Where’s The Woofer?

[Chienmortbb]

Some of you will know that @Phil Stayt bailed my band out last weekend by loaning us his RCF Art 310s.

 

Yesterday I battled monsoon and heatwave (typical British summer day) to travel fro Poole to Chard. 
 

As you would expect Phil and I spent  a few hours discussing speakers. In particular we compared my cube shaped 8” cabinet with his easy build 8” cabinet. My cab was designed to go with my Ashdown After 8 that I had extensively modded and called the After 80. 
 

Having been blown away, week mildly amazed, at how my 8” and the 6” cab Phil built, with Fane drivers worked for bass, he did an optimised version of the 8”. Yesterday was the day we compared them. 
 

Both cabs used the Fane Sovereign 8-225 driver. Phil will explain why but basically it was the same driver in each cab at substantially the same tuning  and cabinet cabinet volume. However the new cab was closer to the traditional  cab rather than the cube of my cab. Apart from small issues caused by a cubic cab, we expected the cabs to sound the same. As the saying goes, every day is a school day and the cabs sounded quite different. 
 

The difference was that my cubed cabinet had the driver quite close to the floor. Once the other cab was laid on its side so that both drivers were at a similar height above the carpeted floor, they sounded very similar. There was little difference to the low end but being nearer the floor/carpet really attenuated the upper frequencies. 
 

We are all aware that rooms with lots of soft furnishings sound different to hard floors/walks but I was quite shocked at the difference. 

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Being closer to the floor doesn't attenuate highs, it just makes them harder to hear, being more directional than low frequencies. You get the best results with the cab aimed at your head.