Sealed ported Subwoofer

[transistor495]

Ok, I have a sub unit in which the woofer is not at all visible outside, rather it just dipped carefully inside, with a bass-port of course . This one is creating a very nice boomy sound leaving the listener difficult to separate the lower frequencies produced. What the hell of a design is this compared to a front/side/down firing ported/sealed woofers? In my experience, I think the woofer front should be visible to outside to produce the 'thumps' in a music(80Hz-200Hz suppose) and the bass-port better suitable for the extreme lower frequency tones(<80Hz). So combining the both makes a better sub unit. This unit with only the 3" diameter bass-port just booms a lot.

What's your thoughts on it? Any audiophiles here

 

[cr0sh]

My thoughts? Cerwin-Vega 15's (circa late-1980s) all the way if you want real bass response...

 

[bountyhunter]

This one is creating a very nice boomy sound leaving the listener difficult to separate the lower frequencies produced. (

That describes about 99% of the speakers I have ever heard in my life. They are designed that way to sound more "bassy" because people equate more bass with better speaker.

 

[dr peppers]

Boomy isnt a brilliant word in speaker design, it applies to a speaker with poor transient response, instead of a thud for the kick drum you get a 'kaboom', an unpleasant situation.
Sounds like your design is a bandpass, you can get good results from such a design, its all down to the driver you use.
Did you use a design program to design the cab, or did you copy another design?

 

[transistor495]

My thoughts? Cerwin-Vega 15's (circa late-1980s) all the way if you want real bass response...

Wow..I went to their website and they looks just awesome products, but costly ya know

And Dr. Pepper, I haven't designed any...it's just a second-hand item I collected from my nearby circle and the model is iBall Tarang 2.1. The company only claims they sounds excellent

In my desktop I usually listen to my Creative T40 speakers. They're audiophile graded units and sounds excellent. May be that is the reason that I feel downgraded while listening to this cheap 2.1 thing. But this one has a very good build quality and may feel much better to someone who upgraded to his normal plasticky desktop stereo speakers.

Creative T40's are very nice but bit costlier item but is recommened if you really want to 'feel' the desktop music. I just feel bit romantic while listening to instrumental music on'em, I can say that it produces lots of tones that are not even noticeable in a cheap speaker system.

 

[unclejed613]

that's called a dual bandpass box, where you have two "boxes" one on each side of the woofer tuned to different frequencies. and, yes, if not designed correctly, or not driven from an amp with a high damping factor, it will sound boomy. amps with low damping factors are tube amps with very little feedback, class D amps, or class A amps with no feedback. with a class AB amp with plenty of negative feedback, it should sound better, unless it was really poorly designed. you should also have something to reproduce high bass (100-500hz) as well, because most bandpass boxes roll of above 150-200hz, and will sound muddy if there is a hole in the 100-500hz range.

 

[audioguru]

The iBall Tarang 2.1 is a cheap speaker system in India.
It does not have a sub-woofer, instead it has a little 4.5" woofer.
The woofer cone is not seen because the enclosure is designed to make BOOMY sounds.
One note bass. All the bass is that same one note. Crappy but some people like it.

A review says the high frequecies from its 3" mid-range speakers is poor. It does not have tweeters.

 

[transistor495]

Thanks for the reply unclejed, so you mean the two inner boxes are opened through the single bass-port in this design?

It does not have a sub-woofer, instead it has a little 4.5" woofer.
The woofer cone is not seen because the enclosure is designed to make BOOMY sounds.
One note bass. All the bass is that same one note. Crappy but some people like it.

A review says the high frequencies from its 3" mid-range speakers is poor. It does not have tweeters.

Ah, what you just told is 100% true, some people like it -who just want some booming and they may be normally not aware of what the actual bass is

While listening closely to the satellite speakers it felt like very ordinary cheap quality speakers. It's high frequency response doesn't resemble anything close to reality. But all got a nice build quality and smooth wooden finish. What matters actually?

 

[audioguru]

I am pleased with the 2.1 speaker system I recently bought for only $25.00 for the TV in my computer room.
They lied about its output power which is only about 4W to 5W in the woofer and is about 1.5W to 2W in each satellite speaker.

Its 5" woofer is in a fairly large normally ported enclosure and produces sounds down to 40Hz. Its satellite speaker drivers are small enough to produce sounds higher than I can hear (15kHz).

 

[unclejed613]

so that actually sounds like one side is a sealed box, and the other side of the woofer is a ported bandpass. not a very good box design. as you said, it has one note response. a lot of the smaller subwoofers aren't really subwoofers, since they only have a frequency response down to 60hz or so, and rely on the principle that the brain fills in the missing low frequency information. however when a bass player plays bass chords (like parts of Tom Hamilton's bass line in Dream On), it sounds like one undefined note, because the difference frequencies an octave lower are missing.

 

[crutschow]

With careful design you can get a bass-reflex subwoofer design to have good transient response with a smooth frequency response but many are poorly designed and have a very peaky and undamped response. Bass-reflex designs (with a tube or port) have a high output level for their size and are thus often used in home theater systems to reproduce the loud, low frequency sound effects. But if you are concerned about the best bass accuracy and transient response for music then a sealed (acoustic suspension type) subwoofer is generally better.

I bought a cheap Sony bass-reflex self-powered subwoofer (exposed woofer with a tube port) to supplement my small speakers on my computer. It had a rather muddy sound so I plugged up the tube port with a heavy sock, which made it into a (mostly) sealed design. That greatly improved the transient response, and sharp bass drum thumps and other transient type bass sounds now sound significantly cleaner and more realistic.

 

[transistor495]

I am pleased with the 2.1 speaker system I recently bought for only $25.00 for the TV in my computer room.
They lied about its output power which is only about 4W to 5W in the woofer and is about 1.5W to 2W in each satellite speaker.

Its 5" woofer is in a fairly large normally ported enclosure and produces sounds down to 40Hz. Its satellite speaker drivers are small enough to produce sounds higher than I can hear (15kHz).

But I think that middle drivers are just pictures of tweeters glued right on there to foolish the customers, right AG?

 

[transistor495]

With careful design you can get a bass-reflex subwoofer design to have good transient response with a smooth frequency response but many are poorly designed and have a very peaky and undamped response. Bass-reflex designs (with a tube or port) have a high output level for their size and are thus often used in home theater systems to reproduce the loud, low frequency sound effects. But if you are concerned about the best bass accuracy and transient response for music then a sealed (acoustic suspension type) subwoofer is generally better.

I bought a cheap Sony bass-reflex self-powered subwoofer (exposed woofer with a tube port) to supplement my small speakers on my computer. It had a rather muddy sound so I plugged up the tube port with a heavy sock, which made it into a (mostly) sealed design. That greatly improved the transient response, and sharp bass drum thumps and other transient type bass sounds now sound significantly cleaner and more realistic.

Yeah, I've seen that some fully sealed car woofer enclosures makes very tighter bass response, but the problem was that at higher volumes it tends to distort because theres no way for the air inside to get compressed more.

 

[crutschow]

Yeah, I've seen that some fully sealed car woofer enclosures makes very tighter bass response, but the problem was that at higher volumes it tends to distort because theres no way for the air inside to get compressed more.

The distortion is either due to the speaker reaching the cone limits or the amplifier clipping. It has nothing to do with the air since, under the conditions in the speaker box, it acts as a linear spring as the air is only slightly compressed even at maximum speaker excursion.

 

[audioguru]

But I think that middle drivers are just pictures of tweeters glued right on there to foolish the customers, right AG?

Almost.
The middle drivers look exactly like soft-dome tweeters but are actually vents.
I have seen "3-way" car speakers that have photos of tweeters glued on.

 

[audioguru]

I have 4 sets of speakers that are completely sealed. They produce very low distortion when driven at reasonable powers.
At resonance and at high power then the cone moves as far as it can and causes a buzzing sound when the voice coil hits the magnet structure.

 

[unclejed613]

one type of enclosure (can't exactly call it a box) that works well is a "transmission line", using a piece of tubing the same diameter as the woofer as a 1/4 wavelength section, and some form of "resistance" (a segment of open-cell foam layers alternated with closed cell foam works well, while speaker "stuffing" does not) to lower the Q. the only problem with this is it is not small, but it is efficient.

 

[bountyhunter]

With careful design you can get a bass-reflex subwoofer design to have good transient response with a smooth frequency response but many are poorly designed and have a very peaky and undamped response.

The cheap ones intentionally put a peak (resonance) down there because it "extends" bass response to a slightly lower frequency and also makes the speaker sound like it has "more bass". As noted, it also makes it a "boom boom" box that simply outputs the same generic bass note for any frequency in the lower range.

 

[unclejed613]

i've heard the same effect in cars with a large subwoofer. the whole car resonates on one note, no matter what notes are in the music (and since the car is resonating, you can also hear a bunch of stuff rattling loose...)

 

[dr peppers]

Less common that Cerwin Vega and in my opinion a better amp/speaker is gallien kruger, the best sounding bass amps around.