w. Passive crossovers can handle that.

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because of the physical size of the crossover components that would have to be used in the cabinet?

The crossover wouldn't likely be below 800Hz, so the size and price of the components wouldn't be a problem.

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And the amount of power that you'll lose as heat in the process.

The amount of power loss with a well designed crossover is insignificant. Bi-amping and tri-amping make sense with large PA systems, but where electric bass cabs are concerned it's an unnecessary level of complexity.

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When Alex started Barefaced he placed a lot of store in three-way designs with a dedicated mid-range driver although he’s subsequently moved away from that approach.

That was probably because they didn't sell well. My preference is for a 2 way, albeit crossing over to the HF element at 2kHz. The typical 2 way bass cab crosses over at 4kHz, resulting in poor off-axis response in the 2kHz to 4kHz octave. There's also no reason for having response above 8kHz. Even slap and pop doesn't go higher than that.

5 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Thanks Bill. 

 

What's your view / recommendation of a decent set up for powerful bass reproduction then? 

I don't see the need for a sub plus line array top for electric bass. Standard cabs work just fine, so long as if you do have more than one driver or more than one cab that the drivers are vertically stacked, which, from a technical standpoint, is a line array.

That's an example of a system that IMO makes no sense. Three inch drivers are too small to reach down to 100Hz to cross over to the sub, and if you're going to have a line array of midranges there should also be a line array of tweeters. As for 'Powerful bass reproduction with 2 x 8" Woofers', in a living room that would be marginal. In a club? No way.

I don't know if any of them are worthwhile, but then I'm not shopping for speakers myself. Mine are, however. 😉

From what I've seen most of them use tiny midbass drivers with no tweeters.  For pro applications I wouldn't use smaller than six inch midbasses other than for a coffee house acoustic gig, and tweeters are not optional, unless you're sure your audience can't hear above 8kHz.

24 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Indeed - so surely that means the length of the array effects the dispersion of the array in general, as below the given frequency, the dispersion of the vertical plane means that more power is lost going up and down which is not where you want it, compared to the higher frequencies that aren't doing that.

With the size of the arrays used in club situations that's not a concern. But even relatively short arrays do have higher intelligibility than point sources, because high frequency early reflections off the floor and ceiling are reduced. Those early reflections result in poor sound quality.

With large arrays the inverse square law no longer applies to frequencies where the array is at least three wavelengths high. Instead of losing output at a rate of 6dB per doubling of distance from the source they lose output at a rate of 3dB per doubling of distance. This greatly improves intelligibility at longer distances, as higher frequencies don't carry as far as lower frequencies due to their absorption by the air molecules that they pass through.

This brings up an important point. Bose for one, and I'm sure others as well, touts this effect, which is known as the near field condition. The Bose array is high enough for upper frequencies to be in the near field. However, distance that the near field extends from the array is also dependent on the array height. These club size arrays are far too short for the near field to extend more than a few meters out, where it then transitions back to far field and the inverse square law again applies.

3 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

The moral of the story is don't believe the store guys or You Tubers.

+1. If there is a problem with column arrays it's that most of them are very overpriced for what you get.

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The column length of the.. umm column gives the lowest wavelength that will beam. So therefore if all your power above (say) 2k is being beamed horizintally by the column

The length of the array only affects dispersion on the vertical plane. It has no effect on the dispersion on the horizontal plane. A major benefit of a line array that uses multiple smaller woofers rather than one or two larger woofers is that having smaller cones midrange dispersion is wider. That being the case tweeters can be crossed over to at a higher frequency, reducing the cost of both the tweeters and the crossover. From an engineering standpoint there are no downsides to column arrays when they're properly designed and constructed. Their issue, besides price, is that not many are. A secondary problem with respect to using them for PA is when the array is mounted above a sub. Good placement of mains and good placement of subs usually requires that they don't share the same footprint.

1 hour ago, chris_b said:

 I'd check with Vanderkley, they could advise if their 210's are designed to work with their 15's. I believe their 112's and 210's were designed that way.

I've seen that claim made, but in order for it to be true the speakers must have nearly identical phase response and displacement limited power handling. That's rare even when they're the same size, let alone different sizes. Besides, if you asked a speaker manufacturer to provide you with that data the only response would be a different sound entirely, that being crickets. 🙄

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

Calling @Bill Fitzmaurice

First, ohmage is what you pay to The Ox. Speakers have impedance.

Not only should you not use cabs with different impedance, you shouldn't mix cabs at all, with one exception, that being when they are loaded with identical drivers wired so that each driver receives the same power. For instance, that could be an 8 ohm 110 along with a 210, the 210 drivers wired parallel for 4 ohms. You'd have to be sure that your amp would handle the resulting 2.7 ohm load. Still, the best route is to use two identical speakers.

It was always very noticeable for me when I last had a valve amp, a Fender Bassman. That would have been around 1970.

Yes, because the added cone displacement of a second cab gives a sensitivity boost.

1 hour ago, Gripbass said:

 

 Some advice would be great... 

Plug them in, play through them. We can't tell you what you'll think of them, only you can do that.

I've never used larger than 14 gauge. 16 gauge is sufficient with the short length of an amp to cab lead, but since I always have 14 gauge on hand for use with PA that's what I use.

A mic is better anyway, as it captures the same thing that you hear. But all is for naught if the guy behind the console doesn't know what he's doing. IME, which includes just about every top touring act of the last 20 years. most don't.

2 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

I think even the Aussies have to give the new guy a month before it's his fault.

Not on Sky News. 🙄