BWC (Big Woofer Club): Why Big Woofers Matter

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by nishan99, Aug 5, 2020.

  1. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    And I’ve heard this shit. Some of it, you don’t need more than 30 seconds to know it sucks. Some of it, you need to spend time with it to know how good it is and you will never appreciate how good some of it is because Demi Lovato sounds like shit.
     
  2. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    You, Rob, have no idea what I do with my gear and get paid for, what most of my time with other peoples work is spent on, what I need to do the job, and why I need to do it for what reason with what gear. You have no idea why low bass extension is mostly irrelevant for what I need to do. You don’t know why I chose the limited but efficient set of tools I work with, how I chose them, what they do, what they do for me, and what makes them superior in function and sound to others in the same price ranges. If you can across many of them you’d be the chimp who cuts his hand by picking up the knife by the blade.

    It took me thousands of hours and at least ten thousand dollars of gear and records to get where I am today. I know what I have, what I like, what I need to do the job, what I need to buy to do it better, and what will make my life easier.
     
  3. Azimuth

    Azimuth FKA rtaylor76, Friend

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    Andrew Jones Pioneers were a) built with off the shelf parts, b) to meet a price point, c) to meet said price point, not the best built boxes. They are what they are and can sound boxy. They are definately one of the better choices in their price category.

    And no one is talking bass quantity. Yes, you can get big bass out of smaller woofers, or even many of them in a tower so you can have your screen in the middle, but there are trade-offs. But it is bass quality here, hence the membership in the BWC (still waiting on mine). Just because there are big speakers, does not mean they are inaccurate. It also could have been the the quality of the room you were in or something else. Not all 15" woofers are the same remember. Like the ones in the L100 and others, they were paper, which meant lightweight and could move with ease and fast. They also had super large voice coils, like 4" or something, with a super tight tolerance. So tight, when Fender started putting D130A's in bass guitar cabinets, they were coming back blown. So they JBL had to widen the voice coil gap just for Fender and thus the D130F was born. All this leads to tighter control of the woofer.

    Dyne also makes good things, they just have not been consistent. Their pro line from the early 2000's sounds WAY different than their laid back hi-fi consumer stuff today. Palm is just not a fan of the laid back British sound, which is what Dyne has been after the past 5 years or so, vs. the detailed and dynamic fast transient BM15A. It's like Dyne's pro line is a different speaker altogether, even if they look the same. I have always said they are way overpriced and now people are starting to realize it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  4. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

    Staff Member Pyrate BWC
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    Updated three posts above with photos regarding Andrew Jones and his work at TAD / Pioneer. Speaker designer Andrew Jones is actually one of the kings of "high-mass" big woofers. @RobS: do you think it's possible that you misunderstood what he may have said to you?

    One more TAD. TAD is about the most BWC anyone can be. Ahahaha. Muhahahahahaha. LMAO ROFL.

    tad3.jpg

    You should do a lot more research before you invoke the name of a famous speaker designer.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  5. Roget

    Roget Acquaintance

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    [​IMG]

    I am learning SBAF style.
     
  6. Roget

    Roget Acquaintance

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    Purrin: Will your burst responses work with speakers? This is very interesting.
     
  7. Azimuth

    Azimuth FKA rtaylor76, Friend

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    Let's not troll you guys. Marv, didn't you have a recent post about this?

    I will let RobS speak for himself, but I am only guessing here he was referring to the Jones/Pioneer entry level speakers and his ELAC stuff. The ELAC stuff does have some liquid low end, but not sure how clean and accurate that low end is.
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don't think he cares and he's admitted he is maybe autistic or shameless. I put up with it because he sometimes asks good questions that many don't ask. I don't think he's crossed the line.
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    No, @RobS made an appeal to authority on why his 7" drivers made better quality "faster" bass than bigger drivers by invoking the name of Andrew Jones to tell me that I was wrong. Evidently he wasn't aware of Jones' time at TAD. and the big ass woofers they had on their pro studio and top consumer designs. TAD could have used x8 smaller woofers, but they didn't. There are reasons for this. Basically all the reasons I cited.

    Yeah. I see a lot of big woofers.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  10. Azimuth

    Azimuth FKA rtaylor76, Friend

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    True. And now you pointed out something to someone that they did not know. He learn't today. Good job.
     
  11. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    This is true of the Elac Debut line.

    https://www.soundandvision.com/content/man-mission-speaker-designer-andrew-jones

    I know about his stuff with TAD, they are awesome. I've seen their older drivers and they look wicked. Their new woofers are insanely expensive though.

    You're missing my point though. AJ is a highly respected speaker designer that has no problem using smaller drivers.

