Open Baffle woofer what is important?

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
I love my open baffle, but i actually don't know thiele small parameters. Since they now sound really good, I'm planning to begin a new design.

I would like to know more.

I'm thinking of two 15" per speaker. Some eq is ok, but I would like to minimize it in the low end. There is a lot of woofers, some available i EU some are not. Therefore I would like to know if there is something that simply do not work.

Xmax - That is important - I'm thinking at least 10 mm?

Qts: I know what Qts does. I know there are lot of opinions. I would like fairly high Qts around 0,7-0,8. Am I wrong when I assume a low Qts woofer will suffer from distortions because massive eq is needed. And I need more woofers to compensate for that? I have 200 decent watt 8 ohm. I don't want 1000 watt PA amplifiers.

Fs - I guess as low as possible, but is it 30 Hz or 20 Hz. Right now I have nothing usable below 40 Hz

Vas - does it matter? High or low Vas

Qms - ?

Maybe we could take this 15" woofer - Two in series = 8 ohm. Can you identify something that will not work, or is not optimum.

SPL15.1

Revc = 3.6 Ohm
Fo= 30.642hz
Sd= 779.310 CM Sq
BL= 12.970 TM
Qms= 6.151
Qes= 0.748
Qts= 0.667
No= 0.477%
SPL= 88.8db
Vas= 128.173 Ltr
Cms= 148.624 uM/N
Krm= 9.174mOhm
Erm= 0.777
Mms= 181.61g
MMd= 169.006g
Kxm= 47.238mOhm
Exm= 0.657

I have searched for the info, but I can't find much. I allwais end up in IB woofer discussions.
 
One more thing

I focus here on low bass. I would be in a 3 way, so The woofer will not go higher than 200 - 300 Hz. So emphasis is on low bass.

This woofer could be some kind of reference

Dipole15 - But what I'm after is why and what is important.

Fs: 21.66Hz
Qms: 15.16
Qes: 1.002
Qts: 0.94
Vas: 623L
Mms: 90g
Xmax: 13mm peak
Voice coil height: 12.4mm
Air gap: 38.4mm
Sd: 855cm2
Re: 12.3 ohms
Le: 0.3mH
Z: 16 ohms
Bl: 12.26Tm
1W SPL: 90dB
Pmax: ~100W
 

No I have missed that one. Thanks a lot. Really good info here.

I need to find a +90 dB woofer with fs below 30 Hz high excursion and a Qts around 1. I still need to play with some simulators.

I'm still not sure about the importance of Qms and Vas (what does a very low Vas do compared to high Vas in an open baffle)
 
I need to find a +90 dB woofer with fs below 30 Hz high excursion and a Qts around 1. I still need to play with some simulators.

That sounds as if you tried to go very low.

IMHO, there is little point in trying to play 30Hz through OB in an acoustically small room. In theory (which typically assumes free space !), you can get it with enough driver area, Xmax and amplifier power. In practice, a normal living room induce very significant additional boundary losses below lowest mode (dipole can't pressurize the room). See: Boundary effects

Later edit: this also happens to be one reason why OB bass is hard to get right. At the end of the day, in-(your)-room equalization is going to be the only accurate way.

40Hz is a more realistic target - and for some people, like me, quite enough for music. If you do movies, multiple subwoofers are your friends.

I'm still not sure about the importance of Qms and Vas (what does a very low Vas do compared to high Vas in an open baffle)

I think Vas has in itself less relevance in OB context, because Vas is a measure of equivalent air compliance that determines the a driver + enclosure Fs and Q. For OB, there is no enclosure. See this discussion: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/176198-vas-question.html

Thiele/Small parameters are not independent, but interrelated (Thiele/Small - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).. Vas is given by the driver's stiffness and the latter is linked to the driver's Fs via it's mass. In the context of open baffle, it makes more sense to look at things from Fs and Qts perspective.
 
Last edited:
I love my open baffle, but i actually don't know thiele small parameters. Since they now sound really good, I'm planning to begin a new design.

I would like to know more.

I'm thinking of two 15" per speaker. Some eq is ok, but I would like to minimize it in the low end. There is a lot of woofers, some available i EU some are not. Therefore I would like to know if there is something that simply do not work.

Will you have DSP EQ?

If so then the only really thing that matters is the volume displacement (sd*xmax) and the distortion performance. (Assuming you have enough watts to drive the subs over planned the operating range).

L26RO4Y for example are great subs, used among others by Linkwitz in the LX521.

Best is if you can use two drivers per speaker where you invert one of them. Also keep in mind that two 15" makes for a huge speaker, I thought I did when I got 2x 15" per side but then I realized I didn't ;)

I initially bought 2x AE IB15 but then downsized to 2x L26RO4Y instead. two high excursion 15" subs is just massive overkill unless you really need crazy SPL below 40 hz. There is very little actual musical content below 40 hz unless you listen to electronic music which I don't so I realized I didn't need that SPL capability.
 
I'm in the design process of building an OB design for my 2 main channels of my home theatre at the moment, as such I will be using two Peerless 830669 12 woofers connected in series for each channel.
The reason for the series connection is that the series combination provides for needed cone damping at very low frequencies that can cause drivers to 'bottom out' when cone displacement becomes excessive. Home theatre can be quite demanding on an OB design and one is usually needs to supplement it all with a powered subwoofer for LFE.
Still by using two such woofers in series in an OB design has its benefits with a home theatre amplifier in that it reduces the required cone displacement ( X max) by half for the same output SPL as a single driver and thus allows better protection against excessive cone movement.
The higher impedance of a series connection would prove to be a less of a strain on the HT amplifier at low frequencies in regards to the current drawn.
As a parallel connection there is a 6db gain not only at bass frequencies but up into the midrange as well which would need to dealt with in the crossover. The series connection will allow easier matching in SPL between the woofers and the midrange driver with minimal loss.

The Peerless 830669 is worth a look at and is relatively cheap.

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.c...rless-sls-830669-12-woofer-coated-paper-cone/

C.M
 
I have DSP now and I have 30 Hz in room measured- But I can't benefit from the 30 Hz, because of distortion. This goes both for electronic and organ music. Also Sprach Zarathrustra is also not played very well. 98% of the music I listen to do not have much below 40 hz, so it's just a little problem, but I would like to have the low end back.

And I must admit that I think about a "normal" woofer for sub 40 Hz.

click here to see my current OB. They are in fact quite small.
 
Johannes, it's the first time I heard someone called AE drivers distortion devices and ringing s.o.d. Whatever that means

I don´t know where you found those words. I have never written them.

What is the difference between a Qts of 1,0 and 0,2???

Isn't that efficiency thrown out the window once EQ is added

Only if you measure at a fixed voltage (2,83 volt).
You have to compare at a given power, not voltage.
 
LO15-vs-JBL2227.jpg

Here is a AE LO15-D16 in a 10000 cm2 open baffle (left) compared with a JBL 2227H in the same size open baffle (right).

The JBL has 1,7761% power conversion efficiency compared to 0,6728% for the AE driver (both at 50 Hz). The JBL driver needs 4 volts to reach 92 dB, but has a much higher impedance at that frequency compared with the AE - requiring less current and thereby less power. Both drivers are operated above Fs in this simulation.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.