JBL 2245 open baffle

[Andreas]

Hello There !

I have gotten hold of 4 jbl 2245 18 inch drivers. Offcourse these sound supposedly well in a rather large ported enclosure but I was wondering if anyone has tried them on a "plain" open baffle or in a "W" config ?

Cheers
Andreas

[BTW]

The Qts of the driver is 0.27 so in OB configuration you need to apply quite a bit of EQ to get the bass

[navin]

leave them in ported enclosures if you could spare the dbs and need a smaller box i'd do a isobaik bass reflex.

i once had a pair of B460s (JBL boxes with the 2245) they were fantastic. then i got married and WAF came into play. enjoy them while you can! :-)

[Sjef]

I'm using the two JBL 2205 15"woofers in a w-form open baffle. I can imagine that things wood work better with drivers that have a larger x-max but it worked out pretty fine. The 2205's are not designed as a subwoofer driver, but with such a large cone area and a lot of active eq you get lots of pretty tight really deep bass out of them. Can't use them for PA purposes in this configuration but for my room its enough. They still do sound a bit like PA bass though. You have to like that or not.

[Nielsio]

"PA bass"

What might this be

[Volenti]

Originally posted by Nielsio


What might this be

nightclub bass, nothing under 40 hz

[usekgb]

I would agree that you should put those 2245's in ported boxes. That is what they were designed for, and that's where they sound their best. One cool thing with these drivers is, they go extremely low in properly tuned boxes. One small drawback though, they need pretty big boxes. I forget the volume, but it is pretty big. They use these things in movie theaters for sub frequencies after all.

Cheers,
Zach

[Andreas]

Thanks for for the comments.

I agree that putting the 2245 in ported enclosures of around 250 liters tuned to 25-27 Hz is quite tempting. However my current system consists of jbl 2226 in 200 sealed boxes combined with 2 jbl 2118 and a stageaccompany ribbon. the whole thing is soffit mounted in the wall.
So basicly the 2245 was just something to play with "on the side" and having monster subs around is currently a big WAF no no at my place.

I might give a plain open baffle a try and combine with a focal 8 inch midrange and a philips ribbon i have lying around.

cheers
andreas

[Sjef]

With PA bass I mean a certain kind of sound character, not that there isn't any output below 40 Hz. Besides most small PA systems don't have any output below 50Hz or so. But 50Hz from a 15 or 18"drivers sound totally different than 40Hz from a 8" driver. There's much more pressure. PA woofers tend to have very thick paper cones with a cetain sound character (hard to describe if you have never heard it) that is different than for exemple the sound character of a relativly thin plastic cone.

Andrea asked if it was possible to use the 2245's in a open baffle configuration, so the answer is yes, try it. But if you want to amplify your own rock and roll band with them than build those big reflex enclosures for them.

The JBL 2205's work quite well in the w-baffle, so it should also be possible with the 2245's. My subs only meausure's 40*40*44 cm outside dimensions and has a resonance frequency of 16 Hz. Without eq they have a 85 dB/w/m output at 20 Hz !!!!!!! and a 105 db/w/m output at 150 Hz. So even with a 20dB eq boost towards 20HZ there's enough headroom for a medium sized listening room.

Most people always refere to PA as a negative thing. Listen to a good modern High End PA system (not the crappy one from the local pub) and you will hear a dynamic range you could only dream of at home.

[SY]

I've used the H version in several different configurations. 8 cu ft ported/EQed worked very well. Sealed and EQed also worked well, but it was hard to get the cabinets not to sing. I'm using them currently in a servoed configuration, which carries the same disadvantage, with somewhat less distortion in the bottom octave. When my wood budget permits, I'm sorely tempted to go TL with these. I'll bet that this will be best of all, but I'm interested to hear if anyone else has done this successfully.

Open baffle would not be my first choice for the 2245. The magnet is too strong and the excursion, while good, is not state-of-the-art. A pile of cheap 12 inchers with undersized magnets would seem more suitable.