    EDIT: Nevermind won't feed the troll.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  12. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don't either. I've got my small collection of 6.5" and smaller Fostex and various MT and MTM Seas and Scanspeak designs. However, I'm not going to tell people lies and say that the bass on these designs gets anywhere close to the 12", 15" and 18" deals. Or that somehow I can parallel enough of the smaller drivers in a column to reach the same performance goals.

    Stop shifting the argument. Your argument was always that smaller drivers produce better quality bass. If it wasn't the mass argument, which does not fly since F=ma, then it was impulse response, which did not fly since bass is low frequency. You then cited Jones specifically, appealed to authority to make your case, saying that there were no big woofers in sight in any of his designs, thus proving me wrong.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  13. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Curious. Did you mean Andrew Jone's US Elac products? Or German ones (AJ didn't design)? For the latter, might agree to some extent. However, for US Elac ones (Debut, Debut sig, up to Carina) I didn't hear sbaf virtues in their lows (highs suck too) regardless of the price points.

    I've seen Debut of and Debut sig were greatly loved by ASR and some youtubers. It did not take long until I disqualified them in a short audition. Not super unlistenable. But just underwhelming. No idea regarding his TAD works, they're insanely expensive, and only people I don't trust (e.g., Stereophile) raved them.
     
  14. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The TAD stuff was balls to the walls, but there is no reason one couldn't get 90% of their performance with much less expensive parts and some workarounds. Their stuff demands a premium because it was Pioneer's dick-waving Cadillac marque to show that they made stuff x10 better than Sony ever could. For the TAD horn/CD x2 woofer pro monitors, it would have been really hard, at least a few years ago, to get the treble extension since those Be TAD compression drivers were supposedly magical and reached up to 20kHz despite the 3" diaphragm. I almost bought a pair of TD-4002 fifteen years ago, but decided not to. Too expensive. To this day I will never know if those figures are real or fudged. I wouldn't have known what to do with them back then anyway. I know a lot more now fifteen years later.

    Radian makes Be cd stuff that is slightly, just slightly more affordable. Measurements I've seen show maybe 14-17kHz of effective response. I have heard the JBL Be stuff and it's good, smooth. It's my understanding that all the Be cd's sound good, smoother than aluminum diaphragms, which I never had a problem with in the first place provided they were made by a reputable manufacturer. One can always throw a supertweeter or dedicated horn/cd for the last octave like what JBL did with the K2 series anyway. The sad thing is that JBL has been slowly getting out of the parts business as they save their uber parts for their packaged solutions.

    I worry less about last octave extension these days considering my age. As for the woofers, JBL still makes a few 15" and 18" models that will work just as well as anything from TAD, but they are still expensive from $400 to $700 a piece. One can always cheap out and get an Eminence Delta 15LFA or something that like for 95% of the performance. A lot of European brands make good stuff. Beyma and Faital I have had good experiences with. As I mentioned before, woofer tech is low tech. Exception maybe for the TAD field-coil stuff, which is still low-tech, but insane.

    Speaking of field-coils, I wished I still lived in Michigan so I could visit Classic Audio in Brighton. Bring a car battery.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2020
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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  17. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    I heard the radian 5312 and 5312Be many times (Coherent Speakers, don't remember if Neo magnet or ceramic). the Be was maybe 5% more refined/smoother. honestly a toss-up, and the owner of the company said he always had aluminum diaphragms in his personal pair. the Radian coaxials are super duper modern, lively, exciting. insane transients. rimshots = gunshots, all with maybe half a watt input when the stock crossover was ripped out and replaced by a cap and coil.

    [​IMG]

    dude speaking of field coils and Michigan after COVID I need to take a vacation to Rockford and visit this guys house http://ultra-fidelityaudio.com/museum/
     
  18. Brian D

    Brian D Facebook Friend

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  19. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    So that's how they look like! The pictures only ever show the back. I'm still in paralysis trying to decide whether I want to go coaxial with the time-alignment benefit or the separate horn route with the horizontal dispersion benefit. i get it on the Be stuff. When you are in the midst of stuff, you stop caring about that last 5% and realize the chase is endless and at some point it's good enough for me. And if customers want to pay x2 for that last 5%, then they can do so.
     
  20. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    for me, I am really weird and I frequently stand up and walk around when listening, especially to piano, jazz and blues. its really rare that I will sit squarely in between the speakers and care about a stereo image. so the choice is clear for dispersion and that wonderful sensation of music filling every corner of the room. I also listen to mono (one channel) about 50% of the time and that sensation becomes even more important.

    the radians have a large throat which helps though, especially compared to something like Tannoy, of which the modern examples (HPD and beyond) sound 'pinched' around the crossover frequency.

    I think the older your recordings are as well, the less tendency there is to care about time-alignment and point source for playback. I mean, does one really want to hear the one-instrument-per-speaker Rudy V Gelder stereo recordings for what they are
     

